ITALY: De Basis' Valedictory

Three weeks ago an unknown German plane droned in the still air above Rome showering anti-Fascist leaflets on the red tile roofs. Blue-helmeted Roman police and furious Fascists formed themselves instantly into a corps of gleaners and rushed about garnering as the leaflets fell, but the snow of propaganda was too heavy for them; thousands fell into the hands of citizens. Out at Rome's airport mechanics rushed from store rooms with loaded machine gun belts. Pursuit planes took off. The mysterious plane disappeared, has not been seen since.

Fortnight ago it was learned that the plane had belonged originally to two German aviators, that the unknown aviator was one Lauro de Bosis, Italian esthete, whose mother, the former Lillian Vernon of Syracuse, N. Y., was arrested in Rome last year as an anti-Fascist propagandist. Last week, hope for Aviator de Bosis gone, a curious document appeared in Paris. Written by young de Bosis in the expectation that he would be shot down over Italy, it was entitled: THE STORY OF MY DEATH. Excerpts:

"Tomorrow at three o'clock in a meadow on the Cote d'Azur I have an appointment with Pegasus. Pegasus is the name of my airplane. It has a russet body and white wings. . . . Sometimes drunk with petrol it leaps through the air like its brother of old, but in the night it can glide at will like a phantom. . . .

"Every regime in the world, even the Turkish and Afghan, allows its subjects a modicum of liberty. Fascism alone, in self defense, is obliged to annihilate all thought. . . .

"The sky of Rome has never been violated by anti-Fascist planes. I shall be the first, I said to myself. . . . My death, however undesired by me personally who have so many things to do, could but add to the success of my flight. All danger lies in my return flight. I shall not die before I have delivered my 400,000 leaflets and then they will be all the better recommended.

"My plane only flies 150 kilometers an hour, whereas those of Mussolini can do 300. There are 900 of them and they all have orders to identify any suspicious plane and if necessary bring it down by machine gun fire. If Balbo [Italian air minister] has done his duty* they are there waiting for me. I shall be worth more dead than alive."