The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1928. MUSSOLINI’S JOKE

Southland Times, Issue 20615, 13 October 1928, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1928. MUSSOLINI’S JOKE

No one gazing on the photographs of Mussolini would suspect the existence of a humorist behind the Napoleonic mask, with its bright eyes and squared jaw. But the humorist is there as the Italian journalists have discovered if they are permitted by the Fascist regulation to admit that much to themselves. Mussolini has been talking to the journalists in Italy and if they were true journalists they must have appreciated the humour of II Duce when he took his pose and told them: That the Italian Press was the freest in the world, the explanation of which, he said, was in the all-embracing regime. The Press must not be a stranger to the general unity, therefore it avoids what is harmful and goes for what is useful for the regime. Newspapers in other countries, under orders from plutocratic party or groups reduced to the necessity of buying and selling exciting news, were getting into the hands of a restricted number of persons who regarded them as a trade, like iron and leather. Italian journalism on the other hand was free because it served the regime. It had no need to await orders because it received ' orders from its own conscience. The Fascist Press was like an orchestra playing the same note of its own accord. Editors of Italian newspapers suppressed because they criticized Fascismo, and of those which have been content to publish blank spaces because the censor’s hand has descended on them, must have found it difficult to refrain from smiling when Mussolini reached the middle of that declaration; but those journalists who had left Italy to find safety beyond the border because they did not like playing the one note ordered by II Duce probably laughed aloud for they were secure. The Italian Press is as free as the Russian, which also resembles an orchestra playing the same note of its own accord. In each case the free will of the newspapers is complete and untrammelled as long as it keeps to the one note ordered, by (the The countries which have newspapers ‘'under orders from a plutocratic party or group,” even if they are “reduced to the necessity of buying and selling exciting news,” open their columns to the news of their opponents and actively maintain the liberty of opinion and are freer because they are clear of Government control. One of the most terrible features of the rule of the State control enthusiasts in Italy and in Russia is the rigour with which they stifle public opinion. These newspap-

ers are free so long as they are obedient, they are free to obey, but transgression means heavy punishment and another branded journalist hiding across the frontier because he dared to tell the truth. Russia and Italy have given the world many lessons, and among the most striking of these is that any extension of the State’s functions which brings the public Press under the regulations of the Government is inimical to the intereste of the people. Every now and then the Labour members declare the “plutocratic” Press of this country to be unfair because it will not print every word they utter. They cheerfully attack the veracity of the newspapers, imputing all sorts of dishonesty, quite overlooking the fact that in doing so they are besmirching the reputations of workers who are also unionists, but their heavy artillery is dismounted and thrown out of action as soon as one cites in contrast the “free” Press owned or controlled by the State in Italy and Russia. Newspapers in this country and in other parts of the British Empire do not require to laud themselves because, however their financial affairs are controlled, they exist as a free forum, within reasonable limits, and keep before themselves steadily the right to criticize the State as it is expressed in a Government. Mussolini’s idea of newspaper freedom would not be tolerated in New Zealand for a day, which is another way of saying that the people of this Dominion feel, deep down, that in spite of all the jibes about the “plutocratic Press,” the newspapers here are free, and maintain a liberty for opinions and news which became a hopeless dream in Italy as soon as the Black Shirts and as misty a thing in Russia when the clowns of Communism started on the experiment which has proved Communism a rank failure.