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Foreign News: Weasel

3 minute read
TIME

Exact dynamic utterance is expected from the lips of Signor Mussolini. His capacity for being clear amounts to genius. He likes to be clear. Yet he can use weasel words.* The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli’s great handbook of statesmanly dissimulation, has been studied long and passionately by Benito Mussolini—on his own confession. Last week II Duce explained to U. S. newsgatherers why he has suppressed the liberty of Italian newsorgans. Weasel words fell from his lips, not sullenly, not haltingly, but with bland, urbane facility:

“The provision effecting revocation until further order of the licenses of certain newspapers must not be interpreted as a breach of the principle of liberty of the press or of criticism. It is well that everyone knows Fascism does not fear either verbal or actual antagonists. What Fascism refuses to permit is liberty of libel, which is also severely banned by American legislation. That is to say, we insist upon tranquillity arid security for the Italian people, whose productiverhythm must proceed without being disturbed. Do you believe we can stop our march at every step to bend to pick up miserable scraps of paper which are thrown at us?

“To resume their proper place after centuries of slavery, and to remedy the pitiful poverty of their resources, the Italian people have no time to lose. I tell you, and make it known to the whole world, that not even the last man among 42,000,000 Italians has a single minute to lose!

“Vulgar insults and apologies of crime must be repressed not only when they explode criminally in the streets or public squares but also in journalistic haunts during the preparatory phase of crime. Moreover, these calumnies have the flat crooked form of the boomerang, and, like that Australian weapon, finish sooner or later by returning of their own force to the feet of those who hurled them.”

*Born at Florence in 1469 at the apogee of Florentine glory under Lorenzo de Medici (“The Magnificent”), Niccolo Machiavelli remains the most celebrated commentator on the brilliant and ruthless statesmanship of the Borgia, Sforza and Medici. When the Prince was translated into English many an Anglo-Saxon was appalled that so many truths about the baseness of men and how to play upon it should ever have been set down in type. Machiavelli was suspected by simple souls of having been the devil himself, and the adjective “Machiavellian” was introduced into English with the connotation “diabolic.” Machiavellian maxims: 1) “It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong and to make use of it or not according to necessity.” 2) “Men are so simple . . . that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” 3) “It is unnecessary for a prince to have . . . good qualities . . . but it is very necessary [for him] to appear to have them. … A prince ought, above all things, always to endeavor in every action to gain for himself the reputation of being a great and remarkable man.” 4) “It is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly.”

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