Today -100: April 7, 1924: Of captives and plebiscites of devotion

Pope Pius is thinking about attending a Knights of Columbus event in Rome. This would be the first time a pope has left the Vatican since 1870; they’ve been proclaiming themselves “captives” of the Italian state. (Update: it won’t happen. The pope will make his way to the K of C building via a circuitous route through various buildings, some of which they’ll cut entrances into so he doesn’t have to cross into Rome proper).

Italy’s parliamentary elections, or as the Fascists term them, “the nation’s plebiscite of devotion to Mussolini,” are carried out with almost no violence.

Germany is also holding federal and state elections. In Bavaria, the Völkisch-Sozialer Block, which the NYT thinks is run by Hitler (or “August Hitler,” as they call him) but which is more like Nazi-adjacent although the followers of ol’ August are voting for it in the absence of the National Socialist Party from the ballot, comes in just a few votes behind the Social Democrats but well behind the Bavarian People’s Party which nevertheless shed a lot of votes to the far-right.

Romania puts the universities under martial law to stop anti-semitic attacks. Student and prof pogromists will now be tried by military courts – civilian courts have tended to acquit.

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