ITALY: Marie Antoinette & Sanctions

Marie Antoinette & Sanctions

Two days before all Italy was aroused last week by the screech of Fascist sirens and the clang of Catholic church bells rung by special permission of the Pope, quiet Professor Felice Guarneri had matters of vital moment to discuss in his snug Roman office at the Ministry of Finance. One day last June the Professor was abruptly summoned by the Dictator, given absolute control over Italy’s exports & imports. Since then no Italian has been able to get foreign exchange with which to buy anything abroad without Guarneri’s O. K. No other man alive knows so much about what Italy’s real powers to resist economic sanctions may be, and the Professor is no cloistered scholar. Captured and clapped into a German prison camp during the Great War, he went home to run the Chamber of Commerce in Italy’s great port of Genoa, was executive boss of the Dictatorship’s control office for Industry when II Duce summoned him last spring. The odd thing about what Guarneri had to say last week as to Italy’s position if she must face economic sanctions (see p. 23) was that his estimate tallied closely with those current in the world’s leading fiscal circles.

“Even last June the British were exerting pressure,” snapped the Professor. “They were demanding immediate payment from us for bunker coal and freezing up on credit.” Off the record Italians were said to have noted that, within 24 hours after II Duce refused the concessions regarding Ethiopia offered by Britain last summer (TIME, Aug. 26), British bankers flashed urgent messages to their U. S. affiliates and, when these curtailed credit to Italy, their action was given by British bankers subsequently as a reason why they could not extend credit to Italy. “I have been steadily engaged in adjusting the National economy to [such] existing conditions in the past few months,” continued Guarneri on the record. “These measures have now been taken. Imports we have reduced to the most crucial minimums, and all Italian resources public and private have been pooled to pay for imports which are indispensable. How much we have obtained or hope to obtain by [forced] repatriation of Italian funds abroad is naturally our secret, as important as any military secret!”

Since the vast sums spent on Italian public works during the 13 years of Fascism have nearly all been directed toward making Italy more self-sufficient, Guarneri noted that these will now reduce the effectiveness of sanctions. “I might paraphrase Marie Antoinette,” said he with a wry smile. “The Queen’s notion was that if the people could not have bread they might have to eat cake and Italians may have to wear natural silk, of which Italy produces plenty, instead of cotton, of which we produce little or none. Having electrified many of our railways, the coal saved is now going into the bunkers of troop ships. We are pinched today. But it is a choice of evils. We must overflow elsewhere or blow up in Europe. We can perhaps hold out longer than other peoples who have little to go on because, although the Almighty gave Italy little, He provided plenty of sunshine and an Italian spirit that can stand much privation.”

Not a member of the Fascist Party and burning with no fanatical flame, Professor Guarneri, who reports three times a week to II Duce, closed with the calm estimate that even assuming successful military operations, which every Italian hopes will be swift and glorious, the development of Ethiopia would in any case require “fifty years of sacrifice before reaping the commensurate reward.” Perfectly aware of this, Dictator Mussolini last week loosed the frenzy required to build empires, with sirens, church bells, battle planes thundering over every Italian city of importance and a nationwide hookup of loudspeakers in public squares which enabled 20,000,000 Italians to hear him in the open, women &children harkening on the fringes of massed male blackshirts or turning on the radio at home.

Shrieked loudspeakers warming up the populace, “The entire country is now marching toward the loudspeakers! Italians are waiting for the voice that will enflame their souls!”

For over three hours Fascists, jammed outside the Dictator’s Palace and down every street as far as the eye could see, kept shouting his name varied with such cries as “With Thee, Duce! always and everywhere!” and, “What do the English do? The English make us sick!”

Finally lean, pantherlike Fascist Party Secretary Achille Starace snarled into a microphone that the Dictator was ready, the great glass doors of his lofty balcony snapped open, and out stepped Honorary Corporal Benito Mussolini of the Fascist Militia in that uniform, alone except for two soldiers who flanked him with rifles at present arms. “Blackshirts of the Revolution!” roared II Duce, “men and women of all Italy! Italians all over the world-beyond the mountains, beyond the seas! Listen! . . .

“Forty-four million Italians are marching in unity behind our Army because the blackest injustice is being attempted against them-that of taking from them their place in the sun! … It is against this Italian people to which mankind owes its greatest conquests-this people of heroes, of poets, of saints, of navigators, of COLONIZERS-that the world dares to threaten ‘sanctions.’ . . . Italy! Italy! entirely and universally Fascist, rise to your feet! Let the cry of your determination rise to the skies and reach our soldiers in East Africa. It is the cry of Justice and of Victory!” Secreted in the Dictator’s frenzy-rousing speech was a pledge of peculiar interest to Geneva statesmen who, while feeling that the League must save its face by voting “sanctions,” desperately hope these will not provoke II Duce to war in Europe. The Dictator pledged, “To economic sanctions we shall answer with our discipline, our spirit of sacrifice, our obedience.” This of course was topped with the characteristic Mussolini smash, “to military sanctions we shall answer with Militarism! To acts of war we shall answer with WAR.”