Fascist Education.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18901, 17 January 1927, Page 10

Fascist Education.

Mussolini is nothing' if .not thorough. A cable message from Geneva tells us that his "latest fancy'' is to make all Italian school-children wear the Pascist black shirt and, on pain of expulsion, salute Mussolini's portrait, which hangs, the bright Palladium of the place, "in every school-room." It is a " fancy " which, one's first impulse is to think, some nimble Genevan wit conceived, not Mussolini's graver mihd. Yet there is nothing really improbable in such an attempt to bring lip Italian children in (he Fascist way they should go. Mussolini knows, or is sure he knows, what is good for tho Italian people, and is as resolute in giving it to them as Mrs Squeers iti giving the boys brimstone and treacle. The logic of an intense conviction does not boggle at asserting itself, least of all when one of the doctrines of • that conviction is that personal liberty does not matter two straws. It is only Englishmen who temper their principles with a humorous fear of "going too far" or of making themselves " look silly." Such timidity will not restrain Mussolini froin atiy exercise of power, however grandiose or however trivial. But it is in the Wore trivial exercise of power that its real nature is Shown. Wheii Mussolini talks rhetorically of a new Italian glory, with a conqueror's gestures this way and that, it is not so easy to remember that he is one man, and therefore a dangerous man, imposing a single will and purpose upon a nation, as when he commits the absurdity, to our minds, of regulating Italian children into a dull uniform and a blind personal allegiance. A statesman might bo carried away on great occasions and say more than he meant; but he must be grimly serious when ho does something superficially trivial, like making children wear black shirts. What the children think about it would be interesting to know. There will be docile little Fascists, unquestioning and easy to bend as Mussolini would have them bent; but there will also belittle rebels, who would rather make-a long nose than a Roman salute before the-portrait. And with them, perhaps, is the future Of Italy. •