HITLER AND MUSSOLINI

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 July 1933, Page 2

HITLER AND MUSSOLINI

AMUSING CONTRASTS Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in a recent address, discussed Fascism and Hitlerism in very entertaining style. “Mussolini may have been right or wrong,” he said, “but what he said was, ‘Pull yourselves together, you Italians. You must not be known as a lot of people who make confectionery and macaroni and Venetian glass. Today you are being laughed at for bea nation of fruiterers and ice cream vendors. You have got to be a new kind of people: Citizens like those of the ancient city States.’ ” “Mussolini did not flatter them,” he continued.“He did not tell them that they were great and glorious simply because they were Latins. “But this attitude was reversed in the case of Hitler. He was busy telling a partially civilised peoplg what a wonderful nation they were. He was not telling the Germns that they were a lot of pudding-face sausages of men and women, who had to pull themselves together and be rational and useful citizens. He was telling them to remember the pride of their largely barbaric tribe, and how they had trampled on the French and the Poles.”

LATIN CHARACTERISTICS The emergence of Fascism was primarily due, said Mr. Chesterton, to Latin impatience and intelligence. Their peculiar type of impatience has been shown on otlwr important occasions. The French Revolution was a perfectly good example of it. “For a long time before the French Revolution, English and Germans and even the Russians, had been deploring the wickedness of the general state of things, but it was France that struck.” The revolution of Mussolini differed in essentials from that, now at work in Germany, he? went on. So many people imagined that the two movements were fndamentally similar. The Italian movement was one of reform. The movement in Germany almost amounted to an organised boasting tnat reform was unnecessary, that it was impossible to improve on the Nordic type. “It must be remembered,” declared Mr. Chesterton, “that Italy is a country that, has been civilised for many centuries. Compared with the civilisation of Italy, the civilisation of the Germans is partial and immature/.

“I do not think much of Hitler’s funny little crooked cross,” he continued, “and his ranting and romantic quotations from Nietsche. Yet there is a great deal to be said for poor old Hitler. It is part of a great movement for a return of order in human government. , “The only alternative seems to be Communism, which, annoys me because it is so abominably dull. Just think of all the machinery it involves.”

hhe likelihood of Fascism ever becoming a serious political force in England was discounted by Mr Ches- ' terton.