MUSSOLINI AS A LABOURER

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1926, Page 24

MUSSOLINI AS A LABOURER

HIS EARLY LIFE

In Italv the uppermost counotation of the word “Alason” is a member of an atheistical secret society, differing entirely, as everyone knows, from the respectable and respected body bearing the same name in Englaud. In Italy the society is, continually and essentially, "agin the Government.” And with Italian Freemasonry Mussolini has come to grips—and has prevailed. But there was a time when Mussolini was a mason—or more accurately mason’s labourer —in the simple litera* sense, a time when he worked with harrow and trowel for eleven hours, a day, at the pre-war wage of 30 Swiss centimes (about threepence) an hour; a time he has not forgotten when the decrees for certain industries provided for a day of nine hours, as he did recently. Moreover, now and then during that lean- period he found himself unable to pay for a lodging, and slept beneath the Grand Pont, the Great Bridge which connects two of the steep hills on which the picturesque city of Lausanne is built.

In those days of poverty 24 years ago he was a Socialist, a “suspect,” and on the black books of the Swiss police. Yet surely in the mass of socialistic theory stuffing his active young brain the seeds of Fascism were alreadv germinant. He was profoundly discontented with the rulers of his country, witlj. the schemes of selfseeking politicians, with the Parliamentary Government which, the more it changed (and it changed very often) was the more entirely the same thing. And then, as now, he had the Spartan temper, the will to work, the determination to know.

None of his professors or companions assuredly ever thought the worse of Mussolini because he had once “built a wall”; and equally, of course, no one ever paid any particular heed to the young mason. Only Dr. Paredo, Italian Professor in Lausanne University,, with the sympathy of a compatriot and the psychological discernment of a true teacher, marked the unusual quality of young Benito's mind; and when, a short time back, the old man passed away, the Duce did not forget to honour the funeral of this good friend. The contractors who employed this strong Italian-youth had naturally less opportunity and less faculty to appraise his quality; and the few inhabitants and many visitors who watched the progress of that massive terrace, nearly a quarter of a mile long, which banks the mountain side at C-aux, above Montreux, were interested in the work, but not in the masons. The contractor failed before the terrace and the huge hotel it supports were completed. To-day it is common knowledge that Mussolini once laboured there; and perchance some day, when he has passed beyond the reach of “envy and jealousy and hate and pain” historians will affix a tablet to the terrace wall at Caux stating that such and such portions of it were reared by the man who saved Italy.