Foreign News: Pants Up, Pants Down

Last fall, in order to save cloth, Italy's Supreme Council of Autarchy (commission on self-sufficiency, headed by self-sufficient Benito Mussolini) urged Italian manhood to get out of long pants, get into shorts. Lest Italian manhood think them effeminate, newspapers insisted shorts were "not only hygienic but masculine and patriotic."

Last week from hat-famed Leghorn came an abrupt style switch, a harsh pull-'em-down order. Snarled Telegrafo, newspaper of Count Galeazzo Ciano, breeches-wearing husband of pants-wearing (TIME, July 14) Edda Mussolini:

"Men wearing short pants look absurd in these serious, austere surroundings. Grown men with hairy legs barely covered and short panties resemble ridiculous absent-minded professors. To be sure there was a short-pants campaign last year . . . but this mediocre idea proved a failure."