Private Lives of the Caesars

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 18 (Supplement)

Private Lives of the Caesars

WHILE Austria was metaphorically burning, Benito Mussolini was ski-ing. This curious fact has agitated the European chancellories. They cannot make out whether II Duce chose just that time to go ski-ing so as to be out of the way when Herr Hitler strong-armed Dr. Schuschnigg, or whether the Fuehrer took advantage of the Roman's passion for ski-ing to put a fast one over on him. The incident draws attention to the curious fact that, just <■:» the moon lias two sides, one of which it never exposes to mortal eves, so the dictators, whom news and movie cameras present to the world as uniformed gods condescending to appear on special occasions before mere mortals, have their secret human sides —private lives where they have their toothaches and stomach aches, their rows with the wife and argumente with son and daughter, their jokes and their nights out. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ In Moscow you will hear the most extraordinary stories of the hidden life of Djugashvili, otherwise Stalin, absolute ruler of the world's second largest empire; but few are a 6 bizarre as the authenticated stories. Last year, presiding at a conference of Red generals, he suddenly pulled an automatic and shot one of the men dead. The others remained silent and still. "He was a traitor to us," said Stalin, putting away his gun. The conference proceeded. The private life of the Red Caesar is concealed behind a Chinese wall. He has some comrades, but no intimate friends. In Moscow he lives in guarded seclusion in his suburban house at Gorki. Mornings, early, between 7.30 and 8, he motors to the Kremlin. His personal bodyguard sit on either side of him in the car, a closed, bullet-proof vehicle, moving at

high speed. His car is preceded and followed by open military cars containing armed guards of the Ogpu. In the Kremlin he works, and if necessary sleeps in his private suite. His workroom is a big l«tre apartment, and he sits at a big bare desk, with a huge portrait of Lenin back of him. Work is his life. Most of the Europeans and Americans who have talked with him have formed the opinion of a shrewd, intelligent man, confident, reserved, uninterested in expressing his opinions, with a streak of good humour. He lacks culture, but has the strong common sense of a militant revolutionary who takes things and men as he finds them —who, as organiser of terrorism in the Czarist days, gambled with his life, was arrested and exiled six times, and yet outwitted everyone, and survived. Such a man ha« always kept in fighting trim. In his middle fifties liow, his working day now is still from 15 to 17 hours long. And every day is a fight—a private struggle for the retention of power. His private life is still that of the commander of a fighting sqtiad of hard men who have to be kept in line. He has a feeling, for those old comrades of the early fighting days and looks after them and their families. One of those old comrades last year was hit by a motor truck in Tiflis and killed. News reached Stalin from the Ogpu commander, in whose force the man had been found a place. Stalin sat silent at hi« desk for a minute, and then he called a secretary and vired to the Ogpu commander: "Shoot the driver of "the truck." Stalin lost his young wife recently— his second wife ... he discarded the first on the way up. Neither ever appeared with Stalin in public. They were just part of the private life of a man who has practically no private life and yet whose whole life is and always has been most peculiarly private. His son by his first marriage lives in the Gorki home, but he seems fondest of his 11-year-old daughter, Svetlana, who is often with him. Down at Sotchi, on the Black Sea. Stalin has a datcha, a country home, where he passes summer anfl autumn weeks when he can get away from his Moscow headquarters. It is a dark green ! house, embowered in fmit trees. Stalin is proud of his fruit trees, and when lie has guests likes to take them through the orchard and point out his favourites. Guests at the datcha find a host of simple, friendly ways, and great charm; a man, too, who seems tireless. After an evening meal he -will produce a gramophone, and if there are womenfolk suggest that his guests dance. Stalin himself does not dance! But he sings, and likes to lead & good rousing chorus.

They say in Borne that the private life of Mussolini—a grandfather now For the fourth time—is devoted to retaining one chin and keeping his waist measurement smaller than his chest. It is, roughly, true. The most aggressive >nd realistic of the dictators prides himself on his physical fitness. It is one >f the few things he is really vain about. He. does npt smoke or .drink,, but the talk about him existing on a handful grapes and a couple of oranges is. i«*t — L talk. Benito knows the value of i spiritual touch about a leader. He tiiay not eat large and juicy steaks, but when he eats he eats well—spaghetti. f»sh, chicken, ravioli, eggs done all the way down the a la list.

By . .. C. Patrick Thompson

He used to worry his guards by the speed at ivhich he drove his racing Alia down the autostrad to the sea at Ostia. port of Rome, where he has a country place, and goes boating and swimming and sunbathing. The guards did not like !*<) miles an hour. He takes it easier now. This may be because one day the tailing escort cars found a child by the roadside, damaged when the Duce's mudguard brushed her as he took a corner at tiO; or the explanation may be the one he gave to a correspondent friend of mine who was interviewing him in his huge private office in the Palazzo Chigi: "I have just founded the Italian Kmpire! I have a lot to do. It would not be very fitting for the founder of an Empire to survive everything, only to succumb to a burst tyre!" In private life he is a charming and genial man, frank and forthright. He talks well, laughs and is good company. He has a technique of charm—"lt costs nothing and makes friends," he told the British Ambassador once. with hi* broad, likeable grin. A distinguished foreign lady, resident in Rome for a

season, got a Fascist Minister friend to obtain a private audience for her with the Duce. She had got up ail exhibition and wanted him to visit it. She sat nervously in the waiting room until the Minister found her and took her into Mussolini's private office. By the time &he had traversed the distance lietween the door and the Duce's desk at the far end, she was trembling like an aspen. Mussolini, who was busy, looked up and said': "What do you want?" She explained herself in bad Italian. The Duce listened politely. When she stopped, he nodded, then rose, found her a photograph on the desk, scrawled a signature and gave it to her. and came round his desk and walked with her to the door and said good-bye most affably. As she departed, clutching the precious photograph, and seeing visions of the Duce adorning her saloon, she heard him mutter to her Minister friend before he turned back to his room: "I don't know what she wanted, but I hope she got it.'* He is more popular now than he warliefore the concerted attempt of the league States to ostracise Jtalv ami impose an economic boycott during the Ethiopian affair. Since he became quite a national hero, he has been able to relax his guard precautions and do such things a« walk about a Rome exhibition, mingling with the crowd, and even visit the opera without being surrounded liv bodyguards. A foreign diplomat one night last autumn went to the open and occupied a l«»x with his wife. Opposite was an empty box. As the opera started they saw, in the subdued light, a sturdy figure enter the box, and felt sure it was tfTe Duce. When the curtain fell after the first act, they went out on to the promenade, and there leaning against a wall with an aide' was Signor Mussolini. The Romans strolling about took no notice of him: it is not done to notice a

KEMAL ATATURK toils like a galley slave and holds a partv to rival a Roman emperor's. dictator on such occasions. But before lie could stop her the diplomat's wife went up with outstretched hand and a: "Good evening. your Excellency." Signor Mussolini immediately advanced and responded, and they talked for 10 minutes. The diplomat's wife noticed that the Duce's pocket bulged, and the Duce, noticing the glance, smiled, and pulled out ah orange. "'Have one!" he offered, in the darkness he had been supping off his favourite fruit. f ♦ ♦ * The private life of Herr Hitler is that of a man who virtually had none until he achieved power. Now, he is making up for lost time. He lives like a country squire and does no more work than he has to. He dislikes Berlin and goes there as little as he can. The chancellor's palace is not to his taste; and one of the secrets of Dr. Goebbels' influence is the liking the Fuehrer has to go along to Dr. Goebbels' apartment and eJijoy some music and the company of the goldenhaired Magda Goebbels. The Berchtes-

gaden chalet, perched on its verdant hill, with its wide balcony giving a view towards the Austrian foothills—and guest bungalows in the grounds, for Adolf prefers not to have even close friends sleeping in his house—in hi< nome. There he reads, listens to gramophone and radio music, broods, dreams, strolls around, and confers with the Xazi and Reichswohr oligarchs. It has done him good. Three years ago he looked a worn and worried man.

He was restless and ill at ease. He suffered from alternate fits of sleeplessness and indigestion. But calm and country air has filled him out id replenished his nerve batteries. Re ..as acquired a healthy ruddy colour, and looks less like a hungry, suspicious wolf. At the Nuremberg rally last autumn he performed feat of standing and saluting for six hours while the Nazi hordes marched past, mass after mass. The luckless Marshal Goering was reduced to leaning up against the car, and it looked as if at any moment he might throw up the sponge and squat down on the running-board. Herr Hitler does not smoke, or drink, but he is not exactly a sparse eater. Eggs form a large part of his diet. He has a chef who can cook eggs in .'!<) different ways. When he has a partv. he has his eggs done with flaked haddock and asparagus tips. When he is alone lie eats his eggs scrambled or plain boiled, for preference. He eats fish, chicken, fruit, nuts, vegetables done with butter, perhaps too much butter, and drinks a lot of milk, perhaps ♦oo much milk. And his weipht, an incipient double chin and an abdominal sag, latterly have begun to worry him. It does happen when a man who for years lias led a life of violent movement and anxiety suddenly conies to a backwater, and has for the first time leisure, and regular meals, and all the sleep he wants. Periodically, he slims; but he takes no regular exercise beyond walking and he plays no games and indulges in no sport. He seems uninterested in moving around, after the way he moved around in his fighting days. It is difficult t«. get him from his chalet home—and bis dreams. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. the Turki-Ji (aesnr. might claim to have the strongest head of all the dictators—if the other dictators happened to be the sort of men of whom one says: "He has ;i strong head." He toils' like a galley slave, but he also relaxes with /est: and an Ataturk party is apt to go on till dawn breaks, or the champagne runs out.

KING EDWARD VIII. made a dictator sigh for applejackSun of an obscure Government official of Salonika, embarking <»n an army i-areer. he learnt the technique of revolution as a youngster in the days of Abdul Hamid. "Abdul the Damned." He was a member of the Vatan, an antiAbdul secret society. He then learnt the arts of sophistication as military attache in Paris, in the days when Ali Risz, quite a fellow, occupied the Turkish Embassy there. His business since lie grabbed Turkey lias been to mingle with pleasure, and not let either interfere with the other, although occasionally both get mixed up. He had not, for instance, been in Smyrna more than a few days, in the brilliant campaign whbli ended in the <ireek invaders being swept into the sea, before he was entangled with the camel king's daughter. There was a marriage; and later a divorce. Among other things, the wife objected to his making his real home in the travelling train equipped with radio, telephone, bath, guest suite and bar. Now, Ataturk lives the life of a hard-working bachelor, who likes his nights out. He entertained King Edward VIfI. and Mrs. Simpson when they were taking a yachting trip which brought them as far east as the Bosphorus. Thev had some Turkish brandy after lunch, and the King said that it* reminded him of American applejack. Kemal immediately Interested asked what that might be. Edward explained, but added, that the best sort was made ill prohibition days. The American farmer would put * a barrel of apple cider out to freeze. All the liquid would freeze except Hie straight alcohol. Then the applejack maker would break the ice block and

extract the precious amber apple brandy. Ataturk sighed. "We have apples here,'" he said, "but no frost and no ice. What a pity!" Portugal used to be torn by faction fights. There are none now. Antonio Oscar de Fragosa Carmona, governing from the walled palace rt Belem, will not have any. People must behave. Otherwise they are disciplined. When he came up from Evora to oust the political obligarchs, the little general »aid to the men he had designated as his Ministers: "I will give the necessary orders. Then, we will lunch." In Portugal. that was surprising. Normally it would have been: "We will lunch first, and then talk about this thing.'' General ( armotia has never made a public <peecli. He receives even unimportant persons if it is politic to see them — with a polished deference, and talks to them simply, as man to man. His eyes, shrewd and sparkling, search those of the man he talks to. He seems friendly behind his hijr cavalry moustache. His whole life is concentrated around his own job of seeing that the army controls the country so that his Ministers can get on with their work. He has not even time for domestic life: lie is a bachelor and an ascetic. He lives in a fortress, on armv pay, and conies out only occasionally to hold audiences at Belem Palace and review a parade.

* ♦ ♦ ♦ Mirza Reza Khan, founder of the Pahlevi dynasty in Persia, is the mwt impressive of tlie modern Caesars—over tift high, in the shoulder and fierce of aspect, an.l straight as a ramrod at <»(>. He joined the army as a private at the age of 1.), and at the age of 44 put himself on the dictator map by moving on Teheran with his Cossack division, left marooned in Persia following the Russian revolution. With all power in his hands, the new Caesar thought Shah Ahmed Mirza should take a little holiday abroad while hi* new War Minister knocked the heads ot the warring political factions together. Off went the plump young Shall to London and Paris to collect ballet girl* and consume much champagne and caviare; and in due course the National Assembly obligingly voted an old Shah out and a new Shah in. A personal ruler, the Persian Caesar. He does not object to gambling, but he takes the view that if hie Ministers gamble they may lose, and then may be tempted to try to recoup their losses by a little sj»eculation at the expense of the treasury. One day in March last gambling was in full biast in the one swell nightclub in Teheran. The dictator had (lined en famille in his palace with his wife—he has no harem—when the word was brought to him that half a dozen of his Ministers were around the higli-play tables. I wenty minutes later a big car drew tip at the portal of the club and out stepj>ed a heavily-built gentleman in a plain khaki uniform and carrying a heavy ruling crop. He strode inside, and six Ministers looked up and quaked. Bang went the crop on the green baize, and counters flew in all directions. "Go home! Your wives are waiting for you," commanded the Shall. The Ministers have not been eeen gambling in public since.

MIRZA REZA KHAN. Shah Pahlevi of Persia, and sixteen pears a dictator, xvho hates gambling, gluttonj; and . . . harems! The dictator smokes, <liinkt> a of wine, tint eats like a soldier, moderately and plainly, and live* like a soldier. He cannot afford to be •self-iiiduljrent. He lias work to do. Often lie rixes at 4 a.m. to <ret his work done in time to he free to see that hw Ministers and the State aide* are their*. When the An;rlo-Saxon would he relaxing over a week-end at jrolf or fishinjr. Reza J\lian enter* his car and drives out 100 miles or so to pec how a new concrete road replacing a caravan track is fretting 011. He has brought in movie*, radio and car parks. Telephone poles push their shaft* above the cypru* trees, under which old Omar lay with his lady, hi* Ifraf. and hi* cup of wine. He abhors harems. When he was ■isked once why, he <rrowled: '"Thev '■"Kb np too much of a man'* time!"

who play the game, the Oxford accent, straw boaters, the Eton and Harrow match ("l'lay the game, you cads"), and pukka sahibs holding the North-west Frontier in "Bengal Lancer'' manner, the while a battered portable screams out the immortal, soul-stirring "Rule Britannia." Until you have experienced of this dream-gethsemane you cannot appreciate. and rightly assess, the comparative relaxation of chasing pink elephants and green lions through the eerie caverns of a drink-distorted mind. Take my word, it is terrible. The only time I woke too soon from this nightmare was during an engagement in trouncing Beverly Nichols with a fives bat. He had just been elected president of the Oxford Union. T remember, and several "young genlenicn" gazed upon the »cenc, uttering in worst Oxford nanner. "Oil. dealt, haolt in-ultin'. ha<>h nttalily vulgah." I would hate cut their ihioats. and heaven knows how the "Kinpiih" would have got. <>n. As Mr. Xcghv Karson has been at pains to point out. a certain type of Knglishman hates colonials and Ameri cans, Tt ha* been my experience that the majority of public school men (what a term) conform to that type. The