1939-02-14 — Page 2

THE CHINA MAIL, FEBE

1989

March of a Dictator-2 by FRANK

MUSSOLINI, CONSCRIPT:

a

I was

tramp

straw."

I

Mussolini

had

me

Dominicis come to preach his morality to there, with what gusto I would have

laid him out!"

road

OWEN

"Even now she can see me.”

Thus begins another Mussolini legend that he deserted. You may reject it. Of course if he had remained in Italy he would have been called up-a year later. He did, in fact, return

tarily and submit himself to service in

He walked along the lovely that goes by the shore. The sun fell and the bells sounded across the dar- kening water, "a sweet melody like a mother's lullaby over the cradle of her little boy." He wept. He won- 1904.

day dered if he could bear another of life.

up the plank to the scaffolding of the tramp. "Oh, if De house we were building. By night my arm muscles had swelled terribly. I ashes. ate a few potatoes baked in

clothes, on, Then, with all my threw myself on my bed, a pile of "Mussolini hated the boss. "I chafed with the terrible rage of the power- crack less. I should have liked to the skull of that upstart who was

while

the accusing me of laziness stones were making my bones ache; to shout in his face, 'Coward! Coward' the And then? Right is always. on side of the man who pays you!

I told the "Saturday night came." boss I intended to quit and that he

off. should pay

ill-dis-

me

With

Here is his memory of that evening of despair and rage.

was

volun-

end it

And why, indeed, should 'Mussolini NOT take advantage of State tuition in the art of handling a rifle? Mus- "The night was spondid. The moon

solini, aged 19, proposed to overthrow rose behind the very high mountains,

The tramp cluchos the railings of the Capitalist Monarchist - Italian amidst white with snow

a silvery

the hotel garden, peers through the State. He knew that it could only bushes, listens to the orchestra. An smile of stars. Lake Lugano- gave out

be done violently, and to this a polished

elderly couple pass him. They look magical reflections like

useful to know how to apply. sheet of metal on which beat unknown

English.

"I would like to beg from violence. a penny. But the words and enchanting lights. In the railway guised rage he threw into my hands them

Mussolini ate, for the second time, carriage all were sleeping. I alone Afteen shillings, saying, 'Here's your die, on my lips. The lady, stocky and the bread of charity. Promptly then was thinking.

I stood smooth-skinned, glitters with gold and he launched forth into the smoke laden What thoughts filled

wages, and they are stolen.'

What should I precious stones. I have not a farth "battle of ideas" that raged nightly in my brain that night which divided petrified with wrath. two parts of my life? I do not re- have done to him? Kill him? What ing. I have no bed, I have no bread. the Socialist club. Thereafter he took momber. Only in the morning when did I do to him? Nothing! Why? I make off cursing. IS IT NOT THE we crossed German Switzerland and Because I was hungry and had no RIGHT OF WHOEVER IS DOWN his part with the most formidable Bar

TO BITE HIM WHO CRUSHES a November rain struck us as coldly shoes. I took the train for Lausanne."

HIM!" as the farewell of a condemned man, did I recall with a heart pany green countrysides of Italy kissed by a sun of fire.”

-

the

An emigrant is speaking. A poet: himself yes, and a patroit, tearing away from the loved homeland: Benito Mussolini, aged 19, going into strange country. He had just under two shillings in his pocket.

He got out of the train at Yverdon,

and

Underneath The-

Arches

he

eaton for 26 hours."

He Was An Agitator

Bolshevists.

The police of Bern expelled him from the canton.

The vehement proclamation of his volcanic policies, his flashing eye and He lay down under an old barge, black temper, his quick, catlike brain but the mountain wind whipped him got him a job in short time. A month from it. He took shelter under the after he arrived in Switzerland Mus- arches of a bridge. Next day he star solini was on the street corner har- ed into a shop window at a filthy, anguing the comrades. Four months In Lausanne there some thousands ragged creature and did not recognise later he was secretary of the Italian of his own countrymen, and also the Mussolini. He begged from an Italian trade union of ย

masons and masons' Swiss in the street, rushed to a baker's shop helpers. Before he had been there a executive committee of the branch of the Italian Socialist Party; and bought a loaf. "I bit into it with year he was associated with an anar- But Mussolini did not know this at the ferocity of a Cerberus. I had not chist plan for a general strike. first. on Lake Neuchatel, stiff, cold

seeking Vainly he trudged about hungry. He looked for a job.

At this period Mussolini identified The dictator of Italy, like the dicta- work. By the end of the week

the only coin he

himself with every kind of attack on tor of Germany, began his climb to was hard up again

the Italian State and on the Church, power and fame as a bricklyer's mate, had in his pocket was a nickel medal-

His was the lot of many a poor lion of 'Karl Marx.

This and he, too, loathed it.

homeless and He was

famished. Italian emigrant. But-Mussolini, the Provided that it was virulent. "After three

of searching days

a cut phase we have seen in others who have I went to work as a labourer. Eleven His hunger gave him cramp in the schoolmaster, reckoned himself

Mussolini's first liter- hours a day, 22d. an hour. One hun- stomach, and he sat down on the steps above that. Like Hitler, the would-be subsequently blossomed both as patriots

He says artist, who also starved, and begged and believers, dred and twenty-one trips I. made of the William Tell statue.

and slept in the down-and-out shelters ary effusion was a pamphlet with that hand barrow full of bricks he looked like a tramp:

of Vienna, Mussolini passionately re- subject, God does not exist. It affirms, "In science religion is an absurdity; sented being ariven down into the in practice it is immorality; and in ranks of the submerged,

men it is a disease." For two years In Mussolini's own "Mein Kampf, Mussolini spoke, wrote, agitated, and his Autobiography, he, lke the Aus-. trian, enlarges on the theme of his organised for Socialism up and down early hardships, "Milestones of My France, Germany, Austria, Italy even. Switzerland, sometimes passing into

The

He was

The only Wristlet in the World

WITH THE

KEW "A"

OBSERVATORY

a

Maturity."

on the

"These days of toil and pain har- He found time to attend lectures at the

University. dened my spirit. They taught me In May 1904 he was first jailed and how to live. For me it would have then expelled from Geneva for staying been terrible if on my journey for there without a proper passport. The ward I had fallen nto the chains of a date had been altered, but. Mussolini

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Theso

denied that he had done it himself.

energies that I now enjoy were trained by obstacles and by bitterness of soul. "Some intemperance in my words made me undesirable to the Swiss They were forged by struggle!”:

Mussolini's vanity, however, makes authorities," confides Mussolini in his "They expelled mo him convey the idea that soon he be- Autobiography, came a mason and "felt the fierce, grim from two cantons. I was forced into pleasure of construction." Actually new places. Not until 1922 at the most of his working time, he was a Conference of Laysanne, when I was labourer, hodcarrier. Butcher's man, Premier of Italy, did see again some even errand boy. But he worked in of my old haunts, filled with memories gusts only, and once was arrested for colourful or drab."s vagrancy.

Mussolini, in fact, already had one trade. He was an agitator. that he made headway...

The Police Threw Him Out

Two women shaped Mussolini's young only manhood." The first was his mother. At Of her he writes, "My greatest love was for her. She was so quiet, so ten- der, and so strong." The second wo- man was Angelica Balabanov.....

Balabanov was, the daughter of a rich Russian merchant. She had a brilliant mind, a deep and generous humanity, and the soul of a rebel. Sho It was evening. The Italian So had given away her fortune and had cialist Club at Lausanne was filling up long boon identified with the interna- with its medley of socialists, anarchists, tional revolutionary movement which republicans, co-operatives. An oven in those days had its hearth in free ing of argument, and possibly brawl; Switzerland. She was the friend of was scheduled as usual.

Lenin, then living in obscure poverty Mussolini, according to George in Geneva. All her life Balabanow Soldo's account, was introduced by a hated oppression and she broke with comrade. with the words, "Here is a the Bolshevists when they made their · fellow countryman who has come to revolution a Terror. Sytzerland to escape military service."

Continued on Pago 21);