From The Times, April 11, 1924
The election victor, Signor Mussolini, returned to Rome tonight, and received an ovation as imposing as any ever accorded to a Roman conqueror.
The population assembled in their thousands in the Piazza del Popolo and surged down the Corso, spilling the sightseers into the narrow side streets, shouting, singing, and brandishing hats, clubs, revolvers, and banners. The procession was, roughly, divided into its Fascist sections, but any excuse seemed good enough to make up a brave company, and there were sections representing ex-gunners, ex-students, ex-Nationalists, ex-policemen, and ex-railwaymen.
Each was “terrible as an army with banners”, and the latter’s bright folds floating in the dusk formed a canopy of colours over excited faces and sombre black attire. All sorts and conditions of men, women, and children were represented, from youthful aspirants of four or five years old, borne on the shoulders of older brethren, to the Garibaldean veteran in his red shirt, hobbling along arm-in-arm with a smart young officer in the National Militia.
On a curtained banner of deep purple velvet were borne the medals of the Medaglie d’Oro, the winners of the Italian Victoria Cross. The military element was, of course, supreme, and gave a touch of discipline and order to the roaring multitudes so that there were lacking only the prisoners, the plunder, and the victorious general for the real triumph to be reconstructed, and the victor was found when the crowd reached the Piazza Colonna and flooded round the Palazzo Chigi.
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Fifty thousand people crammed themselves in the space round the Column of Marcus Aurelius and greeted Signor Mussolini as he appeared on the balcony with one mighty shout of “Eja, eja, alala, alala”’ It was quite impossible to hear what il Duce said, but he would be less, or more, than human if he were not touched by this immense flood of congratulation upon the victory which is very really his own work.
News in brief: The Egyptian Ministry of Finance has at last approved the credit of £28,000 for building a special wing to the Cairo Museum for housing the treasures taken from Tutankhamen’s tomb. The original proposal to build this wing was made last September.
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