I needed a good giggle this morning before work.
The picture above references Mussolini in 1922 as "cocky" when he and his newly organized blackshirts took Italy.
The article reads:
After more than 18 years of dictatorship, Mussolini is no lusty athlete, as newsreels have so often pictured him, but a sick, neurotic old man of 57. He has had stomach ulcers for years, has used no meat, tea, coffee, hard liquor or tobacco. There is a suspicion abroad that both his heart and brain have been affected by syphilis. Coincidence-seekers have even connected his reported ailments with European events, viz:
When Germany took the Rhineland Mussolini had an attack of ulcers. When Hitler conducted his blood purge Mussolini began losing his hair (and he has grown bald since then). When Hitler grabbed Austria, Mussolini had a heart attack. When Germany and Russia signed their Non-aggression pact, Mussolini was fitted for glasses (and he does wear glasses now). When Germany invaded Poland, Mussolini couldn't sleep.
Whether these reports were true, certain it is that no official explanation has ever been given of his abrupt withdrawal from Italy's Army maneuvers in August 1939. During the weeks of crisis that followed, Mussolini espoused a strange new policy: silence. He has broken silence publicly only nine times since then, and those speeches were short, bitter. Last month he failed to make his habitual appearance on the Palazzo Venezia on the anniversary of the birth of Fascism.
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