His entire sojourn here was a complete failure. Out of all the Italian societies in Chicago, only the Societa Riciglianese went en masse to greet the General. The other societies were represented by only three or four members.

Hardly seventy persons attended the banquet in Badoglio's honor, while the bourgeois press stated that one hundred and fifty attended.

There was also that ridiculous figure of Mastro-Valerio, editor of the Tribuna Transatlantica. Because no speeches were requested, he appeared quite contented and officious in his behavior. However, if speeches had been in order, he surely would have opened the sluice of his flowery words. The few that he uttered were also nonsensical - for instance, when 2he asserted that the mass meeting [?] held at the armory of the First National Guard was impressive for its size, while hardly 350 persons attended. He seems to forget our socialist mass meeting of over 1,000 attendants, during comrade Oddino Morgari's visit to Chicago--and Morgari, by the way, was nothing like a general.

His Tribuna and the other Chicago newspapers gave such a hearty farewell to the reporter Donna Paola Parisi, whom the Tribuna went as far as to call "my favorite friend" and "princess of journalists." No wonder! A one-eyed person, in the midst of so many blind, can boast of having a good sight--particularly here in Chicago where there are only four stupid and illiterate bourgeois reporters, headed by Mastro-Valerio.

This man is also two-faced. For instance, one day he and I were invited to a family reception. Well, he accepted the invitation only after he 3had inquired, and found out that his alleged friends, Mr. Paolo Parisi and Prof. Giuseppe Bertelli, had not been invited.

Let us pass on to another disgrace known by everybody, but ignored by dishonest newspapers, particularly L'Italia and La Tribuna Transatlantica.

I am referring to the swindle which Mr. Domenico Pignatta, alias Ario Flamma, perpetrated in Chicago against so many poor people, with the complicity of the above mentioned press and the Italian Chamber of Commerce - robbing them of several thousands of dollars in favor of the Excelsior Dramatic Company.

This crooked deal was originally pulled off in the form of "Hamlet's Mask" at the Princess Theatre in New York. For two years previous I had forseen the total and shameful failure of this drama, which also the American newspapers had rightly and forcefully condemned.

However, the Chicago newspapers never had the honest courage of mentioning this disaster, which would have served as a warning to Italian theatre fans in Chicago. Why this silence? Was it to snub us for telling the truth about this play? Mr. Mastro-Valerio, who had previously praised it, is now pretending to know nothing about it.

Worst of all is the total loss of shares suffered by those Italians who had bought them.

Giuseppe Orrico

807 Sanbaldi Place, Chicago