Italy’s Rebirth: Benito Mussolini

Hiram Kelly Moderwell, Rome Correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, writes of the scene at the interview with Premier Mussolini:

“It took place in the magnificent Chigi Palace, Italy’s present Foreign Office, in the largest and most splendid room of the Palace—that of President Mussolini—at midday, with the din of the Roman streets muffled by thick walls, and with the white Italian light flooding over the forceful apostle of Fascismo at his gigantic desk.

“Our hopes—Mr. Bell’s and mine—had fallen low as we waited in an outer reception room. There were three of these rooms, each big enough for a house, and all were crowded with visitors to see the President. There were admirals and generals in their handsome uniforms. There were dignified, solemn-faced, frock-coated officials and committeemen from all over Italy. There were men of science and men of diplomacy.

“How could the President, in circumstances like these, find even a moment for a newspaper interview?

Keeps Appointment on the Minute.

“But Mussolini is Mussolini. On the instant of our appointment a secretary came through a lofty doorway and called out, ‘Mr. Price Bell!’ We followed him along several corridors and through two or three ante-chambers to the door of the President’s room. There we paused for a few seconds. Then the secretary turned the knob, opened the door, and the vast office of Mussolini lay before us. We had entered at one corner; diagonally across the great expanse of the room in the farthest corner from us sat Mussolini at his desk by a wide, towering window.

“One’s glance involuntarily swept over the room, despite the magnetism of the man. Its walls are hung with battle-axes and strange gray tapestries. There is little furniture, accentuating the immense space. The floor is of beautifully grained hardwood, smooth as glass.

“Mussolini rose, stepped from behind his desk and walked quickly toward us, erect and stern in bearing, like a soldier. He met us almost half-way, shook hands firmly and cordially, turned and retraced his steps to his chair. There were no hesitations, no preliminaries. Conversation began at once. Occasionally Mussolini used English, occasionally French, but nearly always his own musical and brilliant Italian. He was alternatively animated and grave, his fine eyes sometimes gleaming playfully, sometimes reflecting what he has passed through since the outbreak of the Great War and what he has faced in his position of supreme political responsibility in Italy.

Brilliant Listener and Talker.

“We were alone. When I saw Mussolini two years ago in a modest hotel room in Cannes, a young black shirt stood beside me, rifle in hand, motionless during a two-hour interview. But here Mussolini, without guards or secretaries and clad in a smartly-cut morning suit, was no longer dictator of an extra-legal militia, but first minister of the king. He listened. He listened intently, his hands relaxed on the arms of his chair, his head bowed. He seemed to concentrate as much energy on listening as do most orators on speaking.”

Mr. Bell’s impressions of the remarkable man interviewed:

Word Picture of Mussolini.

“He is not tall, or raw-boned, or pretty. He is somewhat short and decidedly well-fleshed, but not fat. Those who see mental and moral rather than physical features will, I think, call him handsome. Nor is he at all bad-looking physically. His dark-brown eyes are the talk of Italy.

“Mussolini is intensely egoistic and quintessentially Italian. Some might call him affected. I put down his mannerisms not to affectation but to individuality. He is too serious, too reflective, too sensible of the weight of his cares, too sincere, to be affected. As he talked, now sitting at his huge, flat-topped desk; now rising, pushing back the tails of his morning coat and thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets; sometimes advancing his face close to mine and looking hard into my eyes, his right arm uplifted; sometimes appearing to forget I was there, turning away and pitching his words into space—as he did these things I felt in the presence less of a man than of a flesh-and-blood embodiment of a great national passion.

“Mussolini has a luminous and powerful intellect. But it is not his intellect that astonishes one. It is his genius. It is his spirit. It is the fire in him. It is his self-forgetfulness. It is the depth and mystery of his personality. It is his courage; one easily can see him, on the instant and even eagerly, facing death for his principles, as he has done many times.

“One way, and an accurate way, of describing Mussolini is to say that he is everything neutralism is not. ‘It is necessary to act, to move, to fight, perhaps to die,’ he says. This is virtually the alpha and omega of his feeling and philosophy.

Not Dictator but Liberator.

“They call him dictator. To the unpatriotic, to the anti-social and anti-civilized, to the lawless, to the bolshevists, he is dictator. To Italy—full of sterling human worth as it is full of natural beauty and of historical glory—to Italy, in my judgment, Mussolini is liberator.

“I should be sorry to have these words taken as mere rhetoric. I am trying to give some idea of a man who has captivated a great people and re-created a nation. I am trying to give some idea of a man who has impressed Europe profoundly; who, in my opinion, has served Europe vitally, and who has become a portent and a promise in the civilization of the world.”

“Fascismo, Sig. Mussolini, is the phenomenon we wish to try to understand.”

“First,” was the reply, “Fascismo is not merely a party or a movement wholly consumed in the field of politics. It was not born in Italy of a group of people who had elaborated, fixed and made popular a series of solutions of predetermined problems in the life and administration of the Italian State. Fascismo is a spiritual movement. It took form spontaneously among our people, and at a certain point issued in an unforeseen, impulsive and very great manifestation.

“To place before oneself the problem of the elements contributing to determine this spiritual movement is to place before oneself the most profound and interesting of the historical problems of modern Italy, and perhaps of the contemporary world. Italian life has presented for centuries the curious phenomenon of a disequilibrium between the height, the fineness and the energy of our civilization and the inadequacy of our education in citizenship.

“This problem, which the purest and greatest spirit of modern Italy, Dante Alighieri, perceived at the moment when the Middle Ages closed, was left by the Risorgimento, not perhaps untouched, but far from a solution. For centuries it has tormented the best consciences of Italy. It has been the agony of the noblest Italian thinkers. It was the very last thought of the dying Cavour. And, unity having been accomplished, it remained for Massimo d’Azeglio to define the problem in a phrase that has become very popular among us: ‘Italy is made; now we must make Italians.’

Education in Citizenship.

“Fascismo is the greatest experiment in our history in making Italians. What do I mean by ‘making Italians’? I mean creating in Italy an education in citizenship. I mean creating something to destroy this disequilibrium between Italian civilization and Italian political life—this evil which has perturbed our history though all these generations.”

“When did the movement take tangible form?”

How the Movement Was Born.

“It was born materially in 1919, but its origins are further back. Many years before the war the youngest, freshest, and most energetic Italian spirits were trying impetuously to break the noose that seemed to be binding and suffocating our young State. They were many, but separated. Every one of them was following a dream. With not a few it was a dream of a Socialism that had nothing at all to do with the barbaric desire to destroy society, or with the miserable questions of thine and mine—a Socialism expressive above all of a desire for liberation and spiritual renewal.

“When the Great War broke out, many Italians perceived not only that the historical exigencies of Italy made necessary our participation in the war, but that the war had given an extraordinary and powerful impulse to the national integration of the Italian people. In every party, even among the extreme Socialists, developed an enthusiasm for war. These pro-war groups were compelled to vanquish the old political class in Italy—a class insensible to the true historical problem of modern Italy and to the vital value the war would have in Italian history.

“At the close of the struggle, with victory established, this caste of politicians, profiting by the popular reaction following the frightful bloodshed and suffering, arose once more to regain the upper hand and to take possession of the State. The State, during the years of the war, became identified with the 5,000,000 young Italians who had served in the army. These fresh and valiant spirits, of the stuff that crushed anti-interventionism, feared that their elimination from public affairs by the old caste would mean the destruction of the spiritual fruits of the war, to the deadly detriment of Italian life.

Saving the War’s Spiritual Fruits.

“For four years the battle was waged bitterly between the old and the new order. In 1922 the new order conquered, as the interventionists had conquered in 1915. Thus you see Fascismo is not only a movement of armed reaction against revolutionary disorder, but a phase in the history of the Italian people, which, having achieved the unity of its national territory, wished to achieve a higher form of spiritual power.”

“Fascismo, then, is both subjective and objective?”

“Yes; it is a thing of the soul, and a thing of practical politics. It is emotion, theory, and practice; it is sentiment, ideas, and acts; it is something felt, something thought, and something done. Fascismo is a spiritual inspiration, a body of doctrine, and a system of State policy. It is morally resolute and intellectually precise. Its ultimate springs must be sought in Italian history and Italian consciousness. As an abstraction, Fascismo is as old as man’s sense of the beauty of great ideals; as a concretion, it is a thing expressing itself in the lives of Italian youth—a thing of energy and daring and a thing inflexibly committed to the principle of sacrifice.”

“What do you mean, exactly, by ‘sacrifice’?”

Character of Italy’s Sacrifice.

“I mean giving up a little to gain enormously more. Social welfare is, at one and the same time, the sum of individual sacrifices and the salvation of the individual. Life is safe, property is safe, personal liberty is safe, constitutionalism survives, only if individuals and classes offer up their selfish interest on the altar of social well-being. Six hundred thousand italian boys sacrificed their lives, and more than a million sacrificed bodily soundness, in order that Italian territory might be inviolate and Italian citizens free. Our armies fought for nothing else. Considered by itself, it seems and is a colossal sacrifice; but it was a little thing to give for Italy.

“When we ask labor to be just to capital, or ask capital to be just to labor; when we ask either to forego a ruthless use of its power in its own apparent immediate interests; when we ask both to be socially conscious and considerate, we are urging the principle of sacrifice. But it is that kind of sacrifice which serves both him who makes it and him for whom it is made. It is the only principle compatible with orderly and happy human life. When the fascisti destroyed bolshevism in Italy—bolshevism will hate us—they compelled the bolshevists to make a sacrifice. It was the sacrifice, however, of only the privilege the bolshevists were claiming to ruin us all, including themselves.

“It cannot be too strongly affirmed that Fascismo is not an enemy of true liberty. It is an enemy of false liberty. It is an enemy of the liberty of one person or of any group of persons to take away the liberty of another person, or of the nation as a whole. Our point of view is that when we assert the rights of society we are asserting the rights of every member and of every element belonging to that society. No individual rights or liberties are secure in a State whose national rights and liberties are not secure. Upon social justice rests all justice; social justice is essential to social equilibrium; and social equilibrium is another name for civilization.

Fascismo Opposed to False Liberty.

“Fascismo has committed acts of force; I neither deny nor condemn them. It had colossal difficulties to overcome. Civil war is one of the saddest phenomena of history, but it is not so sad as is the degradation of high national aims. Cromwell and Lincoln faced civil war. And who shall say that the blood shed at Gettysburg contributed less than did the blood shed in the War of Independence to the unity and greatness of the American nation? The Romans used toi say, ‘resecare advivum.’ Fascismo has been obliged to cut into the living flesh to restore the health of the Italian nation. It remembers its dead with passion and with reverence, and considers that they died, n ot for Fascismo, but for Italy.

“When we suppressed maniacal and disastrous strikes in Italy, particularly in the postal and other public utility services, there was an outcry in some quarters that we were trampling upon liberty. Upon what liberty? If we were trampling upon liberty, we were trampling upon no liberty except that of the labor agitators to overthrow the State, to enslave the people, to destroy industry and commerce, to threaten our peninsula with famine, and to wipe out the priceless heritage of generations of Italian valor, culminating at Vittorio Veneto. To that sort of liberty Fascismo is, verily, an enemy. And let it be remembered, in connection with all this, that when we struck at the monstrous pretensions of the walking delegates we did not offend honest labor; we lifted up honest labor’s heart from the Alps to the Ionian sea.

Why Italian Strikes Were Stopped.

“It is said that Fascismo is aristocratic. So it is. It believes in a civilization of high ethics and high culture. But in what respect is the spirit of a people, of the common people—I never flatter them—disassociated in sympathy from high ethics and high culture? Fascismo’s aristocracy is the aristocracy of the spirit, the aristocracy of order, of law, against the tumult of the instincts and of popular passions. Charges against me and against Fascismo of hostility to the workers are grotesque.

“Work! Who works more than I, with dozens of committees coming into this room every day and with appeals continually flung on my desk reflecting the urgent needs of the 8,000 communes of Italy—appeals, by the way, not for the ‘liberty’ our opponents declare our people have lost, but for aid in improving the living conditions and safeguarding the health of the masses. Work I regard as the highest virtue of man and as the most powerful manifestation of the health of a people. Italian workers were among the original fascisti, and today Fascismo has a strong majority of them, together with small bourgeoisie who are nearer to the working class than to what you call the middle class. But I prefer that Fascismo’s attitude toward labor should be deduced from its conception of the State, which belongs to no one unless to those who serve it; and the square-cornered, firm, solid, unruffled Italian worker serves his country no less than does any one else.”

Fascismo’s Attitude Toward Labor.

“Your creed of liberty embraces the economic field?”

“I am for the greatest economic liberty. The strong State does not in the least mean the State that wishes to do everything for itself and by itself. On the contrary, I am convinced that the stronger the State the greater is the effective liberty within which the economic life develops. Economic enterprise has as much need of liberty at home as of security abroad.”

“Fascismo has been destructive as well as constructive?”

Clearing the Ground.

“Oh, yes. It had a great fabric to erect—the fabric of a new Italy—and the building site was badly cumbered. It was cumbered by the debris of socialistic and demagogic wrongs and failures. Unwarranted privileges, corrupt politics, bolshevistic madness, uneconomic laws, called for removal. House rent ordinances were confiscating property, paralyzing building, and opening before tens of thousands of people the prospect of no roof to cover their heads. Radical laws and regulations shielded strikers. Confiscatory inheritance duties were discouraging thrift and small property and driving capital out of the country. All these deadweights, these post-war deposits, Fascismo swept from the building site of Italian national life—not always, perhaps, doing its work too tenderly—before commencing the erection of the new State.”

“What are some of the constructive achievements?”

“Italy’s budget balanced; war fetters on liberty and property broken; confiscatory land legislation scrapped; limited suffrage granted to women; religion reintroduced into the public schools; majority rule asserted over coalescing minorities; tax dodgers rounded up; paper circulation decreased; popular savings enormously increased; death duties abolished in the interest of the family group; outflow of Italian capital stopped and inflow of foreign capital started; the lira appreciated; labor given the eight-hour day; value of government securities enhanced; railroad traffic augmented; strikes abolished and unemployment reduced almost to the vanishing point.

“Italy is tranquil. Italy is working. The equal of her stability is scarcely to be found in Europe. Yet the Italian people are grievously taxed. Proportionately to their economic possibilities they are bearing a greater tax burden than any other people in the world. Our economic situation, and consequently our living conditions, are made worse by foreign immigration laws, which diminish our capacity for finding work for our people.”

Effects of Immigration Laws.

“What is your opinion of the immigration policy apparently foreshadowed in America?”

Sig. Mussolini was standing when I asked this question. He fixed his dark brown eyes upon mine, lifted his right hand, and said slowly and solemnly:

“I should think it very sad if America shut her gates against the people who produced her discoverer. Selective immigration—”

He stopped, sat and bent over a paper on his desk. One knew what he meant. He meant that, as Italians see it, proposals not based upon the principle of selection for fitness, but based upon the principle of race or nationality, seem to find favor in Washington. Thoughtful Italians regard themselves and Americans as ethnologically the two youngest nations of the world—both old stocks modified by innumerable foreign incursions, both melting pots, but both retaining un-impaired their racial primalities. Such Italians feel that neither Italo-Americans nor their brethren at home have done anything to forfeit American confidence in them as American citizens. Quite the contrary is the belief, and by way of proof one is reminded of the record of Italo-American soldiers in France and of Italian soldiers on the precipitous battlefields of the Alps.

“Sig. Mussolini, we should like very much to have your honest view of this immigration matter.”

Italy Too Small For Its People.

“It is a matter of deep interest and real importance to Italy. Our emotions are enlisted because of our historical and cultural relations with America, and because of our nationalistic identity. Vast numbers of Italians have gone to America, have become loyal American citizens, h ave fought for America and yet know and love Italy. These Italo-Americans, as we regard them, are an invaluable link between our civilizations, and a force for the integration of the world. Those of our citizens who go to America and return to us are an influence for Italo-American understanding, and whatever promotes such understanding is a beneficent thing for both countries.

“We are by no means ignorant of America’s difficulties in respect of immigration. Her right and duty to protect herself against undesirable aliens are clear. Italy, certainly, would not dream of asking her to accept immigrants likely to burden or embarrass her. We do not want to send our diseased or insane or dangerous people to the United States. It is of sound Italians we are thinking when we discuss immigration with your country. Our peninsula is too small, too rocky, too hilly, too mountainous, to support our 40,000,000 and their increase. Only a third of the little land we have is tillable and we possess few mineral resources.

“In a word, we are subject to great and growing emigratory pressure, and our people naturally turn toward Columbia. They are good workers, sensible folk, orderly by nature, healthy in mind and body, heirs of a long and triumphant historical struggle; they will be a source of strength, not of weakness, to any society they join. We feel it strange that any one’s ideas on immigration in America should appear to favor Germans, for example, over Italians. Only the other day Americans and Italians were fighting together to defeat Germanic tyranny. Besides, there is much greater social unrest in Germany and much more bolshevism than there is in Italy.

Turn Naturally Toward America.

“I do not wish to say anything harsh about the Germans, nor about any other people. Neither do I wish to be understood as suggesting that America should admit fewer Germans within her gates. I merely am intimating that I should find it hard to reconcile any American immigration proposals more favorable to Germans than to Italians with what I conceive to be a rightful appreciation of the virtues of my fellow-countrymen. Italy’s need for larger opportunities for her people was greatly increased by her material sacrifices in the general struggle for freedom. This struggle not only wrecked our economic life but put upon our taxpayers a debt burden amounting to more than six-tenths of our national wealth. I have confidence that full discussion, attended by mutual sympathy, will result in a happy settlement of the Italo-American immigration problem.”

“You would say a sense of dignity lies at the core of nationality?”

“Absolutely. Without a sense of dignity there is no nationality. Without a sense of dignity, indeed, there is no individuality.”

“What is your feeling about the war debts?”

Would Pay the War Debts.

“That they should be paid. Debts must be paid. If debts are not paid, there is an end of credit, and it is much better to give up money than to give up credit. Credit is the bedrock of civilization; your Alexander Hamilton was quite right about that. Italy will pay. She cannot pay immediately. She must have time to effect her national economic and financial consolidation. She must have time to work and save.”

“You are an idealist, Sig. Mussolini?”

“Yes; but an idealist who believes in the systematic and quick conversion of ideals into bettered conditions of human life.”

“How can statesmanship and journalism best serve each other and humanity?”

“By an aggressive and tireless assertion of mental and moral energy. By uttering only the truth. By fearing nothing but infidelity to the truth. By constant readiness to sacrifice themselves for their fellow men.”

“What would be your watchword for public men and writers?”

“Fascismo’s—‘Duty’.”

“All the time you base yourself upon the moralities?”

Character the Basis of All.

“There is nothing else for one to base oneself upon. This is the first tenet of Fascismo: Moral character is primary. From the first, fascisti have understood that there could be no political rebirth without a moral rebirth. Physical force, as I have said, sometimes is necessary—Abraham Lincoln, I repeat, found it necessary—to impose a superior principle; but order, above all, ought to be defended in the consciences of the citizens. Modern States can rest upon nothing but a general sense of duty to the fatherland. For this reason, the moral health of a people is bound up indissolubly with the political fortunes of the country. Fascismo’s immediate task, after breaking the resistance of the caste of politicians that opposed the rebirth of Italy, was to organize the new State; Fascismo’s ultimate and much greater task is to depend and solidify the country’s civic morality. Hence our parole de jour: ‘Duty.’”

“What do you say of classic culture?”

“That, for us, it is the basis of every true civic education. I do not wish to appear to express a principle of universal validity, but I believe that, if the classic culture is for us indispensable to our self-consciousness, it is for every people one of the most powerful instruments of civilization.”

“What is your favorite art?”

“Music. Because it is the most communicable. Next I like architecture, poetry, sculpture, painting.”

“What do you think of Maeterlinck’s dictum that ‘America has the cruelest commercialism the world ever has known’?”

Art Promise of America.

“This Belgian is a great poet. I doubt if any of his contemporaries equal him as a psychic analyst. But only a lack of imagination can blind one to the stupendous art promise of the United States. It is still mainly promise, to be sure, for Americans have been busy over other things. But one day it will dazzle the world. One day the Americans will lead civilization in the fine arts, dimming even the greatest glories of the past. It is all sleeping in their destiny. Intense and mighty in material things they undoubtedly are. Why? Because of youth, simplicity, boundless energy. These qualities in due course will turn from industry, commerce, engineering, mechanics, to artistic and literary efflorescence. Material America we know; artistic America we are yet to see.”

Sig. Mussolini is a great student of history. He examines all phases of human development from the standpoint of historical criticism. “Three cities made history,” he says. If you ask “What three?” he replies. “No matter. Cities always make history; villages endure it.” Rome, it goes without saying, is one of the three cities of Mussolini’s meaning. Hear him on the Eternal city: “Rome is today, as it ever has been, as it ever will be, the living heart of our race. It is the imperishable symbol of our vitality as a people. Who holds Rome, holds the nation.”

Thus he felt when, in the closing days of October, 1922, he marched at the head of 50,000 blue-shirted nationalists and black-shirted fascisti to take possession of the capital—a peaceful, disciplined, soldierly host, entering a city equally peaceful, and a city that smothered the marchers with flowers.

State Above All Classes.

“What is Fascismo’s attitude to the classes?”

“None of us has every thought of denying the historical function of the social classes. Class struggles are a reality of history. But, precisely because they are, they are not to be isolated from the other realities that form the tissue of history. Class struggles, for example, cannot be abstracted from the reality of the nation. Fascismo rejects the conception—as a matter of fact it has been outgrown in modern scientific thought—that history can be reduced to the struggle of the classes. This conception Fascismo rejects in favor of the more organic idea that the classes act within the State according to their several interests, while the State, representing the historical unity of the life of a people, is necessarily above these interests and these struggles. States have, with regard to the classes, a superior aim to attain, a higher task to serve. They dare not permit the struggle of the classes to assume supremacy in the national life.”

From the lips of Mussolini have burst many expressions, which, taken alone, would mislead the world concerning his temper and views. For example, he cried out to a great audience on one occasion: “It is blood that moves the wheels of history!” This crimson figure of speech would suggest that the present head of the Italian State believes in war for its own sake.

“Do you?” I asked him.

Peace Necessary to the World.

“Peace at any cost is as absurd as war at any cost. Neither Italy nor the United States, fortunately for both and for all, followed the peace-at-any-cost doctrine in the late war. One’s country imperiled means that one must fight. One cannot ignore one’s country any more than the tree can ignore its sustaining soil. But I reject with equal energy the doctrine that war can be the major interest of the world.

“And, if you want to know something else, namely, my opinion with reference to the world’s interests in peace at this moment, I reply, sincerely and in full consciousness, that peace is necessary to Europe today; and that I, for my part, have directed Italian foreign policy in this sense, solving two of its most essential problems—our relations with Jugoslavia and our relations with Russia. Italy is non-aggressive. Italy wants respect and friendship and is ready to reciprocate them. Italy is absolutely for clear treaty relations with other powers, and for the strictest honring of such treaties at whatever cost.”

Corfu is not a subject of which Mussolini is at all afraid. He is deeply persuaded that the bombardment averted a crisis of the greatest peril to the peace of the world. Responsibility for the massacre of the Italian members of the international commission for the delimitation of the Greco-Albanian frontier, he places squarely upon the shoulders off the Greek Government.

“I struck for international morality,” said he. “I struck for the tranquillity of the Balkan States. I struck against war. I struck for civilization.”

Probably no one is more skeptical about “beautiful chimeras,” or more scornful of the “ideologies,” than is Mussolini. Yet he is no cynic. He confesses himself “a deeply religious man,” esteems religion “a formidable force that must be respected and defended,” and declares against anti-clerical and atheistic democracy, “which represents and old and useless toy.” He supports the ideal of reduced burdens and perils for humanity through judicious and gradual disarmament, but strongly holds that pietistic idealism in this sphere must not be allowed to expose the treasures of centuries of human toil, valor, and suffering to some sudden new eruption of savagery or tyranny.

Favors the League Idea.

“What do you think of the League of Nations?”

“I think everything possible should be done to realize the ideal of the League—the ideal of universal peace based upon justice. At times in their long history Italians have been almost too wide in their thinking and in their sympathies. Still, if they were, I reckon it among their first titles to greatness. Remarkable thinkers—Renan among them—have feared universalism as leading to national decay. But our world is different from what it was before the war. All humanity has a wider vision, a keener sense of fellowship, a quickened conscience toward those who must bear the brunt of war, if war come.

“Peace with honor, peace with justice, peace that does no violence to any nation’s healthy and righteous self-respect—that, indeed, is something worth struggling for, despite any peril inhering in internationalism. Internationalism would not be safe for a single nation; it is safe for all nations moving in concert toward a rational scheme of political, economic and cultural intercourse. Nations need, and generally realize that they need, a lasting foundation of pacific co-existence. Such a foundation cannot be had without skillful and patient building, and such building is out of the question without established machinery for conducting international affairs in accordance with deliberately-developed world opinion. Governments and peoples must work together. They can work together only by understanding one another. They can understand one another only, so to speak, by foregathering in a common council chamber or forum.”

In the full sense, Mussolini is a veteran of the World War. He fought for Italy’s intervention. When Italy intervened, he went to the front as a private in the 11th Bersagliere regiment. In 1917, through the bursting of a shell, he received thirty-eight wounds. Promoted on the field, and invalided out of the army, he returned to Milan and resumed his editorship of the Popolo d’Italia—for this individualist son of a Socialist father who worked at the forge and of a mother who taught school is by profession a journalist—and in that capacity he continued to support Italian arms until the final victory.

The Lessons of the Trenches.

“Let us never forget the trenches,” said he. “Their bloody filth those of us who were in them cannot forget. But let us remember some other things. Let us keep our eyes upon the widened horizons men of many nations saw in the trenches. Incalculable sacrifices call for a new phase in the history of humanity. What millions suffered death and mutilation for—the supremacy of the freedom of the human soul over physical force—statesmen should not forget.

“Thinkers should prosecute to permanent success the work begun by fighting men. Fascismo is wholly for peace with honor and liberty. Fascismo is wholly for pledging the world, in the proper way, to this cause. I think America should swing into the orbit of this movement. Italy will not oppose the entry of Germany; Germany’s great power should be devoted to peace. Italy will not oppose the entry of Russia. Mankind in solid phalanx for the victory of reason and justice over violence should be triumphant. International unity for peace, in other words, ought to be an irresistible weapon. But mankind cannot conquer peace with a broken sword.”