ITALY: Big Black Words

Few insults are deadlier than to tell a male that he is not a man. Yet last week precisely this insult was hurled at Italian bachelors and childless husbands by Benito Mussolini, begettor of a daughter, Edda, and three sons: Bruno, Vittorio, Romano.

The insulting taunt was hurled from a signed article by Il Duce, which all Italian newspapers obediently printed on the same day. Bachelors may well have blushed at these big black words:

Whoever Is Not a Father Is Not a Man!*

“The alarm is sounding and all who can see further ahead than tomorrow (I believe nobody who cannot see at least fifty years ahead has a right to govern a nation) are worried. . . . The whole of urban Italy shows a birth deficit. Not only is there not equilibrium, but deaths exceed the births. We have reached a tragic phase of the phenomenon. The cradles of our cities are empty and the cemeteries growing. . . .

“The root of the evil is urbanism or metropolitanism. The metropolis grows by attracting to itself the population of the country, which, as soon as it becomes urbanized, becomes barren. . . . The progressive sterility of city dwellers is in direct ratio to the rapidly monstrous growth of the city. Berlin, which in one century passed from 100,000 to more than 4,000,000 inhabitants, is today the most sterile city in the world. The bigger a city becomes the more barren it becomes. . . .

“A catastrophe ensues. . . . The city dies. The nation without the vital lymph of youth and new generations, cannot resist and, being composed of cowardly old people, must necessarily fall a prey to younger peoples knocking at its deserted frontiers.

“This already has happened in the past. It may happen again. Indeed, it will happen again, not between cities and the country, but in an infinitely greater order of magnitude. The whole white race may be submerged by the colored races, which multiply with a rhythm unknown to ours.

“Are the yellow and black races at our door, then?

“Yes, they are at our door, not only owing to their fecundity, but also because they are becoming race conscious and feel they have a future in the world.

“While, for instance, the whites in the United States have a pitiable birth rate, which would be even lower except for the injections of races which still are prolific like the Irish, Hebrews and Italians, the negroes are extremely prolific. Already they reach the imposing total of 14,000,000 souls, or one-eighth of the total population of the United States. There is a great quarter in New York called Harlem, populated exclusively by colored people. A grave riot in this quarter last July was with difficulty suppressed after a night of bloody conflicts between the police and solid masses of blacks.

“What does it mean for the history of Western nations that China has 400,000,000 inhabitants concentrated in a single State? Coming closer home, what does it mean for the future peace of Europe that Russia has an extremely high birth rate, so much so that despite wars, epidemics, Bolshevism, famine and mass executions its total population reaches almost 150,000,000 souls?”

By way of specific answer to all these rhetorical questions Signor Mussolini suggested with more vigor than delicacy that Italian husbands should prove themselves men several million times a year more often than at present. Concluded he: “In disciplined, enriched, cultivated Italy there is room for 10,000,000 more men. Sixty million Italians would make their weight felt in the history of the world.”

*Paraphrased from Hegel.