Mussolini's American Build-up
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
Mussolini's American Build-up By William E. Bohn A bankrupt nation, ruled by terror and murder, is painted in glowing colors by Americans to help float bond issues here — Seldes "Sawdust Caesar"...
...BJackshirts in virile ranks swung triumphantly athwart the pages of the rotogravure section...
...Many of them were started while Mussolini was still dodging the police, and the big ones were practically finished before anyone asked his opinion about such things...
...Hi...
...STARTLING REVELATIONS OF CAPITALIST HORRORS...
...And the increase goes on at a rapid rate...
...Most Americans have a sense of disgust when Hitler is mentioned, but Mussolini still looks fine to them...
...We see hard-working, ambitious, patriotic, right-thinking individuals—all of them potentially useful to themselves and their fellow-men—reaping hunger and pain and hopelessness as the rewards of their labor...
...Murdering Opponents When I say that Mussolini is a *-orse man than Hitler, rather than a better one, I am not: thinking cf the dirtiness of his private life his ingratitude, his , duplicity...
...He can as well claim credit for building St...
...The myth of Italian solvency had to be put over again and again...
...A SociaKsr-^rr Bolshevik alarmist maligning the blessed status quo...
...Young ladies returning from Italy were in ecstasy...
...cf police, or Obeka sjM private vendetta wds sat mm mm Hon...
...There were no strikes...
...They all produce a profit...
...Read the brave, losing struggle of the aged heroine of Case 5 to make a home for her paralytic brother...
...homeless children, ¦ orphaned and forgotten...
...But the market is down and their profits are down...
...Mussolini is still a "great'' man in America...
...ACCUSES SOCIETY OF VICTIMIZING DESERVING CASES...
...This is what gives this book by George Seldes its importance...
...And Germswy has no prison like the island pane* colonies, where thousands are aww rotting and dying of m* f ever...
...Marcel Cachin, now the leader of Communism in France, met Mussolini in Switzerland, handed him fifteen ahousand francs and promised him a subvention of ten thousand a month...
...Step Right Up...
...Up to September 21, 1914, Mussolini was hot against entrance into the war...
...The whole popular conception of Mussolini's life and character is pure fabrics.- j tion...
...The man was always talking of a blood-bath as the symbol of successful revolution...
...The cream of the crop...
...Peter's...
...Hitler was soon marked in this country for what he really is...
...It does not matter...
...This man talks .of the "putrid carcass of the Goddess of Liberty...
...And anyone who recalls how Coolidge was built up, hew Hooves was built up, must stliins*i«|g« the danger that lies ia such journalistic myth-making My point is, not that MuwwHni is bad, that fascism is bad, that Italy is in a mess...
...Merely a professional side-show barker showing off his chamber of horrors...
...The parts of the loans which have not been stolen by blackshirt heroes or used for ammunition to shoot Socialists or Catholics or someone else have largely gone toward the financing of fine sights for tourists—which, in turn, give new confidence in progress and solvency and so become security for new loans...
...But he has not ruined it...
...Her sight is dimming...
...Even if unconscious, the social propaganda of the thing is remarkably subtle...
...The man couldn't stand it...
...Professor Salvemini calenhitjm that since 1922 the Italian national debt has increased fifty-five billions...
...crippled fathers, powerless to fend off the woe from their loved ones...
...Every journalist worth his salt in Italy has known the secret behind this miracle, but it wasn't considered fit to print in the United States...
...His young wife went into a laundry and emerged six months later "worn out in health and spirit...
...Their job is not finished...
...His personal character is infinitely worse than Hitler's...
...Our governments, local, State and Federal, are left "to assist the destitute on a scale unprecedented in our history" in the unfortunate "continuing crisis of unemployment...
...The Italian tyrant cannot be blamed for 1Mb* betrayal- His arm hardly reaches this far—no matter how much money he has spent on American propaganda...
...Now as to his having downed the Bolslievjki and restored order...
...Not routine garden-variety suffering, either...
...And this idea has been fed to American newspaper readers...
...Nothing like it has bee* seen in Germany...
...Instead of 'invectives against the system—a demonstration in which the system condemns itself...
...Our own people ape guilty...
...All year round the New York Times does its bit to keep up appearances...
...There are positive reasons for Mussolini's high reputation, and they are American reasons...
...newspapers and press agencies...
...It gives no quarter to the vulgar folk (nice Christmas word...
...deserted mothers, heartbroken and fearful...
...A good round number, but it could easily have been two hundred or a thousand or two hundred thousand...
...Reached the heights of conducting his own dance orchestra...
...During the war Germany was the enemy and Italy was an ally...
...Since then things have learn the trick...
...American trade unions heard about the crushing of the German unions...
...s No Fascist Magic In short, the improvements are no proof of prosperity...
...Nowhere in the compilation is there the faintest suggestion that the prostrate and suffering men, women and children are in any way responsible for \ their own plight...
...The figures published have been false...
...There is no room in this special holiday display for the commonplaces of hunger and homelessness...
...Mussolini's Admirers Read George Seldes' "Sawdust Caesar" and the whole matter will be dear...
...To the community," it declares blandly, "the appeal has become an annual educational campaign that stirs the hearts of the metropolis and informs the citizen of the plight of his neighbors...
...Its technique is infinitely more effective than that of the indignant and ill-mannered agitators...
...Every time the pieces of paper came back into the market the story had to be told anew...
...The 9m cialists, the Commumsts, the trad* unionists, the Free Masons, mm Catholics wars act up...
...fied old New I York Times I singing ' its an- I ¦ nual Christmas I s^eS Carol, proudly I ? WmW~ exhibiting New I fork's One Hun- I . f . dred Neediest I Cases...
...They are all "deserving" cases— innocent and valorous neighbors tortured for no sins of their own...
...Peace was restored and "prosIperity" was coming back...
...All the machinery of fascism, of mihtia...
...There is ample evidence of the deft hand of showmanship...
...In slight degree the differences may be due to external circumstances...
...Arnoldo Cortesi, correspondent of the New York Times, and practically ali Italians who write for American papers, are helping every day to perpetuate the false picture...
...American) fascism, as Lewis sees it ia $¦ imagination, is pot over chicdS by means of a newspaper b-iild...
...Listen to the Times guide describing this fine flower ofVapitalist justice: "For more than forty years Mary F. worked as a nurse, faithfully easing the pain of the suffering in city hospitals...
...No other capitalist system lies in such complete ruin...
...We need not count the donkeys who come back and report the punctual trains...
...Read of the hopeless misery of the seven children ofCas% 49, and of the forsaken'Soy^afy Case 45, who 'wanted to die.' " A RANTING agitator bellyaching about the Ms of our capitalist society...
...Until two years ago she lived on her savings, proudly independent...
...Giving these promises a present valuation of thirty-five billion lire...
...And the mechanism has a catholic taste...
...I happen to have finished just recently another book, apt American book, Sinclair Leaup...
...Now step this way, ladies and gentlemen...
...Perhaps Hitler suffers in American estimation because- the war-inspired hates have been easily transferred to him...
...Everything in the best Horatio Alger tradition...
...But if this accounts for anything, it doesn't account for much...
...If I were editing a Socialist paper, I should spread the story in sensational headlines: "NEW YORK TIMES EXPOSES THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM...
...Then, old and with failing sight, she had to have the assistance of a welfare agency...
...We have a very real boycott of Germany, but there is no effective boycott of Italy...
...Here you are invited to view the more exquisite diseases in the body social...
...Every item is hand-picked from the counters of the largest private charities, guaranteed genuine and carries a price-tag of the "amount needed...
...his attitudinizing is more ridiculous...
...Adolf Hitler spoiled the picture.* It would have paid Mussolini to have had him quietly assassinated...
...They are...
...The men who have created ' the "hero" Mussolini have done it deliberately and for reward...
...But once a year it digs one hundred peep holes in the surface and invites the world to take a look...
...Leaning heavily on Professor Gaetano Salvemini for material, Seldes punctures the Italian financial myth once and for all.' Americans who hold those, securities may a*'welt use them for decorative purposes...
...The thing got talked about...
...The Jews are vocal...
...Military power has not known how to make economics behave...
...But this is the worst case, the dirtiest case...
...100 Peepholes Is the New York Times aware of the implications of its peepshow of everyday horrors...
...A young rabbi, a war veteran, two old stage people, an old nurse, a scrubwoman, a young violinist, a baby of 4, an old man of 80—each with a special brand of noxious misery that will yield only to treatment with $644 or $200 or $475, as the case may be...
...Banker publicity has had a large part in giving Mussolini his American build-up...
...On Sept...
...blackshirts had murdered and i toHured aplenty in advance, but the final occupation of Rome and the starting of the government took place without physical opposition...
...The Italian budget had been balanced...
...By 1922, when he came into power, the strikes were over, the trains were running on time...
...Bat I am sot wri tiagj About Italy I am writing aboutf America...
...In Italy a new delicatessen cant be opened without a speech...
...In Italy, where the Cheka and the j blackshirts control the press, it is I possible thus to rewrite history...
...The traitors are in our own camp...
...A Nice Case Or peep into the Eighteenth Case on the other side of the room...
...And Mussolini was violently shouting encouragement to the strikers, the disrupters...
...The dates of payment run to 1987, and the amount of these obligations amounted in 1933 to more than seventy-four billion lire...
...The truth has been concealed, the myth has been put over, by the "public relations counsels," by Richard Washburn Child, an ambassador whose salary was paid by the American people, by Isaac F. Marcosson, great "expert" of the Saturday Evening Post...
...Italian railways ran on time...
...That took some selling...
...Look at the 34-year-old veteran in the Fifth Case, over there in the corner...
...No one could expect them to junk it...
...every* where...
...The capitalist system of Italy has not been stabilized...
...The Italian Debt The Italian treasury has concealed its true condition by discharging both ordinary and extraordinary obligations with promises to pay...
...The Socialists, trade unionists, anarchists, all the working class and radical elements in the country • were against t. The future patriot was with them, the most radical antimiiitarist of alt...
...And the duty work of deception is still being carried ra by some of our own citizens...
...He has spoiled the fascist game...
...In the Chamber of Deputies, where the Socialists had 195 1 members, the Communists had but 18...
...constantly in service...
...Bonds are bonds, whether they are German, Bolivian, British or Italian...
...He represents the opposite to all that we have thought of as Americanism...
...It Can't Happen Here...
...They have delib-, erately lied to their countrymen about a set of facts which are of , tragic importance in the modem . world...
...H The Big Danger Possibly George Seldes' bodi contains more important matters...
...Here democracy has been a sacred doctrine...
...Animals of the same breed go to Germany and Russia, go everywhere...
...They are American bankers and certain correspondents of...
...Financiers and industrialists may be pleased at the subjugation of the workers and the low level of wages...
...Nothing of the sort...
...After that Mussolini could say: "See, there is trouble everywhere — even in the United States...
...To be sure, this was not a unique case...
...He turns the spotlight on where it is needed...
...All the marks of a great economic set-back were there got worse and worse, business rotten, wages constantly going lower...
...Yet Americans have "sold" this man to our public...
...I have in mind his public and senseless cruelty For . every man | or woman killed, tortured, wrecked •by Hitler there have been a hundred done away with by the Italian dictator...
...On the contrary, the barker goes out of his way to emphasize the courage, high moral character and helplessness of the victims...
...As a financial wizard Mussolini has been a good actor...
...Anyone who thinks Italy is a capitalist heaven just doesn't know...
...tnftatorship is brought nearer because our people are misinformed about it The sources of our thinking are fouled...
...Now destitute in the most genteel style...
...This is a distinct danger...
...What I am driving at is that our bankers and our journalists have put Mussolini and f asciritf over in a big way aj America...
...No one will ever ktjow how many thousands were killed and maimed...
...From 1919 to 1929 it was...
...M~ii*1r The twenty- « r. Bm fourth annual •$*¦<*$ •? 3 x h i b i tion of Bngene Lyons this Roll of Horror...
...But it could not be done in America without the active cooperation of American journalists...
...Nice, gentle old lady, loves poetry and painting and served humanity...
...His messing around with the Jews was really disgusting...
...The Duce's wand has had no magic to part the Red sea of economic contradictions...
...The $35-a-month pension does not suffice for food and medicine, and^ the noble young people are sick and starving...
...One hundred selected cases...
...American* have been fooling other Americans about this man and his work...
...The Italian unions had been crushed ten years earlier, but that must have happened in a quiet corner...
...There ! are others who have refused to lie...
...There is much about the eeeaoseM and political origins of fascisasej about why and how the thing came to pass...
...his failure as a statesman is quite as clear...
...There are ao statistics, but probably he has committed fewer than a tenth as many murders as the big-jawed Italian...
...George Seldes himself...
...Tie beat ami the wma% MatteottAmendola, many other* weie cruelly murdered...
...But murdering Jews was bad...
...There are two main groups of criminals...
...It is the staid and digni...
...There have been bright ex- ! ceptions...
...Seldes gives the total of Italian bonds sold to American investors as $600,000,000...
...Mussolini looked handsome...
...Both Great Britain and France were "persuading" editors in neutral countries, by no means overlooking the United States...
...In addition tothe financial j 'myth, there are three chief misconceptions: that Mussolini is a brave man, a great soldier and patriot, a fine fellow, that he saved ; Italy from Bolshevism and dis-1 order, that he is more decent, less violent, less cruel than Hitler...
...was driven out of Italy because he ! told the truth—so were William I Bolitho and David Darrah...
...Worked in a factory by day, studied music at night...
...I But the great Associated Press still gives us correspondence which is nothing but propaganda...
...The lessons of this "annual educational campaign" are plain enough...
...Bigger and better misery every year...
...What is the truth about these bright new wonders ? First, they have been largely paid for—as far as they have been paid for at all— out of money lent by Americans...
...At the end of the war they had developed a magnificent machine for putting over foreign bonds...
...Democracy really was a bit inferior in the matter of uniforms and thrills...
...f There have been pictures of "improvements...
...who try to scrape off the varnish and expose the teeming iniquities underneath...
...Cjjrtetmas Carol -:- Nineteen Cf)trtp=;jftoe By Eugene Lyons "Old folk, HI and destitute in the twilight of life...
...exAnd to George Seldes must go the credit for having done owe journalist's best to set the record straight...
...This wnole fabrication was an ' afterthought, a piece of propa| ganda &ent out long after to justify violence and dictatorship...
...The bankers first...
...Mussolini's American Build-up By William E. Bohn A bankrupt nation, ruled by terror and murder, is painted in glowing colors by Americans to help float bond issues here — Seldes "Sawdust Caesar" rips lid from enslaved nation SAWDUST CAESAR, by George Seldes...
...Equally innocent, equally pathetic...
...He got there just in time to stick one hand between his .vest buttons, wave the other in the air and open his mouth to claim the credit...
...Business was getting better...
...Mussolini has been advertised as the Saint George who slew the economic dragon...
...It is engaged, with all other agencies of respectability, in the permanent save-the-surface campaign...
...P to 1913 fascism stood high v in America...
...It has been ten years since Miss F. was taken ill...
...Much of the money from the American loans has been stolen by fascist grafters...
...Only space limitations, it is dear, keeps the exhibits to one hundred...
...Mussolini's Record Think for a moment about th.3 notions which these men have put | across...
...he has committed ten times as many crimes...
...Amount needed, $475...
...First about his patriotism, his war record...
...Now, at 69, she is alone with her cherished books — Keats and Shelley and Tennyson—and with her copy of a Madonna by Raphael, which she painted long ago...
...Eirery exhibit is unique...
...The American correspondents j didn't create it, but they knew its j falsity and they have passed it on to this country...
...Yet America thinks him a great man and a great ruler...
...There is no need to specify the social moral when it is implicit in every one of the hundred exhibits...
...The depression in other lands, when it came, relieved the sad situation of the Italian government...
...She has had to give up painting:—though she can still see to read the poetry she loves...
...of the frail mother of Case 27, who fainted at her work trying to earn, for her little folk and her broken husband...
...traitors to sue best tradition of their own land...
...I Much to his disappointment he came to power in perfect peace...
...The newspaper men have taken their part in putting over this financial myth, but theirs is a wider responsibility...
...One hundred select eases of cancer, tumor, economic pestilence, domestic gangrene, social leprosy . . . each in its own case, neatly labeled...
...she knows that she is going blind, but she is unafraid...
...That was the price of patriotism...
...A war hero at 18...
...Our people, except for a radical minority, still think of him as a splendid figure...
...Instances of peculiar misfortune, devastating illness and exceptional distress . . : unadorned accounts iif h|m>mij|iiateiiiii . . . Tragedies among our fellows, recorded as starkly as they happen...
...He has oratorically invited leaders of other capitalist economies to come to him to —decreased population, unemployment, reduced wages, lessened foreign commerce...
...Professor Salvemini has gathered all the evidence about these improvements, and George Seldes makes capital use of it...
...The contrast is worth aa inquiry...
...In 1921 came the strikes, the disruption of railway service, the occupation of the factories...
...But America doesn't know it...
...Instead of shrill generalizations—specific exhibits...
...25 he was just as hot on the other aide, and ia two weeks he had started his daily, jfl Populo d'Italia, to advocate his new nationalistic, militaristic doctrine...
...The Italian budget has never been balanced since Mussolini came in...
...For one more year, until she is eligible for the old-age pension that will sustain her in the twilight of life, kindly aid is needed to keep her in her two small crowded rooms, which are so deeply stamped with her own personality...
...Some of them are great writers and scientists...
...HEARST EXPECTED TO DEFEND SYSTEM AGAINST TIMES DEFAMATIONS...
...But the chief part in the crime must be placed on the shoulders of a long list of well-known and highly respected American bankers...
...Harper and Brom...
...And proof ! of the powerlessness of the Comi n-unists lies in the 1921 election returns...
...They are still at it...
...No boring repetitions...
...But he had brought a bad heart from the fields of Flanders and it forced him to give up his career...
...The fact is that in Italy the depression started in 1926 instead of 1929...
...Great highways, aquaducts and palaces had been built...
...Boulevards, palaces, fountains, aqueducts, power plants —everyone of them opened by Benito in person, and with a speech...
Vol. 18 • December 1935 • No. 51
