Mussolini

Mussolini

THE LIFE OF BENITO MUSSOLINI--From the Italian of Margherita G. Sarfatti--Stokes ($5). Emphatically, the Signora Sarfatti's biography must be read--if only because she is content to efface herself so often while the great Fascist thunders in his own words from her pages--reveals himself vividly in impetuous staccato phrases as compelling as those with which Napoleon Premier was wont to inspire and almost to hypnotize his armies.

Benito Dixit. "The adjective 'sovereign' as applied to 'the people' is a tragic burlesque! . . . Governments exclusively based on the consent of the governed have never existed, do not exist, and will probably never exist. . . . Can you imagine a war proclaimed by referendum? . . . I do not tell you, O people, that you are as gods. As I love you truly, so I should say to you that you are dirty, you must arise and cleanse yourselves; you are ignorant, therefore set yourselves to gain instruction. . . . Horny hands are not enough to prove a man capable of guiding a state. . . . We must abandon the great phrase of 'Liberty.' There is another . . . 'Discipline'! . . . Liberty is not an end, it is a means. . . . If by 'Liberty' be meant the right to spit upon the symbols of Religion and of our Native Land and of the State, very well; I as Head of the Fascisti declare that this 'Liberty' shall never come into existence. . . . Fascism throws the noxious theories of so-called Liberalism upon the rubbish heap. . . . The truth, manifest henceforth to all whose eyes are not blinded by dogmatism, is that men are perhaps tired of liberty. They have had an orgy of it. Liberty today is no longer the chaste and severe virgin for whom fought and died the generations of the first half of the past century. For the youths of today, intrepid, eager, stern, who envisage the dawn of a new era, there are other words which exercise a more potent fascination: Order, Hierarchy, Discipline!"

Interpretess. Signora Sarfatti, wife of a prominent Italian lawyer and for many years a devoted assistant in his editorship of various newspapers, achieves her most telling passages in her interpretation of Mussolini's well known "about face" from Socialism to Fascism.

She will have it that the welfare of "Italia bella"* was and is the one object which he has always passionately striven to advance. Before the War he believed that he had found among the Socialists the men who were trying to rescue Italy from her "misgovernment." Then the War precipitated a crisis ip which the Socialists wanted international "peace at any price," whereas Mussolini eventually came to feel that the national glory of Italy demanded that she should fight--expand. He rushed off to fight. He obeyed an officer who commanded him to fire "just once more" a trench-mortar which he had warned the officer was unsafe. The mortar burst. Mussolini sustained 42 serious wounds, nearly died, lived to see Italy, although "victorious," slump into a period of post-War depression, discontent and unrest from which he felt that only the drastic "black shirts" could save her. To Signora Sarfatti, it was the Socialists who "deserted" Mussolini by betraying Italy--not the reverse.

Benito Himself. Il Duce's wife and children are not so much as mentioned, but that his youth was at one time scarcely celibate is delicately implied by referring to "the blond mane of a young Russian girl" who called him "Benitouchka," and by a remark about the time when "he lived in a brolanda kept by a baccana. These are not really Italian words but coinages of our Italian emigrants, meaning a lodging house of the humblest kind kept by an attractive young woman."

Aside from such occasional, rather "complimentary censure," Signora Sarfatti avowedly sets forth her "Chief" as "a Roman of the ancient mould. . . . He is even an exception to the rule that no one is a hero to his valet. . . . It is wonderful to see how his slightest orders are obeyed. . . ." [When he marches on foot] "so alone, so upright in his martial bearing," [it seems] "as if he were on horseback!"

Finally it appears that "a mysterious old woman, la vecchia Giovanna , . . taught Benito some of her magic lore. . . . 'My blood tells me,' 'I must listen to my blood,' are phrases sometimes used by this statesman-gladiator, so rational normally in coping with the urgent questions which confront him. 'It is no good!' he will add; 'I ' am like the animals. I feel when things are going to happen--some instinct warns me and I am obliged to follow it.'"

Of such "old wives' tales" therefore are only enough "to make a good story." Signora Sarfatti's style is often uneven, diffuse, erratic; but much of her material is of the first importance and obtainable in English in no other form.

*Incidentally the name given by the Premier to his pet lioness.