Mussolini & Napoleon

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 June 1927, Page 17

Mussolini & Napoleon

Points of Resemblance

Is Mussolini, Dictator of Italy, following the course travelled by Napoleon? This question is asked by Emil Ludwig, Napoleon’s latest biographer, and he states that the Italian, according to one of his former aides, constantly studies the “methods, laws and devices.” of the Corsican. The one is, no doubt, the model for the other, but the new will certainly guard against emulating the errors of old. The present Dictator is related to the former in two of his three basic elements—in energy and self-con-sciousness. Whether he is also related to him in imagination and vision I cannot say. The new man has, like the old, achieved great things in the pacification of his fermenting country, and —here there is again a parallel—he, like the Corsican, overshadows his political contemporaries in strength, audacity and swiftness of action. Napoleon was a soldier and became a politician. Mussolini has always been a politician and it is not likely that, at 50 years of age, he is ambitious to become a soldier. Napoleon was a fireeater who was to establish quiet, an abventurer who was to establish order. It was only then that he became great. He never struck the table with a mailed fist, and he never enacted the role of the mere conqueror. He became a sta.tesfnan, and he said: “There are only two powers in the world—the spirit and the sword—but

on the last analysis the sword is al ways banished by the spirit.” In this conviction lie created the new Constitution and three new codes of law, and all of these were his own personal work. His basic thoughts and principles still dominate, after 120 years, nearly all the civil codes of Europe. Musolini may be said to be still in that stage which corresponds to the Shears in w’hich Napoleon was a general, or at most, those of his first consulship. Europe is interested in his methods, his speech and his habits, and since he has so far waged no war, he is more popular abroad than Napoleon was in his time, despite his world-wide interest. Both Goethe, Germany’s greatest poet, and Byron, greatest, paid Napoleon early tribute. Napoleon did great work. He found bread for his people, he put the currency and taxation on a firm basis, he founded the Bank of France, he established a new administration of the Customs, he paid the debts and interest of the State and he destroyed speculation and gaoled. swindling; Army contractors. Mussolini’s march on Rome was the j victory by sheer force of a certain \ party, just as Napoleon’s had been Mussolini attempted a new social State and has already succeeded in i bringing about quiet, order and punc | tuality. in rendering strikes impossible and in finding work for all—big results from the point of view of the State. He has, in the opinion of the writer, achieved this by way of organisation which could be forced upon the Italians only with difficulty, and which would have been much easier to estab- j lish among the Germans. He has done j it by means of a great fund of personal energy, which balks at no means; by introducing younger blood into the ad- j ministrations, and by fusing together j the national forces—“quite in accordance with Napoleon’s technique.” That in doing this he gives the lie to his own past deserves no particular re | proach. What statesman woLid not j have his point of view in 20 1 years ?