ITALY: Bismarck v. Vegetables

What is Benito Mussolini today? He has been a Socialist, atheist, terrorist— but may he not have changed? Last week, in an amazing contribution to the Enddopedia Italiana, Signor Mussolini tried to define the “Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism.” succeeded in defining himself, exposing some of his innermost mental processes. Excerpts: Peace. “Above all,” wrote 77 Duce, “Fascism does not believe in the possibility or advisability of perpetual peace. It therefore rejects pacifism. . . . Only war leads to the maximum tension of all human energies and sets the seal of nobility on people who have the virtue to face it.” Christianity— “The Fascist loves his neighbor,” Il Duce continued, “but . . .

love of his neighbor does not prevent the necessary educational severity, much less differences and distances. Fascism rejects universal brotherhood.” Economics. “Fascism believes always in sanctity and heroism—that is, in acts in which no economic motive, distant or near, enters. . . . Fascism rejects the conception of economic ‘happiness.’ . . .

Fascism denies . . . the equation that well-being equals happiness. [Such an equation] would convert men into animals thinking of only one thing—of being fed and fattened; reduced, therefore, to a pure and simple vegetable life.” Democracy. “Democratic regimes can be defined as those in which, from time to time, the people are given the illusion of being sovereign. . . . Fascism rejects in democracy the absurd, conventional lie of political equality.” Bismarck. Seemingly II Duce finds the touchstone of Fascist policy in “Bismarck, who never knew where the house of the Religion of Liberty was and of what prophets it made use.” Stressing that Germans grew to be a world great people under Prince Bismarck’s policy of “Blood & Iron,” ambitious Benito Mussolini left his countrymen to draw their own conclusions.

During the summer German Biographer Emil Ludwig spent several weeks in daily contact with II Duce, doubtless filled him full of Bismarck, drew from his host some strikingly cynical remarks. Thus Herr Ludwig says that Signor Mussolini said to him: “I do not think that a Duce No. 2 will come—and, if he does, Italy will not endure him!”