ITALY: Worse Than Judas

When a millionaire socialist named Matteotti was brutally murdered by Fascists and his body flung in a ditch (TIME, June 23, 1924), there was a worker in Fascist ranks named "General" Cesare Rossi. He had been a linotype operator under Editor Mussolini and a fervent pedestrian in the historic "March on Rome." In return for his epaulets, Dictator Mussolini apparently expected General Rossi to bear in silence a large part of the responsibility for the Matteotti murder. But at a crucial moment Cesare Rossi refused to keep quiet under blame and figuratively cried "Murderer!" at the man who had made him. Followed jail, interminable proceedings, and a lucky escape in a small motorboat to Nice. Safe in France, General Rossi exclaimed "I would like to have Mussolini strung up higher than any yardarm pirate would string him!"

In Switzerland, a year ago last August, Cesare Rossi was so foolish as to go for a motor ride with an elegant brunette. Their car entered the Italian town of Campione, a town bordered on three sides by Switzerland. Instantly Cesare Rossi was arrested and clapped into jail, charged with high treason.

Last week General Cesare Rossi, thin, prison-pale, and with a scraggly beard was brought to trial. He was allowed no witnesses.

The courtroom was packed with a hand-picked Fascist audience. Sitting dully in the iron-barred prisoner's cage, a white-gloved carabineer on either side of him, Cesare Rossi listened while Prosecutor Michele Isgro came quickly to the following peroration :

"He is a Judas! His treachery is too repulsive to deserve mercy. Nay, worse than a Judas, he is not repentant! He did not follow Judas' example in committing suicide!"

Five trial judges deliberated less than half an hour, then brought in their verdict: Thirty years in prison, of which three years are to be spent in solitary confinement.