PATH OF THE DUCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 13

PATH OF THE DUCE

ELDER STATESMAN NOW

HIS PRESTIGE UNDIMMED

INVOKING OF PAST

Nearer sixty than fifty years old, a grandfather, and as hairless as the original Caesar at the same age, Mussolini is still the first to give the example of the strenuous life, piloting his own 'plane, driving his own car, and seizing chance opportunities to march and even to run at the head of military detachments, and to be photographed so doing, says a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." After fifteen years of "gingering" a people quicker at jumping to conclusions than I at jumping to attention, he must put them through the "Fasso Romano" — goose step—a feat of drill-sergeantry at which the gaily tripping "squadristi" of the march on Rome would have gasped. The leader of youth has in one generation put his swarms of Ariels and Calibans in top-boots, and they are standing it. This grandfatherly but unwearying hustler draws to himself more, rather than less, of the heat and burden and of the power and the glory than ten years ago. At about that date he as--sumed dignities to differentiate him from previous "Presidents of the Council." The common appellation "II Presidente" was already being dropped for "Head of the Government"; a specially ornate chair was provided in Parliament, a Court uniform for state occasions, and particular penalties for offences against him, But he is now "Founder of the Empire" and "First Marshal of the Empire," unique in the former, and in the latter rank co-equal with the only other First Marshal, the "King Emperor." REMAIN MUCH AS THEY WERE. Meanwhile the other personages of Italy (apart from the awkwardly placed King-Emperor and his smiling son) have remained much where they were or have advanced less quickly than Himself. The pronoun in capitals is common form nowadays.) Marshal Badoglio is indeed a duke and Marshall Graziani a marquis, and both have been viceroys; De Bono and Balbo are marshals; Grandi and Galeazzo Ciano are counts; but already^ the first live were, and remain, lifted* as high as they can safely climb, while the last has been assumed to the same eminence. Achille Starace, as general secretary of the Fascist Party, is ready to appear, as well as to be, a plain lieutenant; no party official today stands, as Farinacci once did, for an individual firebrandish policy; no Minister appears do be defending the interests, as Federzoni once did, of staid and comfortable men against the firebrands. Mussolini would no more easily tolerate than Henry VIII a proclamation "Ego et Dux Meus," whoever were the "Ego." . Mussolinli has achieved, inside Italy, a progressive transcendence. Only as joint First Marshal with the King does he accept a titular partnership with another man, perhaps remembering that the Caesars as consuls, when the consular office was merely honorific, accepted it jointly with heirs of illustrious families. IDEAS OF ANCIENT ROME. Mussolini must certainly ponder such precedents, for today he sets the style of an increasing emphasis on -•the-monumental and written records :of Ancient Rome. In Rome itself monuments of antiquity like the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Theatre of Marcellus have at no small cost of money, convenience, beauty, and sentiment been shorn of the ■ houses and streets that had for centuries grown round ' and among them: at several points Mussolini has reckoned a fragment of antique building worth a mighty demolition. In the provinces, too, a great price is paid for .the relics of Ancient Rome. Thus the writer when in Lecce (Apulia) this year found -the'inhabitants watching with anxious scepticism while the central piazza, where the. living have for centuries congregated and argued and taken refreshment, was broken up to reveal the-'amphitheatre of long dead Lupii. ■.. (Saint Oronzo himself, who presides over the town from a tall column, is threatened with a notice to quit.) One of the leading Fascist ideologues of earlier days, the philosopher and senator Gentile, has felt moved to protest almost fiercely in a small pamphlet lately on sale against the obsession with Ancient Rome, in which many people who are quite unrebellious feel there lies an implied depreciation of specifically Italian patriotism. «*R6MAN* AND "ITALIAN." Without making this a matter of faith (witness Senator Gentile's pamphlet), Mussolini gives the lead towards 'secular Romanism. In the Via Nazion- . ale, where for many years tourists have visited the "Fascist.Exhibition," an exhibition of the Augustan. Roman Emvpire is now housed; and stirring quotations from-Cicero and Livy,. rendered in what Byron called "soft bastard ,; Latin," are on "the/ outer, wall for pas-. : sers-by to,read. Close students of Mussolini find that.he says "Roman" where a lew years ago he said "Italian." Marinetti, the futurist who a quarter-cen-tury -ago shrieked "Bomb the mus£vmis," is now a (uniformed) Academician in; a body required to exalt museum values almost above all else. Meanwhile at the very, centre of Ancient Rome (on the western bastion of the Capitol) the name of Benito Mussolini is now. inscribed in what is (under correction) by far the largest lettering to be found anywhere in that incomparable open-air Museum, of the ■■ Roman Forum, Trajan's Forum, Augustus's Forum, and other antiquarian .acres that have now been thrown together by the demolition of streets between Capitol and Colosseum. You cannot conceive of a proposal to subjoin to it any other names, even in suitably smaller lettering. Soon Rome i& to have a third column of size and pattern like those of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. AFTER THE ANSCHLUSS. In the world of current and contemporary affairs this Caesar has been able, in 1938, to bear frustration without . appearing humiliated. Allow that a few years ago Mussolini openly pro-, elaiined it his purpose to keep G.er- ' many^ out of Austria and that he failed ta win Abyssinia without losing Austria. Allow, further, that when he had lost in substance he hoped still, for Austro-German unity to be achieved in Circumstances of his own choosing, whereas on March 14 Hitler took him :by.surprise,, showing that, .he set no . great store upon Mussolini's benevolence.- Yet Mussolini, with a deft throwing of all blame upon "sanctions" for; destroying Italo-European collaboration, cleared himself. That majority, which is effectively "all Italy," saw the argument that what "the "sanctibnist' r Powers deplored could not be wholly to the disadvantage of Rome. Northern Italians of some position and responsibility have for sure continued to feel the uncomfortable presence of Germany without much alleviation from knowledge that France feels it also—if anything, more sorely. Trieste, not only the port but also, through relations between the Jewish firms of the twa cities, to-some extent the com-