THE END OF AN EPOCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 215, 6 August 1943, Page 4

THE END OF AN EPOCH

Back Vo Italy’s "Old Institutions’’= But What Are They ?

HEN King Victor Emmanuel resumed control of Italy last week, he called on his people to "find the way of recovery in respect for Italy’s old institutions." That perhaps means something that does not appear on the surface, but what most living Italians will see or remember if they look back is neither peace nor stability. The King himself found internal disorder and unrest in his kingdom from the time of his accession in 1900. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica he was a "liberal-minded and well educated prince," but until Mussolini gained favour with the people for doing what the -Government ought to have done, Victor Emmanuel’s governments failed to secure the smooth running of Italy’s industries. In the first six months of 1901 there were 600 strikes, involving a million men. The elections of 1900 increased the number of ‘radicals in the Chamber to nearly 100 out of 508, and unsatisfactory working-class conditions brought about strikes ‘which disabled © public utilities, transport, the docks, textile factories, and agriculture. By 1904 strikes were becoming riots. Enter an Agitator In 1914 there were riots at Ancona because an anti-militarist meeting had. been forbidden; the leader was an anarchist, Malatesta, and a prominent agitator was one Benito Mussolini. As the Great War got under way, the Catholics advocated neutrality out of dislike for "atheist" France, while the Socialists opposed all war except class war. But the speeches of the poet D’Annunzio and the articles of Mussolini (now editor of I] Popolo d'Italia) whipped up _ interventionist feeling in the hope that war would promote social changes, and in May, 1915

Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies. Peace, however, brought troubles within the State. The bread subsidy left a huge deficit in the funds, doles encouraged idleness, and then the transport workers became "insubordinate." There were also experiments with methods of government. The year 1919 saw the introduction of yet another

electoral change-the proportional system, whereby the citizen voted, not for the candidate, but for a list. The result was that constitutional groups were split up and were without programmes when the next elections were held, and the returns showed 156 Socialists, 101 Popolari, and 30 Combatants, but no Fascists. The next year, internal troubles reached their zenith-strikes and lockouts became general. Workers tried to run the industries, and there was a practical attempt to introduce Communism, which failed. The March on Rome Then the Fasci established groups throughout the State and masses of workers began to join the one movement which seemed likely, to solve their troubles. In 1921, Parliament was dissolved, but in the ensuing elections, liberals and democrats of various kinds got 275 seats and Poplari 107; the Socialists fell to about 130, and 35 Fascists got in. The following year saw Fascists and Communists in conflict, the Fascists volunteering to work where strikers immobilised industry. This, and the party’s declaration in favour of the monarchy, secured the support of many sections which were not specifically Fascist. Besides Mussolini’s hints at revolution were taken for figures of speech. Thus the movement swelled and Mussolini was entrusted with a party mandate to conduct a political or even a military action to bring Fascism to power. "What we have in view," he said then, "is the introduction into the Liberal state, which has fulfilled its functions ... of all the forces of the new generation which has emerged from the war and the victory." So in October, 1922, the Fascist Quadrumvirate was formed, and four columns prepared to ‘march on Rome. Victor Emmanuel piesa’ to sign a proclamation of martial law, seeing that it would mean civil war, and four days later the occupation of Rome was complete. Believe! Obey! Fight! The rest most of us can remember. Mussolini’s followers were given a martial slogan: "Believe! Obey! Fight!" Il Duce himself hurried from naval reviews to manoeuvres at sea, from military exercises to grandiose mock *campaigns on land. He learned to salute like Caesar, scowl like Napoleon, wear uniforms like the Kaiser. He raised a generation of Italians, including his own sons, to live dangerously, consider pacifism a bourgeois vice, and to take a sensuous eesthetic pleasure from exploding bombs and the music of gunfire. It sounds a little odd, in the face of a record like that, to call the people back to their "old institutions," but the King perhaps knows what they are. Meanwhile Time proposes an epitaph for Mussolini: "He picked up the cult of superman from Nietzsche, the creed of power from Machiavelli. Pareto taught him to despite democracy, Marx to scorn capitalism, and Sorel the myth of universal violence. He courted martyrdom, spat at priests, lived promiscuously with at least half-a-dozen women. Out of Marxism, jingoism, and obscurantism he compounded a new thing called. (Continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Fascism and imposed it on a nation weakened by war and frightened by social unrest. "His thugs spread terror, his henchmen grabbed Italy’s financial and economic power, and through the organised murder in 1924 of Giacomo Matteoti, the one dangerous leader of his opposition, boosted himself to a modern tyrant’s throne. "For the Italians’ romantic love of their homeland and their nostalgia for past glories, he espoused the cult of Romanism. He fancied himself a new Julius Caesar, was courted by the world’s big shots, loved to be called leonine and at the same time ‘father of his people.’ He helped Adolph Hitler to power, was mastered by his pupil. Trapped by his own illusions of grandeur, he led his people into war in an unholy alliance with Germany and Japan. By 1943 he had lost his Empire, and Allied bombs and bayonets threatened to chase him into the sea."