MUSSOLINI’S ZERO HOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19050, 1 July 1924, Page 4

MUSSOLINI’S ZERO HOUR

There are people who profess to believe that dead men tell no tales and that the quickest and most effective way of silencing a witness is to hit him on the head. But, like many common beliefs, it is not sound. The Italian Fascists have found, to their cost, that a dead man has a louder and more eloquent voice than the living man would have had. The murder of Matteotti, a Socialist Deputy, has shaken Italy to its foundations, and given Fascism a blow which may easily prove mortal. What Mussolini may do to rehabilitate his party and its policy remains to be seen, but, at the moment of writing, all his Ministers have resigned. Mussolini may be depended upon to make a big fight for the retention of what is practically a dictatorship, but the opposition groups arc not so impotent that their wishes can be flouted. They have unanimously decided not to participate in Parliamentary work until the Fascist! militia is disbanded. With that big stick out of his hand —the militia numbers 60,000 men armed at the State’s expense for party purposes—Mussolini will be an emaciated Goliath. If the Opposition stood alone in its demand, little might come of it; but the nation is obviously behind the Opposition. Matteotti is not regarded as simply a murdered Socialist. He has been canonised as the personation of a national demand for liberty and a return to equality between citizens: the murdered man speaks more loudly and more eloquently than Matteotti the Socialist could have done. As our cables this morning point out, the dead man was an out-and-out opponent of Mussolini. He had contributed to the July issue of the magazine English Life an article in which he condemned Mussolini’s policy, which, ho declared, is dependent upon violence and political perversion. Italians, generally, have come to ■ realise that Fascism, though idealistic, may, in the hands of unscrupulous men, become tyranny. How the murder of a crusader against a popularly regarded iniquity may rouse a people is easily understood. Mussolini may be personally guiltless of Matteotti’s blood, but, as the self-appointed head of the Fascists, he cannot escape responsibility for the acts of assassins who worked in the name of Fascism. What the next few days bring forth may have a dominating influence upon the history of Italy.