In January 1923, the young journalist Ernest Hemingway covered the Lausanne Conference for the Toronto Daily Star. His first encounter with Mussolini left him distinctly unimpressed. Ushered into a room along with other journalists, Hemingway found the Premier so deeply absorbed in a book that he did not bother to look up. Curious, Hemingway “tiptoed over behind him to see what the book was he was reading with such avid interest. It was a French–English dictionary—held upside down.”¹