knows is that his city of Naples was ver' bad city -ver' dirty-ver' poor -ten, maybe twelve peepl' livin' one room, but no more now- Mussolini won't let them! Just like that! More and more we get the impression from these simple and very intelligent people that this man must combine in himself the most striking, not to say endearing, characteristics of our old friends Santa Claus and the Bogey Man. UT we really sense the deadly earnestness of it all when, landing at Naples, we receive our first- and, we hasten to add, our only - dirty look from a perfectly beautiful Black Shirt soldier, merely because we protest against having our head mashed by a trunk! The whole point lies in the fact that the trunk belongs to a returning Fascist dignitary, whose enthusiastic followers are expressing their joy by dragging off, in lieu of his chariot, his luggage. Unless you are capable of imagining what it would be like to receive a really dirty look from Adonis, in the snappiest of olive-greygreen uniforms, with the snappiest black shirt and collar and eyes and trench cap, you may not realize why then and there, we definitely abandoned the idea of treating Fascism with — God forbid!- a humorous slant! As a matter of fact, we don't intend to treat Fascism with any sort of slant; and we purpose to leave criticism of it, both constructive and the more widely-known brand, to better men than we are. But while only those who know the old Italy can realize what has happened in the past few years, every newcomer can feel energy, the earnestness, the singleness of purpose inspired in this people the of such diverse traits such an enchanting and aggravating mixture of indolence and industry, simplicity and guile, gaiety and passion - by Mussolini. But we must get on to Rome and the Chigi Palace. Everywhere along the way we recognize evidences of the old formulas used since the beginning of time for the imposition of new systems. Work for everyone-intense nationalism the large civil listsuppression of criticism — and, of course, strong-arm stuff. Of course strong-arm stuff! What do you expect? Has any people ever followed a leader who simply called "Here, kittykittykitty!" or its equivalent, to them? Hasn't every truly revolutionary period had its dictatorship, either of an individual or a class? Well, then stop interrupting us! And above all, we are keenly aware of such fixity of purpose, such strict obedience to the law- there is no bootlegging of the prohibited white bread in Italy that one either falls in step with it, or one breaks stone in Sicily. Which last is distinctly not this one's idea of Fun On A Hot Day. much longer, short, by the time we O MAKE a story, which is really reached Rome we were so thoroughly sold on the Idea which rules Italy now, and so thoroughly Mussolini-conscious that, although we had blithely armed ourselves with the proper credentials, the last thing on earth we desired was to meet him. Our inferiority complex, which had several times during the journey reared its ugly head, now boldly cast off its overcoat and false mustache and came right out in the open. We thrilled to the thought that we were actually in Rome during the reign of a Cæsar, but the idea of in- smothered in furniture-covers and truding on his overcrowded hours, look the way furniture-covers would even if it could be arranged, which was look in an anteroom by eight o'clock becoming increasingly difficult was of a hot August night. Here we spend too awful. Imagine a man who holds three or four years in as many minfive government portfolios - War, utes; some of us doing our bit to Aviation, Interior, Foreign Affairs, scrunch nervously the furniture-covand President of the Council, or, in ers a little more; some of us trying to other words, fills the offices of Sec- pretend it will be out in a minute and retaries Hoover, Kellogg, Davis, and won't hurt anyway; some of us just two others we haven't even got standing around looking silly. But all and whose official day begins at nine of us indulging in that horrible indoor and continues till all hours of the night anteroom sport of wondering what during the hottest summer Rome has we'll say and what made this known in thirty years, having to sub- particular game all the worse - what mit for even ten seconds to being we'll say it in. Unhappily, we had goofed at by us! Hideously aware as just learned that Mussolini would we were that we had never swum or prefer not to speak in English. This is flown or done anything of sufficient a crushing blow to an already wellimportance to merit even a presenta- nigh shattered nervous system, as our tion to Mayor Walker, can you won- only two Italian words don't hit. der that, when we learned Mussolini would see us, although it was his last TISERABLY, we search the place day for audiences, at eight o'clock that M where we used to keep our evening, we sunk to a state where we felt as if, to put it conservatively, we would have to stand on tiptoe to look a pansy in the eye? THIS frame of mind, if that's what I it was, we arrive at the Chigi Palace- which, by the way, you may be as interested as we were to know is pronounced exactly the way it doesn't look, or "Keegee". Passing the very business-like Black Shirt guards, who make us feel the way we always do in a bank, we go up a great stone staircase and through a beautiful room - we remember chiefly the tapestries and the huge centre-table with a stunning ship-model of an ancient Roman bireme to the anteroom where we are to wait. This, too, must have been a beautiful room, but the tapestried chairs and wall seats are just now brains for something and what must have been a terrific day . for something to say and how! UDDENLY we realize we're the only woman in our party of fourcurse those chivalrous meanies, we've got to go first! The man in the frock coat almost runs ahead of us. We snap into it - there's something in the air now that makes us-through another great anteroom, round a corner into a tiny one, and then through great carved doors into the huge Salon of Victory, so huge that the mammoth table in its furthest corner, the three men around it, seem miles and miles away and completely and absolutely forget that we don't know what to say! We don't care! We are vaguely aware of more marvellous tapestries; everything but the man coming towards us from behind that great table. And the only thing we really care about is that at last we know, as we have always longed to know, what it must have been like to meet Napoleon! For whether he means to be or not, Mussolini is, startlingly, like Napoleon. It's nonsense to say he has himself painted that way there simply wouldn't be any other way to paint him! He looks infinitely more like the pictures of Napoleon-not the dumpy, heavy ones, but the earlier Napoleon of the David sketch, or the Girodet portrait at Versailles-than he does like his own photographs. And it's not only in the challenge of his direct glance - a glance that one must, for self-preservation, meet as directly or the remarkable resemblance of feature and form and expression. There is about him that same tremendous native dignity a dignity with nothing of the strut about it; a dignity so absolutely a part of him that it will be his always, as it was Napoleon's, at the ebb as well as the flood tide of his power and popularity. HAT he says, naturally, on such a blazing chandeliers reflected in the trivial occasion, doesn't much bare, polished floor; a big easel with a half-finished portrait of Mussolini on it; a sculptor who works steadily at a bust of him; a great green-blue bronze globe of the heavens, which we will learn later is the only relic of Nero's sunken Golden Galley, not so long ago recovered from the Lake of Nemi. But the only thing we really know is that we are swirled across that room on the most tremendous current of power, our ears ringing with the blare of invisible trumpets and the beating of wings, and our eyes blind to matter. There is no reason why he should cast gems of statesmanship before us; we are not after one of those beautiful-women-and-tall-building interviews for the press. We are meeting the man! Consequently the important thing is the way he says it the way those eyes that often flash lightning can roll and sparkle with humor as he discusses the dispatch published that day in an American paper to the effect that tourists were fleeing Italy because of strikes and riots. We have been told that earlier in the day he was much irritated by this entirely unfounded report; but now he is in high good humor. moment "C'est stupide!" he says, rolling his eyes around the group to include us - a courtesy he never forgets for a and we find ourselves through sheer force of example doing all sorts of extremely Latin things with our shoulders, and making those supremely eloquent Latin noises which can coincidentally mean everything and nothing whatever, and of which we had hitherto believed ourselves quite incapable. He chuckles, and slyly taps the side of his nose with his forefinger (a gesture we never saw anybody use except Santa Claus - you remember "And laying a finger a-side of his nose" " in The Night Before Christmas?) as he says, "That dispatch, you see, is dated Geneva! The Swiss hotelkeepers are jealous because we have so many Americans at our Lido this summer! Italy is the one country where at this moment there are no strikes or riots." And he ticks off rapidly on his fingers the countries that have, including our own. E HAVE just sense enough left to don't care anyway -and say it in English. And you can see for yourselves that, whatever it was, it must have been pretty good because he raised our hand to his lips and kissed it! We remember his smile, and returning his Fascist salute; we remember glancing back from the door to receive another salute from him, once again behind his huge table; and we remember most of all the agony of that moment when the carved doors closed behind us and we realized that we bad on our gloves! S jo Now that you know exactly how we feel about Mussolini, go ahead and heckle us if you want to. But first we should like to say how difficult it is for us, whose system of government automatically checks individual control, to realize this man. At this distance we can only realize and perhaps resent the Dictator. But Mussolini is something quite different. Most significantly, the people themselves have called him Il Duce — which, taken from the Roman Dux means "Leader" - an instinctive recognition, not of caste, but of ability and confidence. We, who call our most W know that we bought us go. Too able and respected public men "Cal" and "Al", must remember that this man is known only by the dignity of an un-prefixed surname, or this magnificent title bestowed upon him by his fellows. And now let's take the first little hand we see raised, because we're sure it belongs to someone who is going to ask that goofiest of all the goofy questions that are always being asked concerning Mussolini — and we ought to know, because we wake up in the night shivering to remember how we used to ask them ourselves namely: "Will it last?" OR Once we know the right answer, Fwhich is, unquestionably, "Don't be silly!" What person or system ever has "lasted", whatever that vague term means? Certainly no one knows this better than Mussolini, all his life a student of men and governments. No man of action can know his most significant and enduring acts unless, as Napoleon was, he is for some reason made to cease action and become a philosopher. But if Mussolini is ever given this opportunity he will at the very least be able to answer this question as Napoleon answered it. "Roads... harbors... revived industries . . . water-supplies ... the restoration of public monuments... agriculture... " And perhaps much more! in the face of conditions which make you the world's worst insurance risk - yes, Mussolini is ambitious. Personally we prefer to use a term that is less associated than ambition with self-seeking. Aspiration, perhaps? And now for goofy question No. 3. "Isn't he a great actor?" If by the word actor you mean, as so many people do, a mountebank, No! But if by actor you mean a man who so thoroughly knows human nature that he can exact the desired response from it as an artist does from his chosen instrument yes yes YES! And when more of our public men are great actors in that sense we will have infinitely more interesting politics. G RANTING that, to quote Napoleon again, Washington could be Washington in America but to be Washington in France he must be Napoleon, it is possible that Mussolini could be Mussolini only in Italy at this particular moment. But whenever a man measures up to the moment for which he was created, it is bound to be impressive. When it takes place on such a grand scale as this it is, to us, a magnificent spectacle; and one to go down on one's knees and thank Heaven, fasting, for. But take off your gloves! Because you never know. |