FASCISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS IN ITALY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 15, 18 January 1936, Page 13

FASCISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS IN ITALY

Plight of Professors

APPOINTMENT FOR LOYALTY

Mr Cecil Clark, in the “Contemporary Review,” has a searching contribution on the position of the intellec tuals in Italy. He writes: From the university down, the appointment of professors and teachers, which used to be autonomous in each institution, is in the hands of the State. The full effect of this regulation will not be felt for some time, inasmuch as many cf the pre-Fascist appointments are still in force. But the type of the new appointee is rather definite, and j may be approximated when it is considered that a university appointment is a legitimate form of reward for Fas- J cist loyalty as dismissal is the legitimate answer to so-called Fascist ag- ‘ nosticism. It has been said repeatedly that Fascism is a religion, and the Fascist may ( not be lukewarm in the faith. Translated into practice, this means that the ; intellectual may not be politically indifferent. Whether he teach literature, engineering or mathematics, as a teacher his political faith is of primary interest to the Government. One after another every possibility of activity relentlessly closes, and the non-Fascist may be tempted to look within the citadel for some form of non-political activity in which purely technical expert services may be utilised, and which may leave him, as an individual, a relatively free man. The Destruction of Friendships. Such a search ends before it has begun, if not by reason of political loyalties, inescapable by reason of personal loyalties. For the .Fascist creed has destroyed the backbone of morality, it has destroyed loyally in the name of the State. The new race of men which the Fascists are breeding may be able to live without loyalty; indeed the possibility has already been demonstrated, but it cannot be effaced in those who have known and valued it. It has been put to many severe tests, to the final test, the destruction of friendships. Italian culture has formed a relatively compact group. It is ’ comprehensive, universal, homogeneous; hence informal conversation in small 1 gatherings was the natural medium for exchanging ideas. To-day, three antiFascists under one roof would constitute a rase for police interference. Police intervention, when it does ’ come, is swift and sure, a procedure without formalities. The institution • known as the confino has been created to fill the need. It eliminates the unI pleasant name of prison as a corrol--5 lary to eliminating the judicial pro--5 cess. To send a man to the confino is 1 simply to send him. He disappears. ; literally and completely. His immediate family may be in

formed, if he has one. Having none, his friends arc less than powerless, for too assiduous inquiry may have unpleasant repercussions for him. Not only his whereabouts, but his term of sequestration, his life or his death are equally unknown. A mason engaged on a particular job left his work one night. lie was not again seen or heard of during four years, although his cmployer and his sister-in-law made every effort to trace him that was consistent with his welfare. At the end of that time he reappeared as suddenly. The fate of many men in public life, Fascist and non-Fascist, is completely unknown. Yet this is less than a prison—a man

lives where he will within the prescribed area, receives five lire per day for his livelihood and is subject to visits by a guard at intervals of fifteen minutes, not only by day but by night. The frequency of the visits is a function of the Government’s individual grudge. The fifteen-minute interval has not been unknown even over a considerable period of time. Letter writing among supposedly free men is a lost art, and a useless one, since even within Italy letters have long ceased to be private. Individually one might take one’s chances, but in a letter two people find themselves involved. The ordinary sociability of the tram,

the railway carriage and the countryside have gone the same way, for with a proportion of 15,000 civilian guards and a host of unpaid spies in the city of Rome, for example, ■with a population of one million, every person naturally becomes a potential spy. And so no man knows what the other man thinks or what he himself thinks. He is quite capable of telling you with equal sincerity that the most difficult cross to bear is the desertion of one’s friends to the Fascist camp, that the Fascists themselves are equally anti-Fascists, that there is no way out, that he doesn't know what keeps it up since it is all sham —tlie means do not exist for finding out anything real since statistics are Government made—that constitutional government was all a mistake —the Italian people were not really ripe for self-government, that only their physical welfare interested them, that they arc now destitute and hopeless. A Source of Irritation. The newspaper, as we know, has long since been converted from a source of information into a source of irritation. Day after day, day after day, it records the personal triumphs of the Duce and the institutional triumphs of Fascism. What goes on in the world, or indeed in Italy itself, is a matter of indifference, unless it directly reflects glory on the Fascist regime. In the name of whom and of what, the anti-Fascist asks himself in bitter earnestness, has he been deprived oi livelihood, of the stimulus of books and ? of people, of the possibility of serving t his country, of contact with the life of ( his time, of the opportunity to rear his f children in dignity and in freedom? He feels that something has eluded him, all the positive goods of life could rot have been routed merely by vio- 1 lence. That violence must have content, content of a spiritual order that • refuses to penetrate the void with s which he has been insulated. It cannot be that the battle is 1 clinched with a shadow. The contact ' with life may have been lost temperarily, but somewhere it must be possible to reconnect. The anti-Fascisf is haunted, pursued by the necessity for s content, a content Which by definition i can never be found. c For the philosophy of Fascism, if it 1 has one, is opportunism, the glory of i the State individually interpreted by 1 Mussolini and all his little Mussolinis. I He is the final authority, they are the lesser authorities in literature, art, * morality, finance, statesmanship, re- ' ligion—in short, the categorical ’ ini- S perative incarnate in whatever field of s human endeavour. “Forty million 1 people have been condemned to eternal celebration 1 ’ to rejoice under the Fas- 1 k cism of Mussolini.