FASCIST FAITH

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4958, 20 February 1937, Page 6

FASCIST FAITH

RULE OF MUSSOLINI. ~0 MOCKERS AND BELIEVERS. THE GENUINE ITALY. The Duce rules his country, a more absolute autocrat than ever, says a writer in the Manchester Guardian. He has held power fourteen years, and absolute power ten years. In the first four years he had to tolerate an opposition, to solicit allies and listen to advisers. Sympathisers made speeches commending his policy but bidding him beware of excess; newspapers approved this, disapproved that. By 1926 the Duce had put an end to such transactions. Opposition leaders had been killed, gaoled, or exiled; opposition newspapers bought up or burnt down; the Freemasons, ex-combatants, professional associations, trade unions, Boy Scouts, Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Society for Assisting Special Areas (Associazione del Mezzogiorno), and any other possible rally-centres for the discontented had been disbanded or taken over by the appropriate Ministry. With each year the Italians in public life have become more submissive, unanimous, and adulatory. If the Duce moves he must now have two pages of superlatives where one used to suffice—often with his name in special capitals. For his image and superscription miles of wall space and hoarding are now required. To him is ascribed the merit in every big company report of the “accelerated rhythm of industry and commerce,” to him are due the beauty and vigour of the young, the fecundity of humans and quadrupeds, the speed of cars or Caproni aeroplanes, scientific discovery, successful archaeological research: he is the builder, creator, inspirer, “ideator” of all that is comprehended in “the fourth Italy.” The historians seek materials for noble portraits of his father, the turbulent blacksmith; of his uncle, who composed dialect rhymes in Romagna; of his grandfather, who sported the rank of lieutenant in some civic guard or militia. The anniversaries of the death of his relatives-in-law are observed with public ceremony. Mock Reverence. The Italians have had long lessons in reverence with their tongue in their cheek —have knelt to Borgian Popes and lit up their towns to welcome “Caesars” from Vienna. Eloquent panegyrists were gathering riches in Italy fifty years before the Wars of the Roses; their industry has not since languished. The Italians can sustain a concert of encomium like few, if any, other people in the world, and will do so with far less effort than slower-tongued people imagine. Travellers who wander round highways and byways in Italy are always finding out how much energy Italians, after all their huzzaing, still have in reserve for mockery. A skilful listener could quickly fill his notebook with quips of this or of any year —what King Victor Emmanuel said when asked to go to war, why he did not want to nominate a Viceroy, how Mussolini talked German to Hitler, and so on. Some time ago an Indian prince arrived in Rome and was given an official welcome. Behind the ranks of troops lining the streets a vast crowd watched the potentate, who smiled in pleasure and perhaps surprise. The crowd had been collected by a line of military being thrown across in front of the suburban station without any notice. Thousands of workers, their day’s work done, were hurrying for the evening trains, only to be held up for an hour or more and forced to admire Prince X. Each intercepted newcomer asked what was up, made a grimace at the queer name of the Indian State as passed from mouth to mouth, or swore loudly. At the end the policeman in charge at one corner announced with a loud voice, “End of the comic opera.” “Duce, Duce, Duce . . .” The hasty traveller in Italy can see only conformity: obedience to everlasting summonses, participation in parades, processions, demonstrations, “rites” (“sagre”), mysteries, Roman salutes, choric exercises in repetitive invocation —“Duce, Duce, Duce, Duce . . .” But can he believe that this sparkling, mischievous, merrymaking people has trained itself to be no more than a gramophone with one record? Italy mocks behind four walls; mocks at all things between earth and sky, most of all the play in which all Italians are acting, the play of a heroic nation at length roused from a torpor of indecision and anarchy, led forward now by an infallible superman towards inconceivable destinies of greatness, and letting the world know it with yaups of the voice and jerks of the arms. Who could think of anything funnier? And yet—“Forse che si, forse che no,” says D’Annunzio (“Perhaps yes, perhaps no”), and Pirandello, in another famous title, says, “Cosi e se vi pare” (It is so if you think so”). One does not willingly give half one’s

life, still less risk the whole of it, for the fun of keeping up a farce. A nation cannot do obeisance for fifteen years without growing into obedience. Italy’s Destiny. A nation regarded as an organisation —and as such we usually think and talk of it, however much we admire the doctrine of the Social Contract —seems to delegate functions to this or that complex of cells: we would say class of individuals. The observer of Italian life who knows that the Italian nation must believe in its own part, since it could not submit to playing it for ever (or even for ten years) in perfect inner sobriety and detachment, may discover here and there the unmistakable devotee of the faith. At a cafe table three or four men will be talking. For prudence sake (since a police spy is very likely near them —was in fact quite obviously near one such table one day last October, in the Far South) everybody talk orthodox-wise about the questions of the day, but one after another will take any safe occasion for a little irony. Once they feel safe, they may let their tongues wag merrily at the expense of Ethiopian Empires, Corporate States, rites of commemoration. Not so the fifth who is sitting by them. He is a dark, slim youth with fixed gaze. Disconcertingly for his friends, he follows up their sparkling remarks on the Corporate State, and argues that Italy is now only at the beginning of an experience which is to harmonise capital and labour in the service of the community. Solemnly also he argues that Italy’s destiny is to expand east (or it may be south), to renew the civilising message of Rome. Risk of war? Man’s destiny is to be a warrior, to pit valour and brains against other men, to break or be broken, as God or fate decide. Mussolini’s Italy will not flinch. Other notions may forget that this is life, that to sit tight and ensure comfort, pleasure, or safe sport is to fall and decay. If England and France have forgotten this, Italy will be destiny’s instrument to remind them —Italy, now flanked by awakened Germany. In ■ truth, by dominating the decadent, these people of destiny will be .' helping them to awake and see whither lax dreams have led them. Perhaps then they will stop short of

the ruin in which Russia (so thinks this henchman of destiny) is engulfed, the victim of materialism. The dark, slim youth is one of a few thousand, or only a few hundreds. He is sure that the Duce has found the answer to life’s riddle; he will give himself body and soul to achieve what is set before him. He has perhaps passed through the university, reading history and philosophy, or is perhaps an engineer, or is in some humbler way of living. He has never been abroad, has never read a foreign newspaper. Or he may, if well-to-do, have looked round Paris, only to read the signals of approaching social catastrophe. Amid the millions of voices yelling “Duce, Duce! ’ as the “Founder of the Empire” celebrated various anniversaries this autumn, a few were voices from such true devotees. Those for whom Fascism is one of life’s absurd phenomena, exacting lip service and even foot service or perhaps blood sacrifice, but certainly no more than minimum, cannot altogether account for or explain away the young men (and maybe women too) who look forward with gloomy faith to a meaningful Fascist future.