The officers corps knew what it meant, so much so that thousands of officers absented themselves that day from duty “on account of illness,” but when they came back each had to take the oath individually. The significance of that is that no German army has ever mutined, and this oath bound every soldier of Germany to the person of Adolf Hitler. It was a most impressive ceremony and I carried away from it the conviction that this army would never break its oath and turn on Hitler until it met defeat. I am still convinced this is true. Q. _Yes, but what about Mussolini? You said he was decidedly cocky about defeating Hitler over Austria._ A. I started to say that after having covered the death of Hindenburg and the accession to the Presidency of Hitler, I went down and reported the Nuremberg Party Congress, and directly thereafter went to Rome and met Mussolini. It was October 1934. I had met him several times previously and he always used to insist on asking more questions than he answered; so he began our conversation by saying, “I hear you have been to Nuremberg--what did you learn there? What did they think of me?” I answered that frankly the Italians were not popular in Nuremberg, and that one of my English colleagues, Chris Holmes of Reuters, who is tall, dark, and handsome, had once been mistaken for an Italian and had some trouble with Nazi Storm Troopers until he identified himself. “So we are unpopular there,” Mussolini ruminated. “And go on, what else did you observe in that line?” “Well,” I continued, “one night I met a group of officers of the SS [_Schutzstaffel_] and we were talking about affairs, and one of them asked me what you, Your Excellency, would have done with those troops you mobilized on the Brenner during the Dollfuss Putsch if you had marched into Austria.” “Yes,” said the Duce leaning forward. “Yes, yes, go on, what did they want to know?” “Well,” I hesitated, “they wanted to know if you had marched into Austria, would you have stopped there, or would you have gone on and marched into Germany?” Mussolini put his hands on the desk and leaned halfway over it, and a great smile came on his face as he ejaculated, “Ahhhh! Were they afraid?” I laughed and he laughed and it was agreed that the Germans had been afraid, and if ever there was a delighted man it was Mussolini, reveling in the thought that he had frightened his gentlemen friends. Q. _You have told us that the first impression one gets of Hitler is that he looks silly, but you remarked that this was a false impression.... Do you imply that on closer acquaintance his personality grows upon you?_