Baiting the Duce
Wickham, Harvey
BAITING THE DUCE By HARVEY WICKHAM A MERICANS, so many of whom no longer ber\ lieve in a personal devil, seem, nevertheless, unable to enjoy existence without some villain in the piece. Lenin...
...Not to make invidious comparisons, neither will members of the Order of Mafia, upon whose trail the Duce has set himself...
...A building once constructed may defy a great deal of wind and weather, but it is impossible to build in the midst of a storm without taking some steps toward the erection of temporary shelter...
...My life," he has truly said, "is an open book, in which anybody can read the words 'study,' 'poverty,' and 'combat.' " Here are all the elements of a "success story" for any magazine...
...No doubt Mussolini, himself a newspaper man as well as a novelist and a poet, fathoms the psychology of the situation to the bottom...
...Aside from that, it has been for seven years a de facto government...
...Public opinion is no longer inarticulate, and what would once have been the silent resentment of the interested few now finds itself a voice, and the voice an echo...
...Her exports, worth 19,000 million lire in 1924, jumped to 26,000 million in 1926, and are still expanding...
...Neither will those Italians whom the new regime has converted into voluntary but bitter political refugees—or those who have lived so long abroad as to be out of touch with the domestic happenings of the last seven years...
...Europe is finding this out at Geneva...
...And it does not fall...
...Lenin is dead...
...Yet I am bold enough to suggest that his light has become as darkness—for I also have a first-hand knowledge of this same material...
...The play may go on...
...Sooner or later, under such circumstances, some unbalanced brain, filled with the idea that ignorant or calculated misstatements are the simple truth, is certain to attempt to rid the world of a supposed monster...
...Now a man may be known by the enemies he makes no less than by the company he keeps...
...An American tourist said to me a few weeks ago: "This Duce that I hear so much about— I suppose he is a strong man...
...So I think it might be well if those who oppose the Duce and take part in his baiting would pause and take note of what company they are keeping...
...True enough—and obviously, simply horrible...
...And even in times of peace was there ever a government which allowed itself to be assailed without stint ? As to the suppressed newspapers of Italy, they were, like most newspapers upon the continent of Europe, not so much newspapers as party organs— mouthpieces of those petty factions, which, united in nothing else, had joined in a policy that brought parliamentary government to a standstill and the Italian nation face to face with a dilemma—one horn being anarchy and the other Moscow—the very factions, in short, that Mussolini, bent upon leading the way back to solid ground, had come to wipe out...
...Loud hisses, some that sound like axes being ground— others, the mere exhalation of innocent air...
...The tragic results likely to follow in the wake of irresponsible criticism in public print are sufficiently obvious...
...But this makes no difference to the Duce's baiters...
...The formal celebration of this event was planned for Good Friday, but a preliminary to the permanent restoration was enacted March 25, when the grim old amphitheatre of the martyrs was illuminated, "a fiaccole e a bengala," while a temporary cross was drawn to the top of the walls above Caesar's balcony, and the Societa Polifonica Romana, under the direction of Monsignor Raffaele Casimiri, of San Giovanni in Laterano, sang to the music of Palestrina: "Laudate Dominum, quia benignus est...
...But I'd hate to see him in the White House...
...Count Volpi is no real financier, but a mere "tool of the bankers" (once again to quote Mr...
...He is no theorist, prone to project an original error in a straight line which runs into the ground...
...We're a republic...
...We don't like strong men out our way...
...But perhaps I don't understand the word "meal...
...The people of Sardinia, of Calabria, Apulia, and Basilicata around the artificial lakes of the Sila plateau, where most of the new plants are being established, would better beware...
...First of all, it must be remembered that this is an age of propaganda...
...Many of the world's most useful citizens have perished in this way...
...We talk a great deal about free speech and an untrammeled press...
...Do you understand...
...The press is muzzled and foreign journalists are watched," we are again told...
...But before that he had spent some time as a pupil of the College of Silesian Friars at Faenza...
...If he had let them go on he would have been less dictator than fool...
...When patriarchs of the Orthodox Church were put on trial and sentenced to death, it served them right...
...If deported, as some of these gentlemen have been, they naturally—from the safe vantage of Paris—make the cables smoke with the news of their outrage...
...If he is a dictator, then Europe needs more of the same type...
...He has, instead, restored it to the Colosseum...
...Now this is a joke, and I admit that it is not very funny...
...The world, I think, owes much to the Duce's rare ability to change his book...
...It is one thing to get peoples to hate...
...Yet a large section of the press and public, not only in the United States but in all countries other than Italy, habitually speak of Mussolini as if he were at least Beelzebub if not Lucifer himself...
...Electrical power consumption is now more than 180 kilowatt hours annually per capita, instead of 70, as it was a short time ago...
...And this time the wouldbe assassin is an English-speaking foreigner...
...Here is one of the sad consequences of war...
...Mussolini's government has legalized itself by every means known to man, not excepting a general election and recognition by the established monarchy under which it operates...
...One of the disgruntled scribes—an American correspondent caught in the general clean-up—has attained to such prominence as to merit special mention...
...So last year the procession of Corpus Christi marched through the streets of Rome quite as in the old days...
...In a recent speech delivered at Milan he is quoted as saying: "Mussolini is in many respects the most remarkable personality I have ever met...
...Not enough to furnish casualties for an ordinary skirmish—though what has been going on is war...
...When thousands fell, it was because they stood in the way of progress...
...Some of the upper classes do manage somehow to wriggle into the limits of the French silhouette—but the rank and file...
...Why, this: "By such means, and by the expenditure of huge sums for propaganda abroad, the Fascists think they will be able to stave off the day when their real economic and financial position may become known to foreign bankers and foreign industrialists...
...And though it may be necessary to spend large sums in organization when it comes to boosting, the average citizen is willing to furnish breath gratis when the chantey's refrain is the easy and catchy "Blow the man down...
...Simply because he has no choice...
...But the bankers are going to escape...
...They refused to hitch their wagons to a star which they thought was going to fall...
...He is our national fetish, the self-made man, of poor but honest parents...
...It is, in fact, rather sad1—like the text on which it is a comment...
...So let us enquire a little into this murmurous disapprobation...
...It was different, with these people, when the name most in everyone's mouth was Lenin...
...The Pincio where II Duce takes his morning horseback ride is visible from my window as I write...
...Rome once more is ringing with thanksgiving over the Duce's escape...
...Incidentally, it may be remarked that the brand of Mason thus unhoused is slightly contraband in the Masonic world—but it is easily to be understood that they who have crossed the hot sands, or guide their conduct by means of square and compass, will not do much to swell the song in praise of Mussolini which, in spite of all, is beginning to rise...
...Much might here be said about Italy's economic recovery...
...If France, for example, had a fiscal Mussolini she would not be in the financial turmoil that now besets her...
...When the anti-Mussolini ragtime is played upon such a dignified instrument as, say, the Atlantic Monthly (the January issue) it keeps to a high level of blues, but when it peals from more radical sources, such as The Nation, it becomes genuine jazz...
...Call a government a tyranny, and every member of the opposition who dies or suffers loss, even in a street row, is a martyr...
...The non-combatant must, in war-time, be stirred by slogans...
...Isaac Marcosson, of the editorial staff of the Saturday Evening Post, are beginning to see this plainly enough...
...I think I can see that we have come quite a long way since 1871, when the original Colosseum cross was taken down—a way which does not, it seems to me, lead in the direction of destruction...
...And yet he continues upon occasion to suppress newspapers and to deport newspaper men...
...Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us tonight—Benito Mussolini...
...True enough, he began his active life as a Socialist...
...It is my present home, where I live, move, have my being, and keep house...
...The radicals object to him on principle...
...So our tendency to look upon anything not strictly democratic as a menace to ourselves and to the world, though gradually subsiding, is still at a slightly feverish elevation...
...And he adds a word of praise for Italy's financial condition, declaring her to be the one country that seems to have learned anything from the world war...
...If a sfilatino (long loaf of bread) split lengthwise so as to admit of a pound or so of salcicca, salami, coppa (various forms of sausage and chopped meat) washed down with half a fiasco, more or less, of red wine—if this does not constitute a meal, then it is true enough that many Italians eat but one meal a day—for breakfast does not amount to much...
...When it comes to matters of larger scope, the words of these propagandists are no less amazing...
...Therefore, though he is avowedly making THE COMMONWEAL May 5, 1926 an omelette, he must not break any eggs—or heads...
...And after the war is over the slogan remains, no longer useful in preserving a needed morale but carrying an emotional charge which is a positive hindrance to a return to rational thinking...
...and in Russia for many years now it has been, in the opinion of those who see the world through a glass darkly tinted red, simply impossible for authority to do wrong...
...He is a brilliant and, I dare say, conscientious journalist—according to his lights...
...Or are we expected to believe that the threatened death is to take the form of assassination —wholesale hewings down in the streets...
...But I wish rather to draw attention to the change which has come over the country in ways less easily defined and having more to do with the spirit...
...The Kaiser, with his grey hair, is beginning to look hopelessly benevolent...
...Call a government a government, and its necessary acts of suppression are so many instances of the operation of law and justice, inevitable under any regime...
...As highly percented in my Americanism as is he, I have lived in Europe almost continuously since the summer of 1914...
...I remember one article in The Nation which even warns its readers that some of the American $20,000,000 loan to Italy is being used in hydro-electric construction...
...and declares that he knows of "families in Rome that are trying to live on one meal a day...
...James Murphy seems to be the present holder of the megaphone in the international antiMussolini sightseeing bus...
...That is the sort of an economist Mr...
...In their attacks they used every weapon at hand, including calumny...
...In short, he imagines a country brought to ruin, and the financial interests growing fat in consequence...
...I can understand their chagrin when a government forbids them to dispatch precisely those articles which the editor at home is, in the journalistic phrase, "howling his head off" to receive...
...He is not only the son of the old, anti-clerical blacksmith of Romanga, but the son of a pious mother as well...
...But let no one despair, give up his ringside seat and go home to his radio...
...I can sympathize perfectly with many of the special correspondents responsible for the sort of item which begins its life as a cablegram...
...Murphy as the best spokesman of his class...
...but quite another to get them suddenly to stop hating...
...This must have sounded a tragic note—to newspaper readers ignorant of the fact that in Italy the death penalty is unknown...
...I know nothing against Mr...
...Murphy so much...
...Men like Mr...
...According to this, Count Volpi must have used all the eloquence of which a capitalists' tool is capable trying to convince Washington on the occasion of the recent Italo-American debt negotiations that Italy was rich, fairly rolling in money, and capable of paying her debt in full...
...Foreign (that is, American and English) bankers are being deceived because they are not permitted to read such despatches as would reach them through the press were correspondents with the Duce-baiting complex not compelled to do their heavy work from Paris...
...It must be that public electrocutions are being planned, and upon an enormous scale...
...Imports have increased from 14,000 million to 18,000 million in the same period...
...Later, when reproached for it, he said: "Yes, but I have changed my book...
...But it might very easily have been Dies Irae...
...I knew Italy before the famous march on Rome— I have known it since...
...No one can serve Fascismo without being a good Catholic," he has said...
...Some of these expatriates are in danger of deportation for violation of the immigration laws, and they have informed the American public that they are "certain to meet death" if forced back to Italian soil...
...He says, for instance, that uthe people of Rome are so taxed that life is fast becoming impossible for the middle and working classes...
...One has to live hefe to realize the full magnitude of what has happened...
...And for what reason this muzzling and watching, do you suppose...
...There was being built up in Russia, you see, a dictatorship of the proletariat—and save for Mussolini and his black shirts it might have extended even unto the Eternal City on the Tiber...
...What a difference it makes—the words one uses to describe events...
...At first sight, the Italian Premier would seem to be about the worst candidate for the vacant role of Satan who could possibly be offered to the American public...
...Postscript, April 7: Today, for the second time since I have made my home in Rome, an attempt has been made on Mussolini's life...
...What people seem to forget is that Italy has been passing through a revolution, that in her case storm and stress are more than May 5, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL metaphors...
...But let us listen now to the extreme rights, 100 percent Nordic...
...Besides, where a foreign country is concerned, criticism makes a much better "story" than does praise...
...It was the banking plutocracy," he says, "that originally backed the whole Fascist show...
...To them, the Dictator was malum in se...
...One needs to see a troop of black shirts, young, enthusiastic, fit, marching beneath a consecrated banner to the tune of Youth, Youth, Springtime of Beauty, to know how absurd it is to call them vulgar cut-throats...
...The Royal Academy of Italy organized last January for the promotion of art, science, and literature, occupies a palace on Piazza Navona, in Rome, which was formerly a Masonic temple...
...When Mussolini first came into power, I heard it said that he was going to tear the cross from Saint Peter's...
...Murphy personally...
...Murphy is...
...Te Deum laudamus...
...No comment is necessary...
...but a realizzatore, capable of going forward...
...but how much of either did we tolerate not so long ago when we were at war...
...I am, you see, in the very midst of that "tyranny" which excites Mr...
...Lenin was in Russia...
...And he warns us that the day of reckoning is coming—that the people will have to pay the piper...
...There's the rub...
...Everybody is happy...
...He could, in the eyes of these factionists, do nothing right...
...The first Fascio di Combattimento was founded on March 23, 1914, and considering the completeness of the evolution from chaos to order which has taken place since, surprisingly few have been hewn down in the streets or anywhere else...
...He is a super-Roosevelt...
...Once he was caught reading Machiavelli...
...It is a somewhat mixed company, I must confess, and possessing no one common denominator...
...Why...
...He must have smiled himself when he sent off that one—or possibly he made his observation during Lent...
...And this year—I cite the fact merely as a straw to indicate the direction of the wind—the Italian government, aided by the city of Assisi, contributed 3,000,000 lire and a plot of ground for the erection of a new monastery for the Franciscans, to take the place of the one long since wrested from them and now occupied by the College of the Prince of Naples adjoining the church at Assisi where the bones of Saint Francis lie...
...Was not his father a blacksmith...
...But as I think of the average Italiano (and, alas, Italiana) and of the figures they present to the naked eye, I tremble to think what would be the spectacle were the "tyrant" to let them eat more and oftener...
...For example, apart from believers in government by Soviet and their incongruous bedfellows of the extreme right, of whom more anon, there are the Free and Accepted Masons...
...Yet when I read his burning paragraphs I have to pinch myself to make certain that I am awake...
...We may be able to uncover some enlightening facts...
...Though at present domiciled along the Seine, he has the advantage of a first-hand acquaintance with his material...
...Mussolini has described himself as a realizzatore— a fact-facer—and one of the facts which he has faced is the fact that Italy is a Catholic country...
...The expression of men's faces, the air with which they go about their ordinary tasks, though supremely significant, cannot be reduced to statistics...
...Here is farce, pure and simple...
...This brings us to a deeper source of the opposition to Mussolini...
Vol. 3 • May 1926 • No. 26
