INTERNATIONAL: Newsiest Dictator

• Share

Nearly every kind of hot news story about Benito Mussolini began to sizzle in capitals from one end of Europe to the other last week, while Il Duce made still more news in sizzling Africa:

Mussolini was charged by the Madrid Defense Junta with having committed a slip tending to prove that Italians fighting in Spain are not "volunteers" as Rome maintains but Italian regulars. What Madrid claimed was a message from Il Duce flashed to Italian commanders in Spain which read : "Aboard the Pola on my way to Libya I have received your dispatches.

. . . Tell our legionnaires I am following their action hourly. . . . Mussolini." This drew prompt official denial from Rome where it was called "a fake, clumsy trick."

Mussolini, who was denounced by im plication recently by the Archbishop of Canterbury for "Italian atrocities in Ethiopia," last week was directly attacked by the Dean of Winchester, to the alarm of the British Foreign Office which took pains to intimate that monkeying with Mussolini is risky work for the United Kingdom's State Church. At London, in the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie, a solemn Anglican service for native Ethio pian war dead climaxed when the Dean of Winchester said the Italian people ''have been seized by a spirit of evil of a superhuman nature. . . . The ruler of Italy supposes himself to be a Caesar, but he is the true type of the Assyrian Emperor Antiochus, surnamed 'The Brilliant' and nicknamed 'The Madman.' "

Ethiopia's Minister to Great Britain charged that among natives executed at Addis Ababa after the bomb attempt on the Italian Viceroy (TIME, March 1) were two of his sons and a son of another Ethiopian Minister: ''These three were among the fine flowers of Ethiopia's enlightened intellectuals."

Mussolini's small-statured sovereign Vittorio Emanuele III canceled at Rome last week the Italian delegation headed by Crown Prince Umberto which was to have represented His Majesty at the British Coronation. Reason: Vittorio Emanuele III and his subjects, including Il Duce, are united in considering His Majesty not only King of Italy but also Emperor of Ethiopia, united too in refusing to stomach what they call the "British insult" de livered when George VI invited Haile Selassie to send a native delegation "to represent the Ethiopian Emperor at the Coronation." This hot quarrel last week made sure of a snub in Rome for British Ambassador Sir Eric Drummond when he called to ask the Italian Foreign Office whether further Italian troops were being landed in Spain through the British fleet now assigned to blockade its west coast. Attitude of Count Ciano, the Italian For eign Minister and son-in-law of Il Duce, was that the British were in the best position to answer their question.