A SAVAGE ATTACK

Wairarapa Age, 8 February 1927, Page 2

A SAVAGE ATTACK

H. G. WELLS ON MUSSOLINI.

“A BORN ACTOR.’*

WITH A PERFECT POPULAT ACTOR’S FACE.

LONDON, February fi.

Mr H.*G. Wells, in a lengthy review ot Italy to-day, savagely attacks Signor Mussolini. The article, which appears in the “Sunday Express,”, describes the dictator’s arrival on the scene as that of a born actor and demagogue, guided by quick instinct and what will be a success rather than what is intelligible and reasonable.. “It is necessary,” says Mr. Wells, “only -to study a iew of the innumerable photographs now bespattering the world in order to realise that the face is a perfect popular actor’s face. It usually stares out of some pseudoheroic costume, with eyes devoid of thought and intelligence, with an expression of vacuous challenge: 'Well, what have you got against me? I deny St.’ It is the face of a man montrously vain, afraid at the first hiss, not physically afraid, not afraid of the assassin, but afraid> deadly afraid., of the truth that walks by day. “The murders and outrages against opponents which lie like a trail of blood on his record are the natural concomitants of leadership by a man too much afraid of self-realisation to endure the face of an antaognist. Every single name of men beaten, exiled and foully put to death is the name of a better man than the posturing figure which holds the stage in Italy. Mussolini has made nothing ©f Italy; he is the product of Italy; a morbid product.

“Italians ask, ' What should we have done without Mussolini?’ The answer is: ‘You would have got another.’ “I predict that many things may happen, either war or revolution, and in so far as that Italy is dangerous to all humanity. At present Italy is merely Mussolini. She may presently be his distracted relict.“—(A. and N.Z.).