Three Years of Mussolini, II

...which sound readiness is sometimes laid to his charge for inconsistency, or worse...

...that is laid on him by his office...

...If someone shuts up Gibraltar and Suez, there is an end of Italy...

...It would not be surprising to hear an Italian speak in the same breath of the Church as Italian and international, but anyone who knows him knows that he does not mean the non-Catholic thing which a too literal interpretation would imply...

...It is perfection, of course, that the Pope must always ask for...

...When, for instance, Fascism undertook the revision of ecclesiastical legislation, the good intention was evident and the Holy See allowed that three ecclesiastics should sit alongside the Commission to give expert explanation on ecclesiastical points on which the Commission might realize that its own lay competence might not be complete...

...Many a word spoken here by Mussolini in urging the Italian to think of himself as Italy, repeated with exaggeration by others, is not taken too literally by such as know Italy and Italians...

...The action of ecclesiastical authority is a sound guide on this...

...You have only to look at the map to realize that...

...Then it helped the frail human: its authorized representatives asked for explanations on certain points, and in the end it said: "The legislation is not perfect, but, inasmuch as it is on so many points, first and above all in the establishment of the principle of class cooperation to replace class warfare, in line with Catholic teaching, and as it gives the opening for existing Catholic syndicates to cooperate, and in cooperation to infiltrate their principles to the betterment of all, they are instructed to do so...

...The warning, with the consequent suspension of the work of the Commission, was taken hard by those of less instruction or of less good will on the other side, but was necessary and was seen to be necessary and regretfully accepted by those in authority...

...Learned Anglicans went over to Malines not long ago and propounded their theology to learned Catholics...

...It is a remarkable, and honest, experiment of a method of government, a mode of life...

...Far and away the biggest thing in the new regime is the syndicate and corporation organization of every worker, whether his contribution be capital, brains, or manual toil, in and for state and nation...

...The third point is a very earnest plea that such as have not personal and intimate knowledge of conditions here do not allow themselves to be led away by preconceptions, either their own or those of others...

...The Fascist conception of the "making" of the Italian was to bring home to him that his aim in "work," the employment of his capital, brains or manual toil, should not be just his personal advantage—to which, in many prevalent conceptions, had come to be added the disadvantage of his neighbor— but should be the prosperity' of his country also...

...Let us take a concrete and recent example...

...Innumerable instances might be quoted of the demand for perfection, tempered with charity and, when possible, with encouragement and help...

...Now comes in the charity and wisdom of the Holy See...

...Surely, then, we need not to be more critical than is the Holy See...

...The Holy See studied this and saw at once that there were two defects in its principle...

...Never was there a man so prompt to recognize and act upon what is obviously right either when he sees it himself or when it is pointed out to him...

...The Pope himself has seen the necessity of saying things...

...It is neither the one nor the other...

...has been consecutive and clear...

...The second point was that, in fact, the regulations, in their enforcement of one and only one authorized collective syndicate, went contrary to Pope Leo's teaching of the freedom of the individual worker to organize in his syndicate at his will...

...There has been straight denunciation of such things as were obviously bad, beginning with violence in principle,- and of all instances of the use of violence in fact...

...It desired perfection: it at once pointed out these defects...

...Those conditions made it drastic and gave rise to the—to use a temperate expression— "extravagances" which have been seen...

...From the very beginning the attitude of the Holy See...

...No one of sense will maintain, then, that all Fascist legislation, all Fascist ideas, are perfect...

...Those conditions, again, and the "extravagance" of the opposition to it, both of these things reacting on its temper—but in degrees varying between the sanity of Its centre and the lack of moderation of its periphery—have brought about a rigidity which there is good reason to hope that time will succeed In modifying...

...The first thing is that this new order is not a fixed thing, either in idea or application...

...He is led to take that liberty by the inconceivable inaccuracy of much that he has read in foreign) publications, some of it pro, most of it contra, Mussolini and the new order of things...

...It arose to remedy conditions, special conditions in Italy, universally acknowledged to be bad...

...The present writer—with no more authority than comes from a modicum of common sense exercised in observation, a study of conditions here for nearly eighteen years and a habit of taking the Holy See for guide, with due recognition of its exacting practice of always asking for perfection—offers one or two simple suggestions founded on facts as they appear to him...

...It was not until some time afterward that it was brought home to the Catholics that the words they were using in common meant one thing, the regularly understood thing, in Catholic theology, but an entirely different thing in the mentality of the Anglican, and that they had been led astray...

...The next thing is to ask those not on the spot to beware of being led away by words—terribly misleading, sometimes dangerous things...

...But there is no one who recognizes human frailty more than he does, no one more ready to help the frail human, no one more capable of doing so, provided that there is good ground to believe that the frail human's intentions are good...

...It is not difficult to pick out and record matter, word and act, to prove that Fascism is an heroic thing, a perfect expression of national, even international, life...

...it is still in process of development...

...Nor is it a philosophy...

...The Pope, again, in the Consistorial Allocution at the end of the Holy Year, paid generous tribute to the civil government for all that it had done for the Holy Year's success, but, to prevent misunderstanding, added a straight word about the continuance of those same conditions...

...Exaggeration in expression led to a conception of "The state the supreme end, the individual only a means," a doctrine dangerous and contrary to Catholic teaching...

...If we add to that the characteristic noted above in Mussolini, common sense and readiness to recognize and act upon what is obviously right, whether he sees it himself or it is pointed out to him, hope for the future lies rather in quiet criticism, with illumination and explanation added, than in accusatory denunciation alone...

...it is a regime which certainly has pulled Italy up out of something approaching chaos, and has, above all, put religion, in principle and in a hundred ways in fact, back in the position in which it ought to be, and from which it had been expelled for generations...

...Italy, for instance, is the one country which depends absolutely and completely on the Mediterranean...

...When that unfortunate word "collaboration" accidentally appeared, the Holy See was bound to come out promptly and authoritatively to show that, under circumstances existing since 1870, in two words, since the origin of thd "Roman question," there could be no question of collaboration...

...We should not allow ourselves to be led by antipathy to anything that does not seem "democratic" (incidentally, there was never anything less like decent democracy than the conditions existing before Fascism arrived, and, indeed, Fascism holds that in the end it will be seen to have established a far better democracy than has yet existed in Italy) to help to weaken the present regime by opposition, often without any knowledge of conditions on the spot...

...But full appreciation of all good intention, full encouragement of good work done, has never failed...

...That is what an Italian means when he talks of "Mare Nostrum," not that Italy claims hegemony in that sea...

...or, on the other hand, that it is nothing else than violence and tyranny, the entire negation of democracy, contrary to all the laws of God and man...

...There has been corrective criticism when it has been needed, when there has been evidence of unsound views or policies or when reprehensible action has been seen...