Today -100: February 7, 1926: What I said does not apply to clowning or political oratory

Some Germans are boycotting Italian products over Italy’s treatment of Germans in South Tyrol (or the Alto Adige as Italy calls the province annexed after the Gerat War), among other things forcing them to Italianize their names. In the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini threatens retaliation: “two eyes for an eye and a whole set of teeth for the loss of only one tooth.” He calls the German campaign “nefarious and ridiculous,” which I believe is the Duck’s dating profile. He says “We will render that region Italian because it is Italian, both historically and geographically. The new boundary of the Brenner Pass is a frontier traced by the infallible hand of God.” He says most of the Germans in the Alto Adige “are Italians who have become Germans and whom we will redeem by making them feel the pride of belonging to the great Italian nation.” The rest of the Germans are just “residues of barbaric invasions.”

Five people dig up  Pancho Villa’s body and make off with his skull. They leave a note saying they’ll send it to the US for $5,000. They won’t, and it will never be seen again, except maybe at Yale’s Skull and Bones Club.

Contributing to a debate in the letter pages of the Daily Telegraph on applause in theatres, George Bernard Shaw puts “applause during a performance on the footing of brawlings in church” (like those aren’t fun too). “The first condition of an artistic performance is that the players should be able to forget the audience and the audience to forget itself.” “The only entertainments at which loud laughter and applause should be countenanced are those which have laughter and applause for their object. Therefore, what I said does not apply to clowning or political oratory.”

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