MUSSOLINI—IL DUCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22226, 28 September 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

MUSSOLINI—IL DUCE

BY MA TANGA

A REMARKABLE CAREER

The other day there appeared in a newspaper a photograph of the King of Italy. Jt made many rub their eyes and look again. At least a few thought there was some mistake. " Has Italy a king?" they asked. The question was pardonable. Victor Emmanuel, like others of his select class, needs more than a title to make him known in the world, and one essential is eminent space to be seen. Out of that he has been elbowed by the other man in that photograph, at whom His Italian Majesty is gently smiling;- and that other is so well known that his back—little more is to be seci there of him as he Jills tho eye " clown stage centre " in the picture—is far better known and means much more than tho royal smile. Measured by his vertebral column, II Duco, in spite of his moderate stature, is one of the sturdiest and most dominating men of history. Cartoonists, those acolytes of fame, have made much of his stout jaw at the expense of his spacious brow; but your true portraitpainter would give a great deal for a sight of his backbone. Historians will have much to say about it—and part of their tale will not make pleasant reading. Italy's Superman was born with it, yet by assiduous attention and culture he has called it into increasing service. When he owns without a blush to " the sin of immodesty " he is given to saying that he is a self-made man, and it must be admitted that he has proved more capable of so ticklish a job than most boasters of the risky feat. " I am a man of the people," is his constant claim. Son of an unlettered, revolutionary and atheistic blacksmith, he says: " I spent twelve years bending iron— I am now bending the souls of men." Between the two tasks were years of deep study. As grocer's errand-boy for a while, ho invited dismissal by his incorrigible habit of going with a parcel in one hand and an open book in the other. " Very intelligent, but very insubordinate " had been tho burden of a sorely-tried schoolmaster's reports. At eighteen he startled his parents by qualifying as a teacher himself, and he worked his way to Lausanne for university study and then to Geneva, toiling first as a navvy and afterwards in employments less physically exacting. J3ut the books to which he was especially addicted—they were purveyors of a violent sociai philosophy—played him false. To-day, found out, they are scorned by him. Mingled Inheritance

Two strains met in his passionate > blood. From his father came a turbu- ) lent recklessness. " I often came home r with a broken head," he wrote among [ his memories of boyhood, " but I knew how to take revenge." And that father ' encouraged his scouring of woods and ' fields in search of birds: "my love of 5 birds was very great, especially of owls, i and I was an audacious little country ) thief." Stealing call-birds from a - fowler was one fond way of exercising ' his love —a reminder of the English boy ' so devoted to animals that he wanted to ' be apprenticed to a butcher. But the ; mother of this stormy youth opposed ■ the father's hatred of schools, and , often he went, not altogether willingly, with her to church. So came a very dif- ' ferent influence. " The rosy lights of the candles, the penetrating smell of incense, the colour of the sacred vestments, tho droning eantnlena of the faithful and the tones of the organ moved me profoundly." However, his father's guidance was not overborne, and it led him into many a rebellion. There came a day when the Italian i Socialists protested against the national , struggle for Tripoli, and their barricades went up in the streets. At torli an anti-militarist harangued the crowd, ' exciting it to active resistance. He was arrested, charged with a long list of • violent offences, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. This was the selfsame Penito Mussolini that will not brook a syllable of criticism of his imperial policy. He appealed against the sentence, and actually served only five months. His defence was that lie was delivering an illustrative and historical lecture: "I said that between us Socialists and the Nationalists there is this difference— they want a vast Italy, but I want an Italy cultured, rich, and free." Sudden Conversion What changed him, turning him from the rebel several times preferring prison to law. the demagogue flung out ot Switzerland and forbidden to return, the agitating journalist stirring up revolt, into the scourge of Communists, tho ardent patriot, the denier of the sovereignty of the people, the imperialist uniting strangely in his pantheon the Caesars, Rienzi, Garibaldi? J. he answer is elusive, but some facts instruct. , " , When tho Great War burst upon Europe he saw hope only in thoroughgoing nationalism. He fought in the

trenches against the menace ot world subdual bv the Central Powers. Wounded in 1917. he was out of that fight Then Italian affairs moved swiftly: the small share of advantage reaped at Versailles, the failure or

Italy's parliamentary system, the ineptitude of the Liberals and the bocia - ists, the threat of a white-anting Bolshevism. Something must be done tor Italy. It must be bold, abrupt, uncomFascismo! It peered out of the great Roman past; it spoke in the books ho so well knew, by what they left out as well as by what they discussed; it fitted the need of the hour, with the fabrics of centuries crumbling and a demand for another Italian re-birth; and he would put his hand unflinchingly to the task! The March on Rome At Naples, when Fascismo had spread from the great industrialists to the people southern blood was easily heated to boiling-point. Four hundred thousand men and women wero gathered for the coup d'etat—their average age Quite youthful in spite of the leaven of old campaigners—as motley a crusade as ever dreamed and dared went on that march to Rome. The city received it with open gates. Opposition crumpled at the first touch. Victor Emmanuel took the only possible course. When Mussolini cried "Gentlemen, the King!" the King responded " Gentlemen, Signer Mussolini!" So in a trice the bloodless revolution was over. Afterwards there was blood, as when interfering Matteoti was m irdered—for the Dictator turned to weapons moro formidable than castor oil ui observance of his pirated motto, " Pie that is not with mo is against me." Such things gave pauso, but not for long; and tho rest is written in recent memory. Much that "the Loader" has done for Italy is gratefully memorable throughout tho land. It was a fine achievement in reconstruction. But dangers have gathered. Italy is not haipy, not even well-to-do. And she has lost caste abroad. When Mussolini confessed to his audience of syndicalist metal-workers that bending tho souls of mon was "a far harder task" than bonding tho iron ho knew so woll, he prophesied against his enterprise. This blacksmith's boy still applying himself to the hammer must eventually find that some metal, seemingly like all else on earth, cannot bo shaped at will by the fiery, thunderous means ho mistakenly employs. |