Rothermere on Mussolini

Swift coursing news must be speeded onto paper by a lightning, decisive mind. Necessarily the titans of newspaperdom have been dictators--James Gordon Bennett, Joseph Pulitzer, Viscount Northcliffe. These men had no time, in business moments, for Democracy or its delays. They are dead, but their dynamic Shades must have approved, last week, when that trampler upon Democracy, Signor Benito Mussolini,* was impetuously championed in the London Daily Mail by its owner, Lord Rothermere, brother and successor to the late Lord Northcliffe.

No sooner had Il Duce entertained Harold Sidney Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere, in audience, at Rome last week, than His Lordship rushed to cable the Daily Mail, over his personal signature, and with an abrupt, excited opening paragraph, as follows:

" 'As you can see for yourself, the Fascist regime is unshakable.'

"These emphatic words, spoken to me by Signor Mussolini during my visit here, deserve the attention of the public.

"They are no idle boast. It is five and a half years this month since Mussolini seized personal responsibility for his country's fortunes by his dramatic 'march on Rome' in October 1922.

"To most northern minds that enterprise seemed at first no more than a desperate incident in Italy's impending collapse into Bolshevism.

"The Italian nation virtually was at civil war. Railways, postal and telegraphic services . . . were hopelessly disorganized. Industry had been paralyzed for several years by revolutionary strikes. The government had lost all effective authority. Parliament was a feeble confusion of conflicting cliques.

"This was a supreme crisis not only for Italy but for Europe. . . .

"Our escape from so great a danger we owe to Mussolini alone. . . .

"There can be no doubt as to the verdict of future generations on his achievement. He is the greatest figure of our age."

Although none could doubt the sincerity of bullnecked, forthright Lord Rothermere, persons of active memory recalled that while Signor Mussolini officially founded the Fascist movement in March 1919, this "founding" was essentially a renaming of Nationalist groups which had been assembled by others in the days when Benito Mussolini was an ardent Socialist if not a Red.

Lord Rothermere, secure in the knowledge that Il Duce is now politically a Black, wrote on, last week, in somewhat mystic vein:

"To that broad table of his, in the corner of a vast room in the historic Palazzo Chigi, which with its lofty painted roof and row of fixed seats like choir stalls has something of an air of sacristy, are brought for Mussolini's approval reports and projects from almost every branch of public life in the country.

"He sits there in a carved chair with nothing in front of him but a long list of his day's appointments, giving decisions on the manifold and complex questions that come before him with extraordinary powers of memory and judgment.

"Very seldom does Mussolini need to call for the file of any state business which he previously had studied. 'Without good memory it is impossible to govern,' is one of his sayings. . . .

"He sleeps eight hours a night. For ten years he has not taken a drop of alcohol. He does not smoke. He regards alcohol and tobacco as entirely unsuitable for people who have hard mental work to do."

Complacent, Lord Rothermere added: "His [Mussolini's] opinion [of alcohol and tobacco] confirms my own experience and practice, for, out of regard to the heavy responsibilities resting on me, I have been for some time past a teetotaler and a nonsmoker. ... I am proud of the fact that The Daily Mail was the first newspaper in England, and in the world outside of Italy, to give the public the right estimate of the soundness and durability of Mussolini's work."

*Il Duce has memorably declared (TIME, Jan. 31, 1927) "Fascismo has already stepped, and, if need be, will quietly turn around to step once more over the more or less putrid body of the Goddess ot Liberty."