Evening Star
- STABS KILL YOUTH AFTER HIS BULLET GRAZES MUSSOLINI
- BOTH SIDES CLAIM VICTORY ON EVE OF VOTING TOMORROW
- My Impressions of America
The Evening Star of November 1, 1926, carried an Associated Press report from Italy: a young man fired at Benito Mussolini as he left a stadium after opening a science congress, and Blackshirts stabbed, beat and dragged the youth to death within minutes while the authorities searched for accomplices. On the eve of the midterm elections, another AP dispatch found Republicans and Democrats, wets and drys, all claiming victory, with control of the Seventieth Congress, especially the Senate, at stake and voters giving few signs of their intentions. In a signed installment of "My Impressions of America," Queen Marie of Romania described the formal presidential dinner at the White House.
Translation
STABS KILL YOUTH AFTER HIS BULLET GRAZES MUSSOLINI
Having escaped assassination for the sixth time in the four years he has been premier, Benito Mussolini, whose slogan is "Live in Danger," was undaunted as ever today as search was made for accomplices of a youth who tried to kill "Il Duce," and then was lynched by infuriated Fascisti yesterday.
As Mussolini was leaving the stadium after opening the Congress for the Advancement of Science, a slender, blond youth, about 18 years old, pressed forward toward his automobile and fired an automatic pistol.
As the youth started to fire again he was seized by infuriated black shirts, who felled him, stabbed him 14 times, choked and beat him and then dragged the body through a milling mass of humanity. The youth was slain several minutes after the pistol shots.
BOTH SIDES CLAIM VICTORY ON EVE OF VOTING TOMORROW
The answer to all the efforts of the political leaders and candidates during weeks of intensive campaigning will be furnished tomorrow by the voters.
Sweeping claims of victory continued to come today from the rival camps—Republican and Democratic, wet and dry—but the key to the great biennial election puzzle rested with the millions who had manifested few outward signs of interest and given little hint of how they might be expected to vote.
The big prize in the election from the national party standpoint—the control of the Seventieth Congress—was claimed by both sides, with many Democratic managers confident that they had better than a fighting chance to control at least the Senate, and with the Republicans apparently equally as confident that any threat of such a result had been removed.
My Impressions of America
Our long but pleasant day in Washington ended with the official presidential dinner at the White House. We all put on our most official clothes. As both my daughter and I wanted to honor the President and his wife as we would have honored a King, we drove up in separate motors and were received with the procedure appropriate to the White House. Important personages, members of the cabinet, their wives, some generals and others had been invited to meet me.
Context
The Bologna shooting and the disputed case of Anteo Zamboni
The AP report describes a slender blond youth "about 18 years old" who fired at Mussolini as he left the stadium and was then stabbed 14 times by Blackshirts. Historical accounts place the event on October 31, 1926, in Bologna, where a shot fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car led to the lynching of a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, three years younger than the paper's estimate. The paper treats the youth's guilt as settled and reports the search for accomplices as the natural next step. Later scholarship is more doubtful: the terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell wrote that the boy was likely innocent and that the affair was either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. The dispatch therefore records the version of events current the day after the shooting, while the question of who actually fired has been raised by historians since.
A string of attempts in 1925–1926 and the laws that followed
The paper counts the Bologna shooting as the sixth assassination attempt Mussolini had escaped in four years as premier. Historical accounts list a cluster of attempts in this period: the former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested on November 4, 1925, for plotting to shoot Mussolini; on April 7, 1926, Violet Gibson fired a pistol whose bullet grazed his nose; and on September 11, 1926, the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four others. These four attempts fall short of the paper's figure of six, and the sources here do not show which other incidents the paper counted. The attempts also had political uses. Historians believe the Zaniboni plot was engineered by the Mussolini administration as a pretext to consolidate power, and the Bologna attempt resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police. The accomplice hunt reported here was thus the opening stage of a crackdown that turned a failed shooting into new instruments of state repression.
Results of the November 2, 1926, elections
On election eve the AP found both parties claiming control of the Seventieth Congress, with Democratic managers hopeful of taking at least the Senate. The voting on November 2, 1926, cut the Republican Senate majority by seven seats, but Republicans still held a majority, so the Democratic hope fell short. The result was further clouded in Pennsylvania, where the Republican winner was later refused his seat by the Senate on charges of corruption and fraud in the election. The "wet and dry" contest named in the dispatch was decided partly through state referendums. TIME reported that eight states held prohibition referendums: Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin voted to modify the liquor laws, with the wet majority in New York exceeding three to one, while the drys won in California, Colorado and Missouri. The paper's remark about voters showing little interest also found an echo in the South, where TIME reported turnout averaging scarcely one-third of the usual electorate.
Queen Marie's 1926 American tour and her signed series
Queen Marie's column describes the White House dinner that closed her day in Washington. She arrived in the United States on October 18, 1926, and called on President Calvin Coolidge in Washington before spending several days in New York. The visit was a diplomatic tour on which she was accompanied by her children Nicholas and Ileana, so the daughter in the column is most likely Princess Ileana. HistoryLink states that during the trip she wrote a series of articles called "My Impressions of America," naming the publisher as the "American Newspaper Alliance"; the material here does not document how the arrangement was made or promoted. Her movements were also covered closely by the press contingent traveling with her. Marie had experience of public diplomacy: in 1919 she attended the Paris Peace Conference to campaign for international recognition of an enlarged Romania. Her remark that she and her daughter honored the President and his wife as they would a king reflects that diplomatic purpose.
Original
STABS KILL YOUTH AFTER HIS BULLET GRAZES MUSSOLINI
- Having escaped assassination for the sixth time in the four years he has been premier. Benito Mussolini, whose slogan is " Live in Danger, " was undaunted as ever today as search was made for accomplices of a youth who tried to kill " Il Duce, " and then was lynched by infuriated Fascisti yesterday. As Mussolini was leaving the stadium after opening the Congress for the Advancement of Science, a slender, blond youth, about 18 years old, pressed forward toward his automobile and fired an automatic pistol. As the youth started to fire again he was seized by infuriated black shirts, who felled him, stabbed him 14 times, choked and beat him and then dragged the body through a milling mass of humanity. The youth was slain several minutes after the pistol shots.
BOTH SIDES CLAIM VICTORY ON EVE OF VOTING TOMORROW
The answer to all the efforts of the political leaders and candidates during weeks of intensive campaigning will be furnished tomorrow by the voters. Sweeping claims of victory continued to come today from the rival camps-Republican and Democratic, wet and dry-but the key to the great biennial election puzzle rested with the millions who had manifested few outward signs of interest and given little hint of how they might be expected to vote. The big prize in the election from the national party standpoint-the control of the Seventieth Congresswas claimed by both sides, with many Democratic managers confident that they had better than a fighting chance to control at least the Senate, and with the Republicans apparently equally as confident that any threat of such a result had been removed.
My Impressions of America
Our long but pleasant day in Washington ended with the official presidential dinner at the White House. We all put on our most official clothes. As both my daughter and I wanted to honor the President and his wife as we would have honored a King, we drove up in separate motors and were received with the procedure appropriate to the White House. Important personages, members of the cabinet, their wives, some generals and others had been invited to meet me.
Source: Holding institution