ITALY: Champions

"My eight children, Your Excellency, have all been born without a midwife. You see, our farm is a long way out in the country, and the midwife always arrives too late. I am soon going to have my ninth, Your Excellency."

"I have had seventeen children, Your Excellency, and fourteen of them are living, but only nine have been born since April 15 1926—so I have entered only the nine in this contest, Your Excellency!"

"My husband was fighting in Ethiopia, Your Excellency, when my quadruplets were born!"

Italian mothers last week babbled these pleasant tales of motherhood to Benito Mussolini in his big office. They were representative of the 94 big winners in his More Babies Contest who have had 727 children (7.7 apiece) in the last eleven years. Each received from the Dictator last week five crisp new 1,000 lira bills, and to an Italian peasant 5,000 lire is a great deal more than its exchange equivalent in the U. S. ($263). Each also received a paid-up insurance policy. Of the 94 champions one is an Italian noblewoman, mother of seven.

Hearty in his talk with most of the mothers last week, II Duce dropped his voice to an undertone while talking with Signora Venia Errani, mother of 13, whose husband is fighting in Spain. The Dictator then delivered extempore a series of lusty remarks about fecundity so pointed that several husbands who had come with their wives blushed furiously. "You report to me" Mussolini warned his champion mothers, "if your husbands don't treat you as they should!"