BENITO'S HOME CRITICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

BENITO'S HOME CRITICS.

REARED IN HOTBED OF

PROPAGANDA.

DUCE'S FATHER A FIREBRAND

GAVE REFUGE TO POLITICAL

OUTLAWS,

(From Our Special Correspondent.)

i If people eA'erywhere in Italy are 1 guarded in their comments on the Fascist ' regime, the village of Predappio, Mussolini's birthplace, makes the sole exception to the rule. Here they criticise the Duce without the slightest compunction and quite openly. To the village oldtimers, the Duce of Fascism, the successor of Caesar in the capital, is simply Benito, old Alessandro the blacksmith's boy. It's in Predappio in the environment where Mussolini grew up that one gains an entirely new conception of the Duce's character and views. Even under Fascism this village remains one of the most restless spots in Italy. For decades it was one of the European hotbeds of revolutionary ideas, anarchism and a breeding ground for subversive movements. They have cursed the Government as long as men remember in Predappio, and they don't see why they should stop grumbling just because one of their own lads rules the roost in Rome. As to fear of police, reprisals and prison, they don't know what this means in the Romagna country, of which Predappio is a part. Alessandro, the Dace's father, spent five years in prison for his ideas, his grandfather, Luigi Mussolini, was a rebel all his life. The Duce's mother,"Donna Rosa, was a woman of an independent point of view who held her own against all, including the prefect, the Mayor and the other authorities. As to Benito himself, lie came to know the inside of a dozen S .vise, Austrian and Italian hoosegOW 7 S. Home of Red Movement. The Red movement which Mussolini smashed with his march on Rome was born in Predappio. He himself was one of its products. In his father's blacksmith shop he saw many other things besides ploughshares forged. Alessaudro's companions, fiercc revolutionaries, who hesitated at nothing, inspired the boy with an inflexible will of steel. All through the Duce's youth, Predappio was the continual scene of police raids house to house searches for forbidden literature and bombs, arrests, political trials and incarcerations. Older inhabitants of the village recall the days when the home of Alessandro Mussolini was a place of refuge for political outlaws from all over Europe. Proscribed Russian anarchists and nihilists flocked over from France and Switzerland. Every man, so long as he had an idea that was original or dangerous, was welcome. Alessandro embraced them like brothers. Young Benito heard them expound their doctrines. The great puzzle is how Benito Mussolini, a product of so revolutionary internationalist an environment, became in time a personification of all that is opposed to Socialism. If Alessandro, the fiery, red blacksmith, were alive to-day would he disown his own son for his ideas, and vice versa would the dictator son perhaps be forced to use coercion to silence the tempestuous radical blacksmith? Only Predappio will supply the answer. In 1902 Alessandro Mussolini was arrested. Although he had never gone to school, the blacksmith conducted his own defence before the Court og Bologna that tried him and several companions on charges of subversive propaganda. Warned Government. In the course of his impromptu speech the father of the Duce said: "VVe arc not going to put up with bullying. If the (j overnment doesn't do things ligJit it is tne citizen's duty to take matters in his own hands. Wc intend to run our village as we think best. Some day we will show to you that we love Italy more than the so-called liberals, who are the real anarchists, becausc they work chaos in hand." b Mussolini the blacksmith was a patriot. He was one of the few men to commemorate openly the memory of Garibaldi's deeds in Romagna at a time when the red-shirt leader was an outlaw, hunted from pillar to post. Alessandro Mussolini's internationalism, the i old-timers in Predappio say, consisted in j this; he believed there should be a sound Italian nation before there could be talk of international eo-operation be- | tween the nations. For this reason he j wanted to see the Italian people forged j into one single national unit. These are the ideas on which the son built his Fascist doctrines later. Of the Duce's mother, the other great influence in his life of the formative years, the natives of Forli and Predappio speak with the utmost reverence. She was the school mistress, whose classes assembled in an upstairs room above the smithy. She appears to have been a woman of extraordinary energy and refinement. Rough and ready was his father; gentle and cultured was the Duce's mother. It was from her that Mussolini inherited his deep aesthetic taste and his spontaneous understanding and sympathy with all new artistic move-; ments. Donna Rosa Mussolini was of a deeply religious nature. Some old neighbours say she was like a saint from heaven. The fact that her husband and son later did not share her devotion to spiritual things grieved her deeply. Nor did she always approve of her husband's boon companions, who helped him to spend/ the money he earned in .the smithy by drinking up his-best wine when he had become an innkeeper. In this she was more than justified. For when the cxblacksmith died he left his family not a penny and Donna Rosa was forced to take up teaching again to provide for herself and the almost adolescent boys, Benito and Arnaldo. From his father and the firebrands of Predappio Mussolini inherited his reforming urge. They never stopped dreaming and arguing in his parents' home as to the best means to better the world and Italy. Sometimes the means envisaged were wholesale dynamiting and bombs. But from his mother he learned methodical thinking and practical planning. Benito may have made mistakes, they eay in Predappio, and probably he will make some more, but he is still his father's son and his mother's successor. (A.A.N.S.)