ITALIANS IN AUSTRALIA

Shannon News, 26 November 1926, Page 2

ITALIANS IN AUSTRALIA

GATHERING OF FASCISTS. CEREMONY IN MELBOURNE. With great enthusiasm members of the Italian Fascismo and the Italian community in Melbourne recently celebrated the anniversary of the armistice between Italy and Austria on November 4, 1918, and the birth of the Fascismo movement on October 2S, 1922, w 7 hen Mussolini marched on Rome and was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emanuel 111. As guests of the Royal Italian Con-sul-General for Australasia (Commendatore E. Grossardi) and Donna Grossardi, 50 black-shirted Fascists figured in a picturesque ceremony on the tennis coure at Chohmel, Lisson Grove, • Hawthorne, when the Fascismo flag, after consecration, was handed, as a gift of Donna Grossardi, to the Fascists. Members from other States attended. A remarkable scene was that in which Count Di San Marzano, the re-cently-appointed Consul for Italy In Brisbane, who, like Commendatore Grossardi and Cavaliere Marso Carosi, Vive-'Consul for Italy in Sydney, wore the black shirts of the Order, called upon the Fascists present to kneel during one minute's silence in commemoration of the Italian dead in the Great War, and of 3000 Fascists who perished in the post-war conflicts against Bolshevism and Communism.

The Fascimo salute, given with an upraised right arm in the manner of the old Roman greeting, was accorded to the Consular representatives on their entrance by, the Fascisti guard of -honour, and was spontaneously evoked with ringing cheers at the mention of Mussolini's name during a wonderfully impassioned address by Father Di Franceso. Before the consecration of the colours, Count Di San Marzano, who left Rome only a few weeks ago, brought a personal message of greeting to the Melbourne Fascismo from Signor Mussolini.