Page
THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 15, 1939
March of a Dictator-3 by FRANK
Class hatred and revolution flamed in the eyes of Mussolini when he was a newspaper editor.
sion of schoolmaster.
•
the
OWEN
He starved, he fought, and he dreamed of a Red Italy!
and for ever. He had been appointed Secretary of the
Socialist Trentino Party, editor of its newspaper.
“Voice of Dynamite" Mussolini lived on thirty shillings a week, ate off a plate of beans. He the wrote short stories, practised
Three years "back home" followed. fortified his violin, amplified. and
The Romagna région seethed with re-,
Mussolini became the editor of vocabulary of abuse. When his com- volt. rades gave him a new bat and suit of the local Socialist rag. The Class clothes he crumpled them up in order. Struggle. not to look like a bourgeois.
The Socialist leader in Trentino was Cesare Battisti, a Red who clamoured In the for the Trentino to be returned to an Italian Socialist Republic.
When Mussolini came out of army he went back to his old profes- During 1906-7 he taught second grade scholars at Tolmezzo. The po- lice supplied the prefect of that place with a secret dossier of him together with the caution "needs watching."
Mussolini lay doggo, apart from one Great War Battisti sarved with the demon- Italians, was captured by the Aus- outburst at an anti-clerical
traitor. trians and hanged as stirred up stration, a lapse which the local Church Party to ask "Why "His noble and proud soul are always His aspirations as a do the ratepayers pay this fellow to in my memory.
patriot called Socialist teach subversive politics?" Next pear
Italian wrote Mussolini after he had become he moved to Oneglia, the Rivera. The police record faithfully a Fascist Dictator. followed him.
*
**
A
to
'me,"
"
re-
of souls of men and fire their minds to son; (ii) no Italian Socialist could
tolerate the religious practices thinking and ACTING.” .
church marriage, baptism, and com- munion, either for himself or in spect of his children. When Georges Sorel, the French philosopher and the apostle of syndicalism and of the final use by the workers, of the industrial weapon of the General Strike, passed over to the Nationalist camp Mussolini assailed him with exceptional vircu- In fact, Sorel merely foreshadowed lence as a posturing renegade. on the philosophic plane exactly: what Mussolini was to accomplish in practi- syndi- cal politics--the merging of
in the Cor- calism with nationalism porate State. Sorel himself wrote, in 'Our Mussolini is no ordinary Socialist. It is my belief that one day we shall see him at the head of mighty legion, saluting the Italian fag with his sword."
be
Italy's Flag-A Rag!
the Anti-nationalism was
B
kevnote
He became also its manager, chief reporter and copy reader. Indeed, he and became everybody except printer. He "lifting" from did not descend to worked with demoniac energy
"I write this pa- customary other newspapers. per," he proclaimed with arrogance, "and I do it with my pen,
1912: Hè drove up not with my. scissors." the circulation.
Constantly Mussolini formulated the doctrine that Force alone could the midwife at the rebirth of society on Socialist lines. Ecstatically he praised "the voice of dynamite."
He did not look for a mass move- Mussolini confesses that he knew very well that teaching did not suit
Nevertheless, at this earlier period ment Mussolini has consistently de- him. The itch for journalism was on Mussolini was certainly still an inter-spised democracy-but for a small, of Mussolini's Left Wing Socialism be- him. He contributed to the local So- nationalist: In his Autobiography he resolute disciplined body, which should for the Great War. Angrily he denied cialist weekly, lashing the Church un- asserts that he was deported from take the initiative to seize power and the very idea of "defending the Father- der the pen name of "True Heretic."
Trentino because he wrote an article drag the rest of the nation behind it.. land" What had the workers, the day. As for the In lay matters he divided his con- saying that the province belonged to In fact, he had Lenin's idea, so dar- labourers, the proletarian unemployed
"decadent tempt between the
and Italy.. He had been several times fined ingly executed in Russia in 1917 when of their own to defend! despicable ruling classes" and and gaoled for libels on the Church, a handful of Bolshevists in one night King, he was a citizen who was “use- "charlatans of parliamentary Socia Party, Actually, he was finally put snatched control of 150 million peo- less" by his very definition! Many people had dismissed their kings- lism."
was Mussolini himself for out by the Austrian Government be-ple.
not safeguard them- direct action the General. Strike, the
cause he was thciting to violence.
Next to his native vigour and au- when they did barricades.
earned selves better by sending them to the "Violence" is a word
dacity, Mussolini's frankness
He his guillotine!" flamed, "THE NA- which echoes like drum tattoo
him popu'arity Nobody doubted
devotion.
TIONAL FLAG IS A RAG TO BE Proudly, through all his writings.
sincerity or Mis After a year Mussolini returned to
and indeed truthfully, the Fascist lead- PLANted on a duNGHILL!" his native village. He found it in the
en can write: "In politics I have never who throes of an agrarian upheaval. The
gained a penny. I detest those
at day labourers were in revolt against
live like parasites sucking away
"I hate the share-cropping petty farmers
the edges of social struggle. Mussolini threw himself energetically
men who grow rich in politics. into the struggle. He was gaoled for
When the Executive Council of the threatening a blackleg. On release he
Socialist Federation in the Romagna salary from
The General Strike, in generat, was proposed to raise his wrote an article, "To the flames with the law!"
thirty shillings to two pounds Mus- not a great success. though this alle- gation assuredly cannot be sustained Mussolini solini flatly refused the increase.
the Meantime he induced
Italian in respect of Forli, where Of these days Mussolini explains:
sabotage, riots (Continued on Page 21) Mussolini was packing his bags for "I understood now that the Gordian Socialist Congress, to declare that (i), had charge! There,
could no Italian Socialist could be a Freema the Trentino, Italian province then in knot of Italian political life the hands of the Austrians. He had only be undone by an act of violence...
shake the done with schoolmastering at last The time had come to
а
Deported Again!
the
He returned to Forli. The Socialist world was at that moment in a state of uproar over the execution by the Spanish Government of Francesco Ferrer, the anarchist agitator, who had tried to launch an uprising in Barcelona. A large mob assembled to hear the denunciations. Mussolini was one of the crators of the evening. After the speeches the maddened mob smashed the windows of the Bishop's wooden fence Palace, set fire to 8 which surrounded à monument and tore, up the marble steps.
For Distinguished
Service
The outbreak of the Turco-Italian War of 1911-12 in Tripoli gave him his God-sent opportunity. He had long threatened "In the event of war we will stir up insurrection! War at the fron- tier must be the signal for the General Strike, for civil war at home!"
.
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stration.
through the streets of a country he was soon to
police take hold of Mussolini, after a socialist demon-