MUSSOLINI THE MAN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 4 November 1925, Page 9

MUSSOLINI THE MAN.

SPIRIT OF FASCISM

There has been so much said kgainst Mussolini as the Director of Italy that the opposite view of the man should be of general interest. And this is how Mr Harold Begbie sees the Italian Socialist and statesman: . Mussolini’s achievement, separated from some of the methods of some of his followers, seems to he incomparably the greatest act of modern statesmanship. He has destroyed cynicism in a highly civilised State and kindled the flame of idealism in an ancient people. Any mountebank can climb to power in a half-educated democracy by promising the people cakes and ale in the shape of higher _ wages and shorter hours. But to inspire a nation of 40,000,000 with an impassioned enthusiasm for discipline, sacrifice, and utmost hard work ,this demands certain spiritual qualities of which the agitator has no knowledge, and with which even the best of our statesmen appear to be only incredulously acquainted. As a< little boy Benito Mussolini, born in 1883, was irked by a feeling that many operations surrounding his village life were badly done. He wa's conscious of an instinctive aversion from inefficiency and incompetence, and of a conviction that he could do a great many things better than he saw them being done. No premonitions of political activity, however, visited his mind. He heard his father, who was a blacksmith, speaking of Socialism as an event of tne future, and he grew up in the faith that one day all men would he Socialists. . But his main concern was with scholarship. He loved books with the zest which is the secret of his energy. His mother, who he adored and whose memory he reverences, told him that one day he would he a celebrated mail, prophesying that an hour would come when he would achieve great glory as an Italian patriot. He did not truly believe her, he tells me, and did not certainly covet either grandeur or fame. ‘His youth-time was consumed by the ambition to be a schoolmaster ‘“You take me by surprise,” I said to him when we first met. “I expected something of a monster. Ton seem to be more of a poet.” f -■ “That, too, may he confessed,” he answered with a boyish smile. “Now I play my violin; but once I wrote poetry.” He believed in his mother’s, prophecy for the first time when he took the platform of Socialism. His success was instant and tremendous._ He wanted a better world, and he believed earnestly that Socialism would create it. Never in his life has he acted a part. Never has he spoken with his tongue in his cheek. Never has he used the sufferings of the poor to push his fortunes or to line his pocket. At the fiercest time of his Socialism he was an honest man, clean of all pretence, free from dishonouring hypocrisies. Sincerity told. He rose to leadership among Italian Socialists, and was hailed by the International as a new force.

War came to Ern-ope, had be saw instantly that if civilisation were to be saved Italy must fight. The brethren of universal brotherhood bowled him down, crying, “Kill him ! Kill him!” The preachers and prophets of millennium expelled him from their party. He disappeared out of Italian politics and reappeared as an Italian soldier.

His courage told in that testing hour. Hq fought like a lion, and wherever he fought men were .inspired to fight like him. He made friendships which changed his life. He rose - ' to be a corporal, and went on fighting till, he fell wounded in a hundred parts of the body by bursting shrapnel. Useless to the army, apparently useless to the world, he was .sent home. But Mussolini was not to stand in the gutters selling matches or singing doleful songs with his cap in hand. He had seen a vision battlefield which became to him~a veritable conversion. It was the vision of national unity, expressed by courageous youth cheerfully enduring hardships, triumphantly going out to. meet, death, unquestioningly accepting sacrifice as the time glory of life. He returned to find middle age complaining of inconvenience, and old age moping over the dread of ruin. In order that Italy should be saved from ignominy and ruin he formed a legion of men who had fought in the war, making each man take the sacred oath, “In the r7oTre» of God and Italy, in the name of those who have died for the greater -dory of Italy, I swear that I vil! consecrate myself entirely and for ever to live for the good of Italy.” What most strikes me in this courageous and high-minded man. apart •from his charming naturalness and complete freedom from all Napoleonisms, is his extraordinary composure. One feels that he is profoundly aware of a powe rin himself which is intended for the salvation of his people. The broad forehead, the powerful chin, the curious hrightnes sof his penetrating dark eyes, do not see into me to express his spirit so intimately as the mouth, which is both beautiful and firm. When he speaks, huskily and with great rapidity, the lips are tense with energy; but when he smiles it is as if the man of action had no existence, ani.v the hoy who -loves his violin, his poetry, and the graciousness of nature. . He i s at the head of. four Ministries, he works for 14 hours a day, and he looks thin, pale and tired out; yet when he speaks of the work which the spirit of ascism is destined to do among the nations of the earth, restoring the high places of civilisation and giving to democracy a new spiritual ideal, his face lights up, his eyes shine and the voice rings with youthfulness. On the central tab 1 © in his room lies a full-sized model of the “fasces” carried by factors before the emperors and consuls of ancient Rome—an exe surrounded by close-banded rods. Hfa laid his hand upon it and said: “A symbol! Unity by means of authority.”