DICTATORS IN CONTRAST

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 September 1934, Page 3

DICTATORS IN CONTRAST

HITLER AND MUSSOLINI. Beatrice Baskerville, “Daily Telegraph” Rome correspondent, writes: Up to a few months ago Hitlerism was hailed in Italy as a new force that would develop, in the interests 1 of Fascism, a proof that the Fascist Revolution was a suitable article for export, the affirmation of a new Fascist Germany, which had taken her place in the new Europe born with Signor Mussolini’s Blackshirt Revolution. On the eve of the visit to Rome of Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Sir John Simon in March last year, to hear the Duce’s proposals for the FourPower Pact, Hitler’® devotion to and respect for the Duce were described as an asset for the British. Government in negotiations with Germany. The founder of Fascism declared that Hitler’s triumph was proof that “our doctrine has now become universal and opr achievements a witness for future generations.” The rift within the lute did not show until Germany clashed with Italian policy in Austria; and that was said to be mended when the two Dictators met in Venice last June. All was believed to be well again between the parent revolution and its German offspring. Little wonder, then, that the events of June 30 in the Nazi “clean-up” in Germany took Fascists by surprise. Anti-Fascists have interpreted the Fascist embarrassment as indifference and condonation of political murder. A few, who would not risk their own lives in a bid for power, hint darkly at a possibility of “something like it” happening in Italy. are no nearer the mark than arc nervous people living beyond the Italian frontiers. And here are the reasons.

Herr Hitler went to Signor Mussolini for his slogans, his. windowdressing and his ideals. 'But the structure he raised up within a few months stands, or totters, on very different foundations. The Fascists, anxious to hail a sturdy European offspring, did not see that difference. They are only just beginning to realise their mistake, and comforting themselves with the thought that such happenings as are revealing the skeletons of the Nazi structure cannot be repeated in Italy. To a great extent they are fight. MUSSOLINI’S LONE HAND. Apart from the fact that Germany’s Dictator is a very different man from Italy’s Dictator, differences in methods, environment and internal policy have placed Fascism on a firmer basis than Hitlerism. Mussolini’s Government hits never been a, coalition. From the first day of power in October, 1922, he has played a lone game, with but one private army in the country and probably no, confidant but his brother Arnaldo, who died a couple of years ago. Out of fourteen Ministerial portfolios he holds seven, and he controls the rest. No other man, no matter what he has done for the regime, is allowed to get influence. He is swept off the chequer-board of this one-handed game with a dramatic suddenness that 'Stuns the victims.

There is no Junker class; Italy has never had a military caste; and her aristocracy has long ceased to play at

politics. Slowly but surely the army is being Fascisticised. The new army regulations are weeding out men who joined under the democratic dispensation. Their places are taken by men of undoubted Fascist sympathies. The cavalry regiments, officered by the nobility and until recently anti-Fascists to the core, have been whittled down to impotence; a “system of political information” looks after the rest. Cadets are not admitted into the mill-, tary colleges unless the “system” is sure of their loyalty to the regime. Herr Gobbels has no counterpart; his functions have been built up into a State Department, controlled by Benito Mussolini, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and by Benito Mussolini, Minister of the Interior. Benito Mussolini, Minister of War, has vanquished the Von Schleichcrs and the Ernsts long ago, not by swift executions, but with a mixture of Latin subtlety and forcefulness. They have not found emulators in a land where most people believe it more convenient to welcome the accomplished fact. The Roehms and the Heineses and their kin have their little day; then they disappear to the penal islands.

The squadristi (Fascist storm troopers) have also had their day. Some of them are tamed; others have joined the Roehms ; they are no longer of use as in the days of conquest. Their task is done. Punitive measures and summary repression now stand on the Statute Book.

The old parties which sat in Opposition for 'some years after the march on Rome have been scattered. Their leaders are dead or living in strict retirement, or struggling against starvation in foreign exile. Some of their rank-and-file have been incorporated into the executive organs of the Fascist party.

/■* HITLER’S BIG MISTAKE. But are there no party quarrels? There are. But so firm is the Duce’s authority, so great his personal prestige, that he settles them singlehanded before they grow unwieldy. The slogan “Mussolini is always right,’’ which little boys learn when they put on black shirts and shoulder tiny rifles for their first drill, is not an absurd phrase—in Italy. It is the foundation of a policy. Herr Hitler, the pupil, made another fatal mistake. Within fifteen months or less he made changes in the Reich which the Duce, whose greatest asset is a thorough knowledge of his countrymen’s psychology, haiji taken twelve years to do. The Duce makes haste slowly. For years he watched his opponents, seized upon their mistakes to achieve his own ends. At every step in bis path to supreme dictatorship he has picked the opportunities dropped to him by the lack of cohesion and courage in the other camps. Until 1926, the Press was free. In 1926, *four years after coining into power, he instituted the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, with powers to inflict capital punishment, hitherto unknown in United Italy. He promulgated a series of decrees which gave the police unusual powers. Repression and police supervision, capital punishment, the penal islands, obligatory registration of citizens with the police: all the “protective” and repressive measures are now embodied in the Fascist penal code. And

where are the men who compiled them? They have been swept out of the arena, they are things of the past, rendered innocuous by the very laws and regulations they drafted and brought into being. How different from Herr Hitler’s haste to build up a Nazi State within a few months. His exemplar in Italy has reduced his enemies gradually and with varying methods, not all violent. The Duce ha® been lucky. He admits it. He was able to make these changes before the economic crisis hit Italy in 1927. He found a. Pontiff ready to negotiate and conclude a Pact of Conciliation (1929) between Church and State. This, too, endeared him to the peasants. They are profoundly Catholic and cannot share the doubts as to the advisability of this measure from an international standpoint.

THE DUCE’S “CLEAN UP.” In the struggle with the Holy See over the control of youth, which lasted through the summer of 1931, he won. Nobody has yet solved the mystery of the Church’s sudden capitulation after three months of encyclicals, allocutions,, and official utterances that she would never give up her claims to the education of youth. On July 19 last, the astounded Romans witnessed nuns in hood and wimple marching past the Duce when he reviewed a Balilla formation in a holiday camp on the outskirts of the city, raising their hands in the Fascist salute. These nuns form part of the staff who look after the children. How different from Herr Hitler’s relations with the Roman Catholic Church! One of the Duce’s first cares was to “purge” the ranks of the Blackshirt party of those undesirable elements that were welcomed between 1922 and 1924, when it was good policy to show opponents and the world how easily the Duce could get recruits. There were many purges in the grand style. There are smaller purges to-day. Hitler failed to take this precaution, so busy was he rushing his “reforms” in record time. Benito Mussolini dealt in a masterly way with the Civil Service. Before making great constitutional changes he purged, the permanent staff of all State Departments, putting in youngmen who, to use his own wards, “were not tainted with the old liberal ideas.” They do his bidding; hope for speedy promotion now the older men have gone, and are under the new Fascist discipline.

So the possibility of plots has been cut to a minimum. The arena is empty, swept and garnished by a variety of methods, and the institution of a new bureaucracy which approves of the extermination of the old. If it he true that there is l nobody to take the lead when the present, Leader dies, it is equally true that lie has vanquished his internal enemies and established a period of internal peace to carry out his plans. He has already lasted 12 years; and the end is not yet.