FROM THE SOIL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 2, 3 January 1934, Page 12

FROM THE SOIL.

Whatever the state of agriculture in various parts of the world, sons of the peasant class are prominent at present among the world's dictators and national leaders. They have won their positions, in several cases, despite an early lack of educational opportunities. The list includes Mussolini, son of a peasant, whose early education is said to have been in free schools. In Germany there is Hitler, of peasant descent, who was a house painter and draughtsman's assistant. In Russia the strong opponent of Fascism, Stalin, was of Georgian peasant stock. He is said to have been expelled from a village seminary at an early age and to have been self-taught. Dollfuss, of Austria, is of peasant stock; his mother, it is said, still lives in a cottage and continues to wear peasant attire. Mustapha Semal's determined mother, who managed to get him into a military establishment, seems to have been the force which started him upward from his peasant surroundings. Ramsay Mac Donald, the British Prime Minister, was born of workingclass parents.