SIGNOR BENITO MUSSOLINI

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19662, 23 August 1935, Page 6

SIGNOR BENITO MUSSOLINI

Mr Herman Finer, who had a fairly long sojourn in Italy during 1933 and 1934, has written a book bearing the title "Mussolini’s Italy.” It deals somewhat extensively with the Italian Dictator, his career, and his policy. A comparison is drawn between Louis Napoleon and Mussolini, in which it is shown that there is a marked similitude in their characteristics. Napoleon’s undoing was his attempt to establish a French Empire in Mexico. In the furtheiance of that enterprise he lost his grip on the situation in Europe, and in that he made a blunder which he could not retrieve. _ It proved his undoing. Will Abyssinia prove to be Mussolini’s Mexico? Mr Finer describes the Fascist State and shows how from the ago of six years the people of Italy are undergoing a training to harden mind and body, continually excited and stimulated by every method known to art and politics for keeping the imagination combatant and loyal. Through this training supplemented by the Institutes of Culture the Fascist party of the future is created. Thus everything is done not merely to attract support but to train up a Fascist Italy. The author pays tribute to Mussolini’s outstanding talents and his capacity for work, and declares that his mind and hand are in every phase of Italy’s public life. In that he scents his collapse. It is conceivable that one man might administer a City State, but it is not possible to direct all the activities of a modern nation, and keep the mind balanced and alert. Mr Finer asks: "Can a man live in this atmosphere year after year and remain as patient of criticism, as tolerant of unpalatable advice, as a man must be who is to use the minds of others? Is it not inevitable that sooner or later such a man must make a blunder like Napoleon’s blunder in Mexico? And what is the penalty of failure? Take from Mussolini the magic of success, and what becomes of this mystical faith, this body of organised enthusiasm, this romantic devotion? Take from him the magic of success and there must inevitably descend on Italy a terrible retribution for the methods by which the system has defended itself.” Mussolini seeks to found a State based on new principles, but his system has a fatal flaw. For the cult of Mussolini is an essential part of it. He is the idol, the demigod of this mass of emotion. And this cult is more and more associated with the cult of violence — a cult that all nations will pursue from time to time but few nations pursue for long without a strong reaction. Mussolini seeks to create a trained and disciplined State, hut its training and, discipline centre round a person. Mussolini thinks of himself in public as a Caesar. In private he must often doubt whether he will even leave behind him an effective garrison for the fortress ho has raised with such skill and daring on the ruins of liberty. This is the man who, from comparative obscurity, has risen to direct the destinies of his nation, and now defies tho world.