A Conversation about Mussolini

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 17

A Conversation about Mussolini

A SPECIAL correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” renders a distinct service by recording a conversation between a man of Italy and himself on the situation in Italy. It is, says “Public Opinion,” a quiet, detached survey that should be studied on its merits. We give a quotation from the latter part of the talk as it appears in the “Manchester Guardian” British Journalist: “Could you say briefly what arc the virtues and the emotions engaged on either sidcr’ Mere Italian: “I will endeavour to do so. Let me begin with the Fascists. The best of the Fascists have a vision of ‘the old Italy,’ which they desire in all seriousness to get away from, the vision of a country anarchical, cynical and corrupt, perpetually rent by local and personal factions, ready at any time to suspend work for an argument, and to terminate the argument with a show of knives. -. . . The “plain citizen” then goes on to explain the Fascist aspiration “Let us begin by showing that we arc not slaves to an anarchial temperament; that law is law. When a notice says ‘Keep to the right,’ let anyone who prefers to keep to the -left, Italian or foreigner, cultivate this tase in a prison-yard. If somebody likes putting his feet up on the cushions of a State railway carriage let him contribute to the supply of cushions with a stiff fine. “If anyone wants to indulge in depravity let him learn that this is more easily or safely done in France or Germany—or England. When a foreigner drives about Italy and thinks to himself how funny it is of the Italians to talk Italian let him occasionally be reminded that five million Italians with bayonets in their hands would be no more amusing than five million Germans, and that it is no particular fun for foreign coal merchants to lose Italy’s custom through development of her hydro-electrical resources, nor for British shipping to be cut out by cheaper Italian freights. “And let the Italians, when they accept a five-lira piece proffered in lordly fashion by a foreigner for some service which would be paid for in his home at the rate of ten lira, recall as he murmurs his thanks that Italians can fight, fly, build, navigate, ride, drive, dig, and manufacture as well as and perhaps better than this other fellow. But it’s no use his recalling it unless it's true. And it won’t be true unless one or two conditions are realised. “The inhabitants of Palmero and Naples must learn, when asked what is their nationality, to answer something other than ‘Sicilian’ and ‘Neapolitan,’ the inhabitant of Siena not to reply ‘Tuscan,’ nor he of Turin ‘Piedmontese.’

In fact the word ‘ltalian’ has got to become part and parcel of the language, a usage which cannot easily be secured without some abuse to begin with. “The symbol of Italy, the grecn-white-red tricolour, cannot, for this purpose, be too frequently seen and saluted. ... “I have enumerated to you some of the aspirations which most of my countrymen, and I amongst them, associate with bascismo, and in particular with the name of Benito Mussolini. It is not easy for us to take aims against the inearnation of this complex of desires and emotions, especially so long as there is nothing very obvious to take arms for. British Journalist: “That is one side of the sundered mind. What now is the other side?” Mere Italian: “What was it of which Dante said he alone knows the beauty who loses his life for it? Freedom. There are Italians who in these last years have earned the. right to say they knew that beauty—Matteotti, for instance, and Amendola. There are a good many more who have been prepared to lose an important part of their lives, their incomes, for example, as judges, journalists, or professors, because they preferred to starve in silence rather than speak under constraint words which did not come from the heart. “Perhaps there are not as many as one might wish there were, but there are enough to form in the national mind an inclination which cannot be suppressed or ignored. In the highest ranks of these guardians of a great idea stand men like Croce and Ferrero, who have a vision of political life which they know in the depths of their hearts tp be the forward-looking vision. These men want the Italians to be Italians, but with an Italianity springing unconstrained from the heart and not only from the lips. They see a nation as a not wholly independent living unit, composed of dependent living units which we call provinces, towns, and communes, and going to form ;*. larger unit called Europe. . . “No unit is self-sufficing, but all, to have any value, must be living and at least in part autonomous. So, too, each individual in each unit, if his adherence to it is to have more than mechanical value, must give that adherence out of the freedom of his will.” British Journalist: “How will this end? Will it end?” Mere Italian: ‘lt will end some day, quicker, perhaps, than anyone expects, and what seems impossible to-day will seem possible to-morrow. The combatants may just grow tired of growling at each other, and take to yapping quite inoffensively. Clear your mind of the expectation of anything verydramatic or tragic or heroic.”