BUT THE BOY GREW UP

There is an old legend of a Prince that sought his lady love in a tall tower east of the sun and west of the moon. At the present time there are still many young people who are searching for an ideal that seems to be just as securely hidden. The modern youth movement since the war has been attempting to turn the world upside down to find its princess of liberty, and there is every indication that she too is hiding in that ancient stone tower. At any rate, the governments of Europe especially are tiring of this excitement, so the Communistic party in Russia has decided to purge itself of the young moderns and take up her interrupted liaison with the more substantial Madame Prosperity. Spain is more abrupt, and has threatened to imprison all students who attack the existing dictatorship.

But it has remained for Mussolini to cap the climax. In the Decalogue of the Young Facist there are incorporated ten commandments that almost reach the magnitude of a Napoleonic gesture. The purpose of these ten requirements is to train good Italians to be good Facists, and if these rules are obeyed, II Duce will have succeeded in resembling Napoleon to an even more gratifying degree. Anticipating some of the difficulties that might arise from the rather unusual sternness of the pronouncement, the Italian youth are not to object to being confined to prison, for the Dictator assures them that any such punishment will not be inflicted unless he deems it deserved. This is in keeping with the main point of the Decalogue which is that it is absolutely necessary to believe that M. Mussolini is always right. On the whole, the hopeful youths of 1919 seem to have aged rather rapidly.