Italy under Fascism
Pamphlet No. 42
Series 1926–27
February, 1927
ITALY UNDER FASCISM
Its Economic, Political and Moral Aspects
DISCUSSED BY
Professor Gaetano Salvemini
and
Professor Bruno Roselli
A STENOGRAPHIC REPORT OF THE
94th New York Luncheon Discussion
JANUARY 22, 1927
of the
Foreign Policy Association
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
Eighteen East Forty-First STREET
New York City
Speakers:
PROFESSOR GAETANO SALVEMINI
Former member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies; formerly Professor
of History, Universities of Messina, Pisa and Florence
PROFESSOR BRUNO ROSELLI
Professor of History at Vassar College; Former Attache, Italian Embassy
in Washington
MR. JAMES G. McDONALD, Chairman
| SPEAKERS' TABLE | |
| Mr. Chester Holmes Aldrich | Mr. E. C. Lindeman |
| Mrs. George L. Beer | Dr. Arthur Livingston |
| Mr. Gino Bigongiari | Mr. James G. McDonald |
| Dr. Albert C. Bonaschi | Sir George Paish |
| Prof. Mario Cosenza | Mr. Leland Rex Robinson |
| Count Thaon di Revel | Mr. James P. Roe. |
| Countess Irene di Robilant | Prof. Bruno Roselli |
| Miss Martha L. Draper | Prof. Gaetano Salvemini |
| Mrs. Jackson Fleming | Mr. George Seldes |
| Mr. H. V. Kaltenborn | Dr. B. M. Tipple |
| Mr. John Langdon-Davies | Mr. P. S. Zampeiri |
| Mr. J. A. N. de Sanchez | |
Italy Under Fascism
Mr. JAMES G. McDONALD, Chairman
THE subject of the meeting today is "Italy under Fascism." There are to be two speakers, Professor Salvemini and Professor Roselli. They are to speak in that order. Each is to speak for thirty minutes. Professor Salvemini, who is the first speaker, was a former Professor of History in the University of Florence, and was elected to Parliament in 1919. He is the author of many well-known books on medieval Italian history, on modern political science, and on the French Revolution. He was a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1919 to 1921, and in June, 1925, was arrested on the charge of being concerned in the publication of some anti-government papers and was released the following month.
For the last two years he has lived abroad, for the most part in England, until he came to this country three or four weeks ago. I am sure you all join with me in welcoming Professor Salvemini as a distinguished scholar and a distinguished publicist.
PROFESSOR GAETANO SALVEMINI
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is not true that Mussolini and the Fascisti saved Italy from Bolshevism or anarchy. During the two years, 1919 and 1920, which immediately followed the World War, we had in Italy many disturbances, many strikes, many riots. This so-called Bolshevism was nothing but an outbreak of restlessness which was an unavoidable result of the Great War. To this restlessness, the worst elements of the Italian ruling classes replied by an exhibition of cowardice out of all proportion with the actual danger.
Towards the end of 1920, the worst of the crisis was over. Then many who had been cowards in 1920 became apostles of terrorism in 1921.
As early as the summer of 1921, not even a shadow remained of the Bolshevist peril in Italy. Mussolini himself wrote on July 2, 1921, "To say that there still exists a Bolshevist peril in Italy to substitute fears for reality. Bolshevism has been vanquished."
The famous march on Rome took place sixteen months after those words had been written. The march on Rome could have been stopped easily enough if the General Staff of the Army had willed it. Not more than 8,000 Fascists took part in the march. They were poorly armed and as disorderly as carnival revelers; they were scattered up and down the country around Rome in small localities where they could not be adequately housed. The forces of the regular army concentrated in Rome might easily have dispersed these loosely organized groups one by one. The Fascists were in fact allowed to enter Rome unresisted. This was not revolution, as alleged by Fascist propaganda. It was a coup d'état staged as a spontaneous popular rising but in reality carried out by a clique of high military authorities and big war profiteers.
This coup d'etat was directed not against Bolshevism but against the Chamber of Deputies and against the King. From that moment, Italy no longer had free and representative institutions, but a dictatorship. From that moment, Italy no longer had a King but a prisoner of war with the title of King. Fascism is the Bolshevism of the Right just as Bolshevism is the Fascism of the Left.
The Fascist movement, not the badly organized, inefficient movement of 1919 and 1920, but the well organized and efficient movement of the following years, was not Mussolini's creation. The Fascist branches in the various towns were founded in accordance with orders from the military authorities, by retired officers and officers on leave. The big war profiteers subsidized them, and the police and the magistrates took no notice of disturbances started by the Fascisti and intervened only when it was a question of disarming, trying, and sentencing those who attempted to resist.
While the military authorities, the war profiteers, the police, and the magistrates pulled the strings behind the scenes, Mussolini stood in the limelight, arousing the enthusiasm of the younger men by daily articles in his paper, urging ever new offensive movements and boasting that he was the author of all that was taking place.
In Spain, in Greece and Hungary, the military cliques who nowadays control the governments have set up soldiers as their representatives. In Italy, in 1921–22, the military authorities acted more cunningly. None of them dared to set himself up openly as the responsible head of the coup d'état but they found elsewhere a figurehead for their coup d'état. This figurehead was Mussolini. Mussolini is the great propagandist of the combine of high military authorities, big land owners, and big industrialists who conduct affairs behind the scenes, while the Black Shirts form the shock troops of the combine, maintained at the expense of the taxpayer.
Officially, Mussolini is the head of the government, the Home Secretary, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of the three fighting services, and the Minister of Labor.
It is impossible for him to deal personally with all the questions which arise from day to day in all these seven offices. Therefore, the problems are studied and the action taken by high military and civil officials, and by representatives of those big industrialists and big land owners who form the real working center of the government.
Mussolini retains for himself those decorative and theatrical functions which keep his personal prestige alive and maintain the mystical enthusiasm of his followers at the required pitch. He receives distinguished foreigners, above all American bankers, grants interviews to foreign journalists, writes articles with his own hand which often appear without his signature. He prepares speeches for official ceremonies, always representing himself as the deus ex machina of all that has happened and has not happened, with that instinctive feeling for the psychological moment which he often displays in the highest degree. He knows his public as only a man who has been a journalist, first on the Left and then on the Right, may know it, and he plays on it with the skill of a demagogue of the first rank. The only ministry to which Mussolini devotes himself whole-heartedly with great success is one which has no official existence, the ministry of propaganda.
Italy has produced during these last few years two wonderful movie actors, Mussolini and Valentino. If you want to understand the enthusiasm of the Black Shirts—I say of the Black Shirts and not of the Italian people—for their chieftain, you must remember certain storms of fanaticism which were noticed among certain sections of the population of New York when Valentino died.
Fascist propaganda asserts that while free and democratic institutions have been abolished in Italy, economic life has been on a sounder basis during the years of the Fascist dictatorship. Italy, they maintain, was on the brink of bankruptcy when the Fascists came to deliver her from Bolshevism and anarchy, and Italy now has been restored to prosperity. These assertions are sheer legend.
In Italy, in January, 1920, namely, in the most dangerous period of disturbances, a national loan, a free national loan was floated which yielded 20,000,000,000 lire. In the spring of 1921, a single piece of legislation yielded an economy of 6,000,000,000 lire. 12,000,000,000 lire of war liabilities were paid off in 1921. Another 12,000,000,000 were paid in 1922, before Mussolini captured the Government.
In July, 1922, namely on the eve of the march on Rome, the Minister for Treasury in the last pre-Fascist Cabinet, Signor Peano declared in the Chamber, "Many English and American bankers offer us loans at good terms, but we do not wish to borrow foreign money. We must work out with our strength our own salvation."
Italy, according to Fascist propaganda, was expiring and on the brink of bankruptcy when the Italian Minister for Treasury made such statements. The great sin of that minister was that he was used to speaking quietly without rolling his eyes and without gnashing his teeth. His greatest sin was that he did not waste a great lot of money in publicity abroad.
When the Fascists came to power, they had to face war liabilities much less formidable than the preceding governments. The war liabilities fell from 12,000,000,000 lire in 1922 to 6,000,000,000 lire in 1923, and to 1,500,000,000 lire in 1926, and yet the Fascist Government had to borrow $100,000,000 in the United States in 1925. From July 1, 1925 to June 30, 1926, 32 banks had gone bankrupt. From September 1, 1926, the population has been put on war bread. Last November the Fascist Treasury was no longer in a position to pay the short-term bonds which had expired and obliged their owners to accept instead of money new permanent obligations. A compulsory, not a free national loan, is being floated during the present weeks. In such a way, the Fascist Government has restored Italy to prosperity and saved her from bankruptcy.
When I read Fascist figures, I always remember what an old friend of mine, a Professor of Statistics, was wont to say—"My boy, there are four degrees of lying. The first degree consists of the harmless lie which is very common among children who, out of the abundance of their youthful imagination, tell tales which never happened, without wishing to harm anyone. To the second degree belongs the lie told in order to escape the responsibility of some action without any desire to harm anyone else. Then comes calumny, the lie attacking a man in order to harm him unjustly. In the last degree of all we find statistics."
Fascist propaganda claims that Mussolini has restored order in Italy. What kind of order? A friend of mine, a member of Parliament, Signor Matteotti, was kidnapped in a motor car, under order of Mussolini, and killed. Another friend of mine, a member of Parliament, Signor Amendola, was twice savagely beaten by Fascists and died as a result of the second attack. Another friend of mine, a former member of Parliament, Signor Pilati was killed in his own bed at midnight by the side of his wife. Another friend of mine, a lawyer, Signor Consolo in the same night was killed in his own house in the presence of his wife and his two children. When I was tried in Florence in July, 1925, my two lawyers were severely injured and my friends savagely beaten. Many friends of mine are in prison. Many of their houses have been looted or wrecked. Many of them had to flee abroad to escape prison or assassination.
The Vice General Secretary of the Fascist Party wrote last September 28th, in the Roman paper Popolo Di Roma: "Those who have gone abroad must be hunted and tracked down. Every commune ought to be obliged to post a list of all those who have gone abroad, together with the addresses of their families. The danger of reprisals on their families will restrain them from further activities."
Last November, after the attempt on Mussolini's life made by a youth of sixteen (who it is good to remember was a dissident Fascist), the whole of Italy was given over to a terrific pogrom. For instance, in the city of Naples, the Fascists, sacked the house of Senator Benedetto Croce, the philosopher of world renown, of seven members of Parliament, and of six other citizens. In Bergamo, the Christian Democratic member of Parliament, Signor Cavazzeni, was dragged out of his house, beaten, and spat at along the streets and taken outside the city to a place where a gallows had been erected. The Fascists put a noose around his neck, lifted him on the stool, and kept him there for some time as if they were about to hang him. Before letting him go, they nearly beat him to death. Remember, that Naples and Bergamo are only two of the thousand cities and towns of Italy, and keep in mind that similar outrages took place almost everywhere.
Do you think that this is order? If so, I declare myself unable to refute this point. But as I am not a Fascist, I shall not crack your skull, or still worse, I shall not force you to swallow castor oil by the pint merely because I have, no answer to give you.
When the Fascist propagandists cannot deny the crimes committed by their comrades under the flag of their party, they admit that unfortunately there is something rotten even in the Fascist state. They deplore the most notorious crimes, but they instantly add, "What do you expect? Such acts of repression are unavoidable in a country like Italy which does not share the repugnance for bloodshed felt in some other countries. To keep in order a people so prone to violence and so anarchical, a certain kind of retaliation is indispensible, and a dictator is necessary, a dictator with an iron hand capable of imposing discipline on the people by means of terror."
We witness today a strange paradox. In order to exalt on a pedestal of false glory a single man, the Fascists fling disgrace and throw mud on the whole nation of their birth, spreading the belief that the Italian people need the Fascist bludgeon to grow wise, and that the nation is so incapable of self-government that it can be governed only by that bludgeon, and is so morally degraded that it enjoys being bowed under that bludgeon.
They claim that Mussolini is lifting the Italian nation to greatness and to glory, but they do not ask themselves: "May a nation be led by terrorism to greatness and to glory?" If tomorrow the dictator calls these people to the colors for a war, will he be able send them to death by means of castor oil? In a war against nations trained by the spontaneous training of liberty, could victory ever go to a country like Italy today, split up by the party in power into a minority of masters to whom everything, even assassination, is permitted, and a majority of slaves deprived of all rights and protected by no moral law? The experience of the World War showed that Czarist Russia, "Kaiseristic" Germany, and the Austria of Franz Josef—all autocratically ruled countries—collapsed, while the free and democratic countries, amongst which Italy then stood, emerged victorious from the terrible ordeal.
While the Fascist patriots introduce to you the Italian nation under such an unfavorable light, I beg of you to allow me, an anti-patriot who has been torn from the living flesh of his home country, to vindicate before you the honor of my race.
While liberalism and democracy ruled Italy, crimes were followed up and punished, whatever the political opinion of the guilty parties. During the sixty years of the old free régime, crimes steadily diminished, though not so rapidly as might be wished in a civilized country. But everybody in Italy felt ashamed of them. Everybody endeavored to wipe out the dishonor of these crimes. In the sixty years of free government in Italy, not a single deputy was assassinated, not once an amnesty was granted to assassins of any sort. The murderers were always murderers and not heroes. They were put in prison and did not become prime ministers.
In the war against Austria in 1866, six years after the old despotic governments had been wiped out, a small skirmish in which the Italians lost no more than eight hundred men was enough to create the impression that the Italian Army had suffered irreparable defeat. During the World War, after sixty years of weak liberal rule, the Italian people had half a million men killed in battle, and yet they stood their ground for three years and a half until the Austrian Empire had been dismembered.
Even during the two years of so-called Bolshevist tyranny, the Bolshevists did not once sack an office of any association belonging to industrialists, agrarians, or traders. They never burned a single newspaper press. They never looted a single house belonging to a political adversary. Such deeds were introduced into the Italian public life by the Fascists.
It is well also to note that while the Bolshevist outrages were nearly always the work of the excited populace, the deeds of the Fascists are too often planned and carried out in cold blood by members of the upper classes who claim to be the torch-bearers of civilization.
The Italian nation has its own faults. It has its own errors. It has its own sins. But it ever remains a nation which is not unworthy of its noble past, which will be capable of outliving—we know it—its present shame, and will find again its own path towards the future. [Applause.]
Mr. McDonald: The next speaker, and the only other of our announced speakers today, is Dr. Roselli.
Professor Roselli is Professor of Italian Language and Literature and Chairman of the Department of Italian at Vassar College. He was formerly Attaché of the Italian Embassy at Washington, and he served with distinction during the War and was awarded the decoration of the Crown of Italy as well as the Italian Literary Cross. We are grateful to Professor Roselli for having spoken for us in Boston and elsewhere, and we are delighted to welcome him here today. Professor Roselli!
PROFESSOR BRUNO ROSELLI
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: A few months ago, when it became very popular to hurl mud at the glorious figure of George Washington, when the father of his country was accused of all kinds of wickedness and crimes, of drunkenness, of swearing, of misbehavior, of all sorts of vices thoroughly out of keeping with the general ideal which the American public had formed of such a lofty patriot and of such a distinguished leader in her Revolution, Calvin Coolidge, President of these United States, on being told of the moral hopelessness of his celebrated predecessor, looked down across the marvelous vista which spreads in front of the White House, pointed to one of the most glorious of monuments ever erected by a grateful people, and quietly, as is his custom, said, "The monument still, stands."
I am inclined to think that history will take a similarly broad and sympathetic view of Mussolini in years to come. For in discussing the political and economic and social conditions prevailing in Italy at present, I must, in justice to all, remind the people of this audience which spreads beyond the fourteen hundred assembled here today, that Italy has peculiarities of her own, historical, climatic, racial peculiarities, which must be well taken into account before passing hasty judgment upon any régime existing in that country.
These peculiarities must not be misconstrued so as to mean that I am excusing any of the obvious mistakes, of the grotesque exaggerations, of the brutal crimes also which have been committed by members of the same political party to which the Premier of Italy belongs, and which have often angered and always hurt him immeasurably. I can freely state that, because I have the rare fortune of standing here as a non-Fascist, as a sympathetic critic who has systematically declined to belong to the Fascista organization; of standing here as a man who has so thoroughly, so honestly—if I may use this adverb—refrained from acting as the unofficial mouthpiece of any members of the party itself, that a distinguished gentleman who shares with me the honor of the speakers' table and who is the head of all Fascists in this country, has not seen me or heard from me since the day, seven months ago, when curiosity and courtesy combined to send me to his office for my first and last call upon him.
Therefore, do not, please, take any statements which I may hive to make with regard to Fascism as official utterances of the Fascista Party. I am merely a person, bilingual in expression and bi-national in mental reactions, who knows his native Italy fairly well, and is able to look upon that country from a standpoint at the same time distant and near, distant in that my constant return to the United States, the hosts of my American friends, my occupations here enable me to see from an angle of unusually clear visibility what is going on in the Peninsula; near because of my yearly visits, now repeated for one-fifth of a century, to the land of my birth.
Allow me to make use of that two-sidedness in explaining to you Nordics how the peculiar conditions of Italy affect the practical applications of a political ideal in which we all theoretically believe—liberty. To the average person in this audience that word recalls the days when you first learned to love and revere that ideal, which became also the marvelous foundation of your political power. Every high school boy or girl has written essays on it; or has indulged in oratorical flourishes proclaiming before the rest of the class his undying love for liberty, later on trying to the best of his knowledge and ability to square up his views with the use of the ballot, practical application of liberty as organized by and for the American people, who learned to revere that ideal especially through an Anglo-Saxon tradition. But we of Italy do not go back to Runnymede, do not go back to the year 1215, to King John or Magna Carta. We have, alas, as the very mainspring supporting the foundation of our constitution, the hall of the Jeu de Paume in Versailles in which on the 20th of June, 1789 a group of Frenchmen, very much displeased with the then existing régime, announced those declarations of the Rights of Man which have gone down into history as a marvelous assembling of rules more beautiful than practical.
The Latin peoples of the earth established upon that foundation a very great number of republics both in Europe and in the various countries to the south of us here, many of which cannot square up with the ideal that should be the ideal of real liberty.
You who have to struggle at election time with the problem of two and a quarter political parties do not know the joy of having twelve constantly conflicting political parties, the representatives of which are elected by not more than 40 per cent of the voting masses—and that list of possible voters in itself includes only a very small percentage of the entire population of Italy. So that beginning by eliminating the large masses denied the right to vote, (which have hitherto included, among other things, 50 per cent of the population of Italy, as it consisted of women who were not granted the suffrage), by further eliminating that 60 per cent of possible voters who never were willing to avail themselves of the privilege that was given them, we arrive at an infinitesimal percentage of the population which subdivided itself into twelve political parties, finally turning the entire country over to one of those twelve groups. Do you wonder that when we are discussing Italian liberty I beg you not to visualize that buxom lassie who presides over the destinies of New York, and casts a deep shadow upon Ellis Island and some light upon the rest of New York Bay? We have disheartening memories of liberty—I mean of the sad prostitution of the ideal of liberty, of the miserable way in which liberty was first proclaimed by demagogues and then mismanaged and mishandled. It is only de facto liberty, not the de jure liberty of theorists, that I am willing to compare with the present virtual dictatorship; the firm illiberality of today with the political chaos of those sad days, wicked post-bellum days, which I deprecate as much as the speaker who has preceded me. I am so glad that I can for one thing agree with him in saying that what was curbed in Italy, what was knocked out in Italy by the coming of Fascism was not Bolshevism. Granting that the average person does not know what Bolshevism really is and therefore can ascribe to Bolshevism all sorts of irregularities and all sorts of wickedness, I prefer to be precise and to free both Bolshevism and Socialism from the accusation of having reduced Italy to the plight in which Mussolini found her, to the chaotic state from which he rescued her. It was anarchy, not only weakness of government but total lack of it in fact—sheer anarchy indulged in by a frenzied majority and withstood by a spineless minority, that took hold of Italy in those sad post-bellum years, 1919, 1920 and to a certain extent 1921 as well. Mark my word-anarchy is not synonymous with violence, although it often produces it. Anarchy existed before Mussolini's march on Rome—not after. Violence existed before that event, and it continued long after—too long after.
There is no use mincing words, or fearing that a certain group of over-sensitive Italians may object or call me to task tomorrow because I say that the Italian people have a certain leaning towards violence which does exist in the history of Italy and which no patriotism of mine would ever enable me to rule out of the history of my country. I am not referring to highway brigandage, now long past, nor to street shooting leading to financial loot, a sport in which America is an easy winner. It is a kind of inability to repress your own feelings, a lack of self-control, a willingness to defend your ideas until death and to impose them forcibly upon others, which unfortunately existed in Italy in the past and exists now; which can be explained historically, which can be explained racially, which can be explained climatically. But explain it as you will, it exists in Italy, and I shall not certainly take a large part of the thirty minutes placed at m disposal by the courtesy of the chairman to add to the descriptions of Fascista violence a report of the equally lamentable violence which preceded the days of the Fascist régime—with nothing to show on the credit side!
It is as easy to keep on with retaliation between nations as between individuals. The Matteotti murder on the one hand, the Empoli massacres on the other; and so on ad infinitum. I move that we leave to the tabloids that double list of murders and turn to governmental conditions before and under Mussolini. Mussolini found a thorough distintegration of the governmental forces, which had put Italy in a condition of inability to rule herself, let alone to carry on honest, fair, responsible intercourse with other nations of the earth. That kind of disintegration is proven by the fact that the Fascist government has found two million more tax-payers. When you find two million more tax-payers out of a population of forty-one or forty-two million people, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. It means that there are people who by political pull or otherwise are able to get away for a long time from fulfilling that national obligation of every individual. Or, if you wish further proof of governmental disintegration, study the workings of the sympathy strikes which preceded Fascismo. In my own quiet, law-abiding native city of Florence, for an entire summer, we did not know from one moment to the next what would be done. Out of sheer sympathy with somebody who somewhere in Sardinia or Bascilicata had been treated badly or complained that he was treated badly by the government, we were left today one hour without water supply, the next day one hour without electricity, and the next day one hour without gas; the next day the strike hit the white wings, and the next the trolley lines that tied the various suburbs of Florence to the central part of the city. And the disintegration was thorough, the government helpless; no possibility of ever getting the police to interfere.
The so-called Royal Guard that had been established by the government preceding the Fascist government was given officers' uniforms and very good pay, but standing orders not to intervene. The Italian flag could not be shown from public buildings for months at a time. It had to be flown from the central courtyard of public buildings on festive days.
You saw it here on the Italian Consulate because it was protected by the New York police. You saw it flying from the Italian Embassy in Washington because it was America that was protecting it, but in Italy it could not be seen. My two brothers and myself have suffered the indignity of being told, as officers of Italy—and I am no militarist; I do not boast by any means of anything that was done by us in wartime, as merely a result of obeying orders and nothing else—not to go out in the evening except in civilian clothes because our government could not protect us if we went out wearing our uniforms. Soldiers again and again were attacked in the streets for being guilty of answering an unescapable call to compulsory military service. But the rabble had ceased to be logical. Down with the Signori! The factories hoisted red flags; true, nobody could run them; but they were free. There was disintegration from beginning to end.
The entire Fiume adventure, take it as you will, showed eight thousand soldiers who were not present in their barracks when their names were called, and whose absence was not noticed by the people who were calling the roll every night: I do not call that Bolshevism; I call that absolute anarchy. No one had any power to rule anybody else.
Of course, there were large expenditures of last-minute war funds to Tom, Dick, and Harry, who knew that if they were powerful enough, if they had clever enough lawyers, they could threaten the government and obtain from that government a large percentage if not the absolute totality of the amount they were claiming for services rendered during the war. The government, on its knees, unable to carry on even its regular, ordinary business, yielded. Many printing presses were working overtime.
If we had been dealt with differently by the liberal governments that preceded the Mussolini government, I frankly say—I do not care whether my Fascist friends like it—there would not have been the support of so many neutrals, eager only for order, to the Fascisti of the earlier days, with all of their violence, which I for one do not justify, and am so happy to see on the wane.
It is very easy, of course, to say that Mussolini, who led them and leads them is a mere figurehead, a sort of marionette, or a puppet whose strings and springs are moved by somebody else. It is harder to prove it. Look at the speed with which Italy has forged ahead during the past four or five years, whether you approve or disapprove of her speed and push, and then congratulate Italy on the quantity, the skill, and the retiring disposition of her able men who are pulling those strings behind the marionette. I do not see anybody there, except a tremendously able man, who to the best of his knowledge and ability, gives practically sixteen hours of his time each day to what he believes, rightly or wrongly, to be the good of his country.
I have never seen in the entire history of Italy—and I, a non-Fascist say it—a statesman who aimed as steadily, as unselfishly or as passionately toward what he believes to be the good of his country as Benito Mussolini.
We hear from all sides the query: Why does not Mussolini retire, withdraw to private life, now that the job is done, now that the Italian people are normal again? It is so very easy to talk normalcy in this quiet and rich United States where you own twenty-two million out of the twenty-five million automobiles existing in the world, where no woman is too poor to wear silk stockings, where everybody travels Pullman unless he wants to admit he is a poor immigrant. Nowadays, you cannot find a Pullman seat unless you engage it a couple of days ahead! It is very easy to talk normalcy when you are situated economically and geographically as you are.
But only three years ago, a poor contadino on the mountains of the Pistoia region replied to my question as to whether he preferred porridge made of chestnut flour or of cornmeal, "Signore, I would rather have chestnut flour porridge because it sticks to my stomach three or four hours longer."
The Italian people cannot be talked about as being again normal—ready for "normal government." How would you feel with regard to normalcy if at this moment, having put $1,000 into your bank sometime ago, you were to draw a check for $200, go to the cashier and say, "Kindly give me twenty $10 bills" and have the cashier retort, "Sorry sir, but you are overdrawing your account. You only have about $185 in this bank." Nor can you accuse anybody of taking that money away. Nobody has stolen it. It has gone, disintegrated. A lira is worth less than one-fifth of what it was before. People who planned to support themselves, their entire lives on earlier earnings or inheritances, cutting coupons, all sorts of pensionati who thought that they were sure that in their later days they could quietly live and think of the time when they served their government, their public utilities, their firms, now find themselves practically on the verge of starvation. You cannot speak of normalcy when a country is situated as Italy is at present. Under such conditions it is obvious that the granting of stability, of class cooperation, of a prosperity comparatively high even if far below American standards, can be paid for by the temporary sacrifice of an outworn ideal. But there is more. No matter which attitude we may have with regard to the theory of Fascism, or its existence beyond the Alps, (since I am discussing Fascism in Italy and not the doings of the Bavarian Fascisti or the British Fascisti or the Mexican Fascisti, for whom I hold no brief and for whom no real Italian Fascista should hold any brief,) the sheer evidence of facts, gathered not only by a few tourists but by statesmen, bankers and scholars proves in a thousand ways, that Italy may have paid dearly perhaps in freedom of expression, in democratic institutions, but has by that heavy price obtained a spiritual resurrection which goes beyond the actual matter of dollars and cents, of lira and centesimi, and amounts to nothing short of the rebirth of a nation.
It is amazing to see, as you travel from Ventimiglia to Fiume, from Chiasso down to Syracuse, a new spirit animating the Italians. They are proud and they are gay. The people again are talking to each other, the signore with the contadine, as they never did before. And the middle class, which is said to be on top in Italy now, is unprecedentedly idealistic. Class fights used to be continuous, especially at election time. Now the classes no longer fight—perhaps because there are no elections!
But, let us see. Few of us are quite happy at election time and say, "Now I have found the ideal candidate, the machine I was working for all my life. I had always wished it might come. Now I am happy again; I can see that nothing is wrong in this organization." With downcast eyes, a great many of us go toward the fulfillment of our political duties, wondering whether after all the vote that is being cast for certain unknown individuals sponsored by machines who have to reward loyalty more than ability, popularity more than honesty, is a vote ultimately for the good of the country and of the world.
Let's be fair about it—the average individual has lost that basic confidence in his government that makes one say, when the tax bill is received, "I am so happy that I have an oportunity of showing to the government how much I love it." The average human being no longer has that sense of utter devotion, that freshness of attitude toward his government which his forefathers had. But I have not time to discuss the modern plight of democracies.
I am holding no brief for the denial of elementary liberties which Fascism has brought about. I am discussing the Italy which emerged as she did in 1922 from a state of absolute anarchy which had followed the demoralizing influence of the war. And you may accuse the war itself of this demoralizing influence; I grant that. Hardly had Austria collapsed when vast masses of Italians flocked home from Austrian prisons, hardly anybody knowing what to do with them, how to receive them. How many were bona fide prisoners, how many "strikers" of Caporetto? When the Caporetto disaster happened, those people wanted to get away; now, on the contrary, they were being welcomed back and no questions asked. I grant that. But a real government would have stepped in. The liberals, on the contrary, preferred not to see. Result, the Fascisti had, with their vehement methods, to bring order out of chaos. Some of you find fault with that vehemence. Please be fair: take your share of the blame. Those early Fascisti were all war veterans—shock troops of that Italian army which America allowed to go on fighting unaided on the Alps. You insisted on sending all your boys to France. But these boys had passed through three and a half years of terrific war against a military power greater than Italy, on the Alps on which no real war was ever fought before. It meant no poison gas, no tanks, no large caliber guns, no Big Berthas; it meant in practically all cases the pocket knife, the hand grenade, the bayonet, the things that show to an individual what it means to kill another man. You who are seeing day after day a number of veterans of the World War filling Sing Sing prison now because they have forgotten how to respect human life ought to be very generous and broad-minded toward a people who have been made to fight practically alone a war against the combination of a Power greater than Italy, and Nature as represented by the formidable barrier of the Alps.
And what have those boys done since they took charge in Italy? I regret to say that the statistics in which I thought I would indulge (for only five, however, of the few minutes that have been allotted to me) have been thoroughly discredited by the statement made before that statistics are the fourth degree of lying; therefore, not wishing to submit official data to that stigma, I shall not of course give any time to them, but refer my hearers to the mass of data printed in America concerning the practical achievements of Fascismo.
I prefer to insist on my previously expressed viewpoint that Mussolini represented, from the very beginning of his access to power, a fighter of the first magnitude, fighting for all sorts of ideas and against all sorts of people, with a courage, with a daring, which I doubt whether he could have had had he not been prevented by his youthful enthusiasm from realizing how tremendous were the odds against him. He found barriers on all sides, within and without the country, and he started wondering what could be done with that terrific budget which presented—well, I have to bring out at least that one figure—which presented a deficit of 15,500,000,000 lire. Now, for a poor country to have such a colossal, such an incredible deficit as that, would have staggered a politician of the old type, a diplomat of the type with the fine Italian hand. This bull in a China shop, if we are to call him such, went headlong into the situation, and whether we like it or not, he has brought Italy out of that. Granting that here and there there may have been some boosting of results, announcements perhaps a bit premature of a surplus which, however, has come, the deficit is over. Italy is able to face the future with confidence, and she is facing first of all, her international obligations.
Kindly tell me, now that two installments of Italy's debt to the United States have already been paid, and one has been paid to the British Empire—kindly tell me what other leader, what other government of Italy would have been able, in four years, to put Italy on such a basis as to meet her international obligation to you?
But the balance sheet of Italy is permanently and notoriously a sad one, and even eliminating statistics, for we are agreed on that, we find that Mussolini was confronted with terrific sources of constant weakness. The wheat of Italy—Italy being a tremendous consumer of wheat—could not be brought out of the soil fast enough to support a people which feeds especially on bread and on spaghetti and other forms of Italian paste. Also, coal does not exist in Italy, and it might be said now and here that our friends beyond the Alps have been very careful indeed to see that all possible sources of raw materials and fields for normal Italian expansion, some of which had been promised to us under the Treaty of London, were ultimately denied us. Gold cannot be found in Italy or in any of her colonies. It might have been secured by Italy in indirect ways, if the Allies had been broad enough to give to Italy even one square mile out of the nine German colonies which they so kindly appropriated in the guise of mandates at the end of the war. But the Allies became very, very Biblical at that time, and they quoted that well-known sentence—"To those that have it shall be given, and from those that have not it shall be taken away." Therefore they distributed those mandates with no regard to the country that is so sadly in need of expansion of a healthy kind, but on the contrary to the countries that already have enormous colonial empires. Then of course they went about saying it was a heavy responsibility, and Italy should call herself blessed that she had not been cursed with such big burdens; burdens which overcrowded Italy is perfectly willing to shoulder today, if you can only persuade the countries who accepted the colonial inheritance of Germany to disgorge.
But, since that was an impossibility, and Mussolini knows perfectly well what the possibilities and impossibilities are, I prefer to speak of his three battles to strengthen Italy's economic defenses: the battle for wheat, the battle for coal, the battle for gold.
Italy needs every year 65,000,000,000 quintels of wheat, and that cannot be gotten out of Italy's soil as yet. 45,000,000,000 was what she usually got. Immediately Mussolini saw that there were still territories in Italy which were not producing as they should, places that had been overlooked by agriculture, malarial regions, or perhaps the feuds of a few political leaders that managed for the sake of their peace of mind, to keep in a state of agricultural misdevelopment or undevelopment regions that might just as well produce wheat. And although all odds were against Italy, for the climate had been most unfavorable last year, instead of 45,000,000,000, already 55,000,000,000 was raised last year, and we expect in a couple of years the battle of wheat to be such that Italy will no longer need to buy wheat on the Chicago market or on the markets of Argentina or of Canada.
Next is coal. Italy cannot get real coal; but she has white coal, that is, the possibilities of those wonderful waterfalls of the Alps, and to a certain extent, to a minor extent, of the Apennines, yielding the motive power for trains and factories, for engines of all kinds.
Very little had been done with these before the days of Fascism, and there is an obvious reason. The initial cost of the electrification of industry is very great. The Government, in many cases, must directly or indirectly, pay the cost, and what government wishes to undergo the heavy responsibility of digging deep into its own treasury in order that the new government which will follow only a few days afterwards will reap or begin to reap the harvest while the sowing has been done by its predecessor?
Now Mussolini, insisting on a stability that had been unheard of before, has been able to harness the waterfalls of the Alps, and when you come now from France or from Switzerland and get into Italy, the first thing you notice at the frontier is the replacing by an electric engine of the steam engine that brought you there.
And smoothly do those trains run; no longer the absurd delays that existed before. But I shall not insist on it, for it is one of the chief tricks of the enemies of Fascism to appear magnanimous by granting that Italy has one good thing now, and that is trains arriving on time, since Mussolini has gone into power. It is a great joy, however, to find that at least now you can travel without finding that your neighbor takes out a pocket knife and cuts out a large piece of the red velvet of your first-class car or the brown velvet of the second-class car, or places both feet down, covered with mud though they be, on the compartment plush, or goes somewhere else in the car and breaks a looking glass, or steals a few of such removable objects as are still kept somewhere in Italian trains. All of that formerly happened daily.
Once more, it was the thorough disorganization of the service, more than the railroad schedules, which was typical; a disorganization which has now given place not only to precision and punctuality, and also by such insistence upon the rights of the railroad that if you should by any chance place one foot on that same velvet of the first or second-class, you will soon find a Fascista railroad agent fining you twenty lire, if it is first-class velvet, or ten lire, if it is second-class velvet which you have in some way offended.
And gold—how to secure that was the heavier problem for Italy, who owes much of it to her war partners. Italy has no gold, and she has none of those raw materials mainly found in colonies by which other countries can repay, even without supplying gold, their interallied or international obligations.
Italy had, however, two very great assets before the war—emigrants' remittances and the so-called "industry of the foreigner," that is, the hotel and tourists' transportation industry, the selling of the beauty of the Peninsula to those who wanted to come and visit her. But, sad to relate, no sooner had the war ended when barriers of immigration (which I do not wish here to discuss) were placed in the way of the Italian people, so that everybody said to us, "We love you very dearly, but we can only take three thousand instead of three hundred thousand of you," or "We love you very dearly, but you must have one thousand dollars before you can land in our country." In other words the beginning of the Fascist régime found Italy owing much gold, yet confronted by the closing of an avenue of escape for Italians and of a possibility of their repaying indirectly with their remittances the unfavorable balance of Italy toward the other powers.
So Mussolini said: If our emigrants decrease, let their tourists increase! Let Italy sell her beauty to more and more, travelers. She has made travelers so welcome, so happy within her boundaries, she has attracted them with such good steamers, trains, and even airships, that they are flocking to that country, so that there is hardly any hotel room to be had anywhere. They are often coming from lands where they are too often reminded that the dollar is worth more than the depreciated European currencies. They are coming from all sorts of places where there is one or another handicap, strikes, war-time racial strife, and what not, and as they are flocking there, they are bringing their very valued assets into Italy, thus making it possible to offset this very serious handicap of lack of local gold.
Politically (since the Chairman gives me so few minutes and is going to hold me down mercilessly to my half-hour limit) I shall say that the outstanding feature in the relations of Italy to her neighbors and friends, is that Italy has not rattled the sword except in word. That, she has done quite often. Mussolini has to keep quiet, to a certain extent prevent from taking the upper hand a large number of people who so far, thank heaven, have been fed with nothing but words; and if he talks about the coming of a Roman Empire or if some of the people under him talk of a Napoleonic Year, you need not get scared; it is with satisfaction that we see that the Napoleonic Year was to have been the year 1926, now defunct. It will do the world a lot of good to reflect upon the continuous necessity of speeches for home consumption for a people inordinately fond of flamboyant talk, lately mistreated, and now severely tried by a stern discipline and made to look toward a distant and brighter future for the salvation of Italy from her plight and the solution of her pressing international problems.
Look at the facts. When did you hear most of the trouble in the Adriatic? During the days when the "fine Italian hand" had almost brought Italy to war with Jugoslavia, or now, when by the cutting of the Gordian knot, Fiume being given to Italy and Dalmatia to Jugoslavia, it was possible to introduce peace into that troubled sea? Is it not a fact that Mussolini has looked in a practical, matter-of-fact way at the thorny matter of relations between France and Italy, merely saying, "We suffer from overpopulation; we must send our sons somewhere. The one country which can take these people is France. To France, we shall send them, and therefore you newspaper editors and writers please don't keep up with this exhausting yet useless war of pin-pricks that has been going on ever since France took over Tunis in 1881."
I call that practical Machiavellism, looking at the realities, not lulling yourself to sleep by means of words which cannot describe or lead to any reality of events; the same practical, businesslike way in which the relations of Italy with the United States have been carried on under Mussolini.
There were people who at the time of the passing of the latest American immigration law were expecting Italy officially to resent the situation; I regret I am not at liberty to say more. Word came directly from the head of the government—"No such nonsense can be contemplated. If other people do not like the new American law, we shall say nothing and take our punishment in peace."
And immediately it was possible to settle the one outstanding matter with a very interesting and very generous reduction on the part of America of the interallied—or, if you don't want to call yourselves the former allies of Italy, the interassociated debt of Italy to the United States, thus making it possible for us to start paying at once, and bringing to a close in a satisfactory way one of the knottiest problems of post-bellum days.
My time is up. But let me say in closing that it will only be when Mussolini is no longer in power that we shall be able to understand the real moral and political stature of that man. Only then we shall clearly see that he built himself, as invisibly as the great poet of old, a monument more enduring than any metal that has ever been created for the instrumentalities of war or peace. [Applause.]
The Chairman: I wonder if without taking sides in this discussion, I could, on the basis of what someone whispered to me, confirm something that the last speaker said. It was a lady. She said she knew that at least some of the statistics of Professor Roselli were correct, because she and a friend of hers were not fined twenty, but were fined forty lire for insulting the plush in an Italian train.
Coming back to the question of time, since Professor Roselli was so insistent about time, Professor Salvemini took three minutes less than his thirty minutes while Professor Roselli took five minutes more than his thirty minutes. So it seems to me fair that we give to Professor Salvemini the five or seven minutes which he didn't take.
Professor Salvemini: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is unfortunately true that Italy is a poor country. You have so many motor cars; we have so few motor cars. But I don't think we must give up our liberty in order to buy motor cars. I don't think that Mussolini will grant a motor car to every five Italians.
We were poor people sixty years ago after so many centuries of despotism. We were poor, much poorer than today, and yet we had our progress under the free institutions. We were able to pay all our debts. Every year our treasury paid its debts, and we were able during the fifteen years preceding the war to balance our budget always with a surplus. During those sixty years of free institutions we built up all our railway system and we built a great many new roads and developed our schools, and Mussolini had not yet arrived!
When Mussolini came to power, he did not find a deficit of 15,000,000,000 lire, but a deficit of only 5,000,000,000 lire. The Minister for Treasury in the Mussolini Cabinet, Signor Tangorra, in his statement to the Chamber in November, 1922, some weeks after the march on Rome stated clearly that the deficit for the following year was 5,000,000,000 lire. The preceding cabinets had reduced the deficit from 15,000,000,000 to 5,000,000,000. The Fascist government continued the struggle which the preceding governments had already carried out with great success. This is the truth.
Mussolini is building up in Italy a great system of electric plants. Ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of the Great War, Italy produced 2,000,000,000 kilowatt hours. In 1922, on the eve of the march on Rome it produced 4,000,000,000 kilowatt hours. Today it produces 6,000,000,000, according to the figures of 1924, perhaps 6,500,000,000 kilowatt hours. The present government is carrying on the work of the construction of these electric plants, because, ladies and gentlemen, the Italian people were used to work before Mussolini, are used to work under Mussolini, and will work even after Mussolini.
There was great disorder in the railways during the first years after the war. But, ladies and gentlemen, the railways had been ruined during the war. The rolling stock had been completely ruined, and during the first two years we had to face the war liabilities. We could not spend our money in replacing the material which had been ruined during the war. But in 1921 and 1922, we began to spend money in order to replace the material which had been ruined during the war. When the Fascists came to power, they found the new material, and took the full credit themselves.
In regard to foreign policy Mussolini must keep his followers quiet by words. But I thought that a leader must follow his followers and must keep them quiet by words only in countries like yours, where the body of liberty has not been trampled down. But what is the use of having a dictator if he must follow his followers?
Relations with France—hm! I want only to remind you of the name of Ricciotti Garibaldi. This is a document characteristic of the good relations between Mussolini and France!
The Italian people are happy under the Fascist régime? Then if these people are so happy, why does the Fascist régime need so many dreadful laws to keep them quiet? If the majority of the Italian people were back of Mussolini, the Fascist Government would not need so many laws in order to protect the state. Every month there is a new law which protects the state, and there is no law which suffices to protect it.
Either the Fascists are mad or they must protect themselves in a country which they must rule like an army encamped in an enemy country. Italy today is like Belgium during the war under the German Army. This is the reality.
If you want to know the great enthusiasm of the Italian people for the Fascist rule, listen to this: There were in Italy up until 1925 internal commissions in the factories. Yet in all the elections for these commissions not a single Fascist was ever appointed. The great majority of the voters were always against the Fascist candidates. These elections in the factories were so devastating for the Fascist rule that the Fascist government suppressed them by law, and this year I am not able to give you the facts because there are no longer elections in the factories as before. If the workers were in agreement with the government, what was the use of suppressing these elections? I don't need to detain you longer. I want even in this case to spare you some minutes.
The Chairman: We are going to come to the question period in just a minute, but Professor Roselli says that he would like to have just a minute, and I take it by this he means a minute now.
Professor Rosselli: It is not my desire, Mr. Chairman, to make the discussion of what has been retorted by the other side too pointed or personal. Therefore, I rise only to what I might call perfacto personale, using the terms of the Italian Chamber of Deputies that was or is.
The fact is that I did not say nor intimate that the Italian people were so inordinately happy under the present régime. I did not use the word and I do not like to be misquoted. Strong medicines are accepted with more equanimity than glee. The entire adaptation of Fascism to Italy, the very discipline of Fascism is such an unusual experiment in the relations between the people and the state, that it would take much longer than the one minute at my disposal to bring before you the entire new idea of the individual living for the state instead of the state living for the individual, which is the fulcrum of the Fascist theory.
The Chairman: Now the Chair would be glad to welcome questions.
Mrs. Nathan: The statement was made in the papers this morning that in future there would be no educators in Italy who did not subscribe to Fascism. That was the sense of the article. I would like to ask Professor Roselli whether he thinks that that would be a good thing for any government. Of course we, having a democratic form of government could not subscribe to it, but I would like to ask Professor Roselli if he thinks that would be well even for Italy.
The Chairman: According to this dispatch there is a further provision that if they belong to political parties which are dangerous to the State they may be displaced.
Professor Roselli: Madam, I can only say that I cannot be called responsible for the extreme policies of Fascism when I am not even accepting without reservations its milder applications. This, if reported right, is only one of the many chapters of Fascist discipline which can be explained only by what existed previously. The universities of the country, to mention only one type of educational institutions, were in Italy all state universities. I would like to ask you how many state universities such as we understand them in America would ever allow on their faculty year after year professors who, receiving the state's money every 27th day of the month, spoke constantly against the organization of the state? How long would they be retained in this country?
Mr. Knollenberg: I want to ask Professor Roselli if he thinks that the Italian people are so much less capable of restraint that they would not have been able to work out from the disorganization that existed after the war into a state of comparative calm and well being in the way that the Germans have done who were faced with a similar disorganization, and who through constitutional means have been able to work that out. That is one question.
The second question is—you state that you have no time to discuss this new ideal of the individual living for the state rather than the state being built up for the well being of the individual, that it was a new ideal. I had supposed that that was much the same ideal as had existed in Germany before the war and has existed in Japan for many years. If it has not been discredited, at least it is believed by most people that the American and the English systems represent a better development.
Professor Roselli: May I answer the second question first. I hold no brief for Fascist theory as such as a panacea for all the political ills of humanity. If Japan and Germany thought that a certain theory was preferable, that is their own business. I am discussing Italy after the war. And in discussing Italy after the war, I find that it is not as easy as some people think to emerge from the state not of Socialism, but of anarchy and chaos in which the Italians had placed themselves, or were placed by circumstances largely beyond their control; it took heroic measures; and therefore I do not believe that they could have emerged under any system very different from the system which has been used, and, to a certain extent, even misused by Italy during the last six years. The term "six years" includes practically the beginning of the large activities of Fascism even before it obtained full power.
There was a period when a large number of Italian Deputies seceded from Parliament as constituted under the Fascist régime. It is what we usually refer to as the Aventine opposition. Yet those gentlemen, knowing what a serious situation they were facing, how tragic their failure would be, how everything depended on their holding together, were unable to forget their own local disputes, and being practically held before the eyes of the whole world as the defenders of freedom, proved unwilling to avail themselves even in a moment of terrific crisis of the opportunity which offered itself.
If I had any doubt before as to the Italian people's inability at a particularly difficult moment to emerge from danger in any other way than through Fascism’s drastic experiment, the doubt would have been dispelled by the history of the Aventine opposition.
The Chairman: Professor Roselli illustrates admirably how to answer questions briefly, which the Chairman thinks is a splendid quality in speakers.
Mrs. Nathan: If Fascism is such a good form of government for Italy, and Professor Roselli is not discussing any other country, why is it that they are forming Fascist groups in other countries?
The Chairman: I wonder if this is not a point where the Chairman should use his descretion. I am inclined to think that he should, though I hate to start with ruling a question out of order. But let’s reserve it and if we run out of other questions which bear directly on Italy, perhaps we can come back to it.
Mr. De Witt Clinton Jones: What would happen in the event of the death of Mussolini?
The Chairman: I think I am going to ask both of the speakers to reply to that.
Professor Salvemini: The craft of prophet is dangerous, but in my opinion if Mussolini dies, there will not be for the moment a great change. As I tried to explain to you, Mussolini is not the creator of the Fascist system. Mussolini is the propagandist of the combine. The combine works on its own account, while Mussolini stands in the limelight gesticulating. So if Mussolini dies, certainly the combine will lose a great propagandist, but they will find a successor to Mussolini until the day when a great crisis occurs in the public life in Italy, and then the Fascisti régime will collapse.
I should not like Mussolini to disappear. As I am strongly anti-Fascist, I wish that Mussolini would live until the moment his system collapses. If Mussolini disappears before the failure of the dictatorship occurs, the Fascist experiment will be robbed of a great part of its value. There will be always in the world a certain number of young boys and retired generals to say "Oh, if Mussolini was alive, Fascism would remain always in power!" Then the failure of the dictatorship would not be the personal failure of the dictator. If the Fascist experiment is to be useful not only to the Italian people but to all humanity, it is necessary that the failure of the dictatorship should occur at the same time as the, failure of the dictator.
Professor Roselli: This is probably the pivotal point of the difference of opinion between the two official speakers of today. I take, as I have repeatedly expressed, the stand that Mussolini is not the marionette he is elsewhere described as being, but he is the moving power of a movement which I do believe he sponsored to a very great extent, he made popular in Italy, and for which he stands in a much higher rôle than has been described by the other speaker of today.
Therefore, I, for one, feel much more seriously as to what would happen to Italy if Mussolini died. But don't make the usual mistake of thinking that it will mean collapse, or the return to liberalism, or to socialism, which the Italian people have at various times either tested or learned to be afraid of. There will remain Fascism, deprived, however, of its ablest exponent, of the man who could really be the pyramid of the structure which is built not according to earlier political ideas, as a levelling movement, but as a pyramid- shaped movement. Therefore, I believe that it will be a sad and very serious day when Mussolini dies, or leaves the helm. Fascism will remain, but not perhaps necessarily Fascism at its best.
It has been said in other cities where this matter has been discussed by today's speakers, that the people of other countries have to consider Mussolini as being personally guilty of everything that appears to be wrong in Italy now, and that therefore the rest of the world should only punish Mussolini in case something goes wrong. The comparison was drawn only a week ago today in a gathering similar to this in Boston, between Mussolini and the Kaiser—the Kaiser should pay, the people of Germany should not pay. I ask, who is paying more at present, the quiet Kaiser who lives chopping wood at Doorn in Holland, most of whose worldly possessions have been restored to him, or the German people who, right or wrong, are being made to bear the burden of what the Kaiser may or may not have done? Is is easy to discuss the responsibility of a leader detached from his people, but international relations do not bear that out.
Mr. Hogue: Because of what seems to be the direct relation of the value and the validity of Professor Roselli's interpretation of Fascism, I should like to ask the reason for his reference to Mexican Fascism and the meaning that he attaches to that term.
The Chairman: I had that question written here. Mr. Hogue elaborates it by saying that in order to test the validity and the value of Mr. Roselli's statement, he would like to know what Mr. Roselli means by Mexican Fascism, I am inclined to think that we will save that, too, until we run out of Italian questions.
Mr. Filsinger: I should like to ask Professor Roselli if he can tell us something about the Syndicalist Labor Law and how it has worked.
Professor Roselli: The "Corporation Law" is a very recent creation. It has hardly worked at all, well or badly. I wouldn't be willing to go on record as either praising or finding fault with the present corporation law which is absolutely a new-born creature. It is not fair, I think, to pass upon it at present.
Professor Salvemini: Perhaps it is useful to know what the new corporation law is. The Prime Minister appoints the General Secretary of the trade unions. The General Secretary appoints the Provincial Secretaries. Each Provincial Secretary appoints the Secretaries of individual trade unions. All workers must pay their contribution to their trade union. The tax collector collects the contribution and gives the money to the Secretary of the trade union, who must not overwork himself to get the money because the money comes by itself.
The workers are divided into two groups—a part of the workers, if they show signs of national loyalty, that is if they join the Fascist Party, are admitted to the trade union; the others remain outside the union, paying their contribution. And if a worker in the Fascist trade union shows signs that he is no longer loyal from the national point of view, that is to say, that he is not in agreement with the Secretary, he is turned out and he continues to pay. This is the law.
Mr. Riley: Would Professor Salvemini tell us who are the peoplebehind Mussolini pulling the strings?
Professor Salvemini: First of all there is a "black hand" of high Generals headed by the Duke of Aosta, the cousin of the King. The second group is formed by large industrialists. For instance, Signor Agnelli, manager of the Fiat motor car factory. There is also a certain group of big land owners, one of whom is the Chairman of the Senate, Senator Tittoni. Then there are several big bankers. These are the men who are behind Mussolini. I don't know if you want to know the names one by one. It would be rather a long list.
Mr. Laidler: May I ask Professor Salvemini what has happened to the cooperative movement under the Fascist régime?
Professor Salvemini: In 1920, we had in Italy 15,000 cooperatives belonging to all the different parties. During the Civil War and during the first years of the Fascist rule, all of the cooperatives which were under Socialist or Christian Democratic colors were wrecked or dissolved. Now, the Fascisti, after having wrecked or dissolved a great many cooperatives, are trying to build up a new system of cooperatives.
The Chairman: While you are getting the rest of your questions ready, I am going to ask Count di Revel, a very prominent Fascist in this country, if he won't speak for two or three minutes.
Count Thaon di Revel: I am a Fascist. I have only three minutes, and so I will be to the point. Professor Salvemini accused the Fascists of using statistical lies. I am glad to see that the enemies of Fascism are using all four qualities of lies. Mussolini is a figurehead, they say. That reminds me of what I heard downtown just a few days before the United States Steel Corporation was going to vote its stock dividends. I was inquiring if a certain person thought that the United States Steel Corporation would or would not vote the stock dividend and what he thought were the ideas of Judge Gary, and he answered me, "Well, Judge Gary is just the chief clerk of Mr. George Baker and Mr. J. P. Morgan." Mussolini is in the same position probably as Judge Gary.
I want to say a few words on Italy in 1922. I will not speak of statistics. We Fascists don't like a lot of statistics. We like facts. I went to the library and took the statements of the Corriere Della Sera, so there was no doubt as to the authenticity of these facts. It will show that the last factory which was occupied in 1920 was left at the end of September, 1920.
I will tell you another thing—I left Italy in March, 1921 and the red flags were still on all the factories. In July, 1922, we had a cabinet crisis which lasted more than ten days. Nobody wanted to take hold of the government. Mr. Giolitti was asked to do it, and he said he wouldn't even take the trouble to come to Rome in the present situation. He wrote a letter to Mr. Malagodi, Editor of the Tribuna, of which this is a part:
"While the danger for the country is the march toward bankruptcy, nobody seems to care. A strong cabinet is necessary and it will consist unfortunately of men thoroughly out of sympathy with each other. If they will be strong men, they will use their strength to fight among themselves."
Now, that was the statement of Mr. Giolitti on July 26, 1922. The general strike in the north took place in the middle of July, 1922. The general strike in all Italy took place August 1 and 2, 1922.
About finances, Professor Salvemini expressed his opinion. Other men here in America also expressed their opinion. There is a bank downtown which has very good auditors and which gave a loan to Italy of $100,000,000. I refer to J. P. Morgan & Co. There is another man, the greatest Secretary of the Treasury that America has ever had, Mr. Mellon, who examined Italy's budget, and owing to the sacrifice Italy had made and owing to the tremendous financial progress in Italy's budget, he gave Italy, Fascist Italy, conditions for settlement of her debt to this country for which Italy will always be grateful to America.
Let us speak of the railroads. I am not very strong on statistics, but I think there was a deficit of either 1,300,000,000 or 1,700,000,000 lire before the Fascist government came into power. Today, there is a profit of 300,000,000 in running the Italian railways. The same thing is true of the postal and telegraphic service.
Professor Salvemini has spoken of anti-Fascisti martyrs. We never speak of our dead because we think that they are still living with us. But for every anti-Fascist who has been murdered, we have five Fascists who have been murdered by the anti-Fascists. Here is a book that you can buy. It is called Pagine Eroiche del Fascismo and has the photograph of every Fascist who has been murdered. These are not statistics; these are facts.
As to the victorious war—Professor Salvemini and his friends remind us of the Italy that we have known in our youth, the Italy of Caporetto. The Professor has no right to speak of the victory of Vittorio Vento. It is because of the betrayal of Italy by himself and his friends that with a victorious war, Italy was obliged to accept a disastrous peace.
Fascist Italy is realizing the dreams of our youth. We want to forget Italy's past and the men of the past—only to remember that that past must never come back again.
The Chairman: Professor Salvemini rises to a point of personal privilege in reference to the last point made by Count di Revel.
Professor Salvemini: Ladies and Gentlemen: If you take that book and you count the names, you will find that they are until the end of October, 1922—I don't say after because the list is not complete and it would not be fair to take in account this section of the book. If you take that book, you will find that the number of Fascisti killed by anti-Fascists is 350. If you take the number of the anti-Fascists killed by Fascists, you find it is double the Fascist dead. If Count di Revel is able to show that I am wrong in this point, I pledge myself to leave the United States at once.
I must add something else. All the murderers of the Fascisti have been tried and sentenced to heavy penalties. But when anti-Fascists are killed, the murderers usually remain persons unknown, and when they are tried, they are acquitted, and after they are sentenced, they are pardoned. A murderer, in my opinion, is always a murderer, whether he is a Fascist or an anti-Fascist. This is a point which Count di Revel found very, very convenient to forget.
As regards my responsibility during the Great War, I take all my responsibliities. I accepted the war, and I said at the beginning of August that Italy had to stand in war side by side with the Entente when the friends of Count di Revel and the Nationalists were preaching the war side by side with the Germans.
In accepting the war, I said, "The war will be a big affair, a big enterprise," when the Nationalist friends of Count di Revel were saying that the war will finish in six months. I said, "As the war is a big enterprise, we must try to get all our friends with us, and we must make an effort to dismember Austria." The Nationalists were for keeping Austria alive.
Bissolati and I were saying, "Dalmatia is a Slav country; we must abandon Dalmatia to the South Slavs, but Trieste and Fiume are Italian cities and we must have them." This was our program, and we maintained our program in spite of the insults and of the calumnies of the friends of Count di Revel. If our program had been followed, Italy would not have appeared during the Peace Conference as a beggar, and as a country which was against all her friends in war and awaited the moment to become the friend of her old enemies. Italy would have stood on the side of justice and would have had justice for herself and justice for all.
The Chairman: Someone was suggesting a reply to the personal parts of Professor Salvemini's retort to Count di Revel, and I said I thought since we had had it from both sides, we might come back now to the question of Fascism. Once you get started on the other line, it is difficult to tell where you will stop.
I have a very good question here which I beg leave to read. It is addressed to Professor Salvemini. "Is it not true that the proceeds of the $100,000,000 loan referred to here today several times, floated in this country by the present Italian government, have served to reduce the debt of the Italian government to the Bank of Italy, and thus to strengthen the financial structure of the country as a whole by increasing the bank gold reserve?
Professor Salvemini: The Italian government had a debt with the Bank of Italy. It had to pay this debt, and it paid this debt with the Morgan loan. It doesn't strengthen the financial situation of a country to make debts and to pay them. It would be better not to make debts.
Mr. Crosgrave: In view of the overpopulation of Italy, why is it the Fascist government wants to maintain or increase the birth rate?
Professor Roselli: It is my humble opinion that all that is governmentally decided concerning any increase or decrease of birth rate will not be followed by the people whose leaders have pledged the State's interference in the number of inhabitants of a certain country.
Mr. Jones: Professor Salvemini said that in 1921 and 1922, Italy had so reconstructed its finances and its general economic situation that certain English and American bankers were at that time ready to advance sums to Italy. Will you please tell me who these bankers were?
Professor Salvemini: I have the official statement of the Minister for Treasury, Signor Peano. I was not the minister then. He made his statement in the Chamber in July, 1922. That is sufficient evidence for me.
Mr. Seligman: May I ask Professor Roselli whether his view is that the Italian people are permanently incapable of democratic self-government, or does he advocate the Fascist dictatorship merely as a temporary measure because of certain existing economic conditions in Italy?
Professor Roselli: In dealing with it, we have to be very sure that there are only two horns to a dilemma. I deny that the situation can be put in a way as simple as Mr. Seligman puts it, as a choice between Fascism and no Fascism. I would not for a moment advocate the eternal permanency of the Fascist rule as at present constituted in Italy. But the four years of Fascist rule in Italy have opened the eyes of all of us who want to keep them open to the constant changes within that organization.
Fascism was born, to mention only two things, practically in opposition to monarchy. And it was born practically in opposition to religion, or at least to organized religion as understood in Italy. Yet Fascism took later on, as cornerstones of the régime, both the Catholic Church and the Italian Monarchy. Therefore, Fascism, being able to change its views and adjust them to varying needs as long as there remains always this permanency of reverence for discipline, may modify itself in such a way as to remain in power for many years to come. If, on the contrary, it does not yield to the changed circumstances of Italian life, then in my estimation, in the estimation of non-Fascists, I believe then and not before, Fascism will fall.
Judge Cotillo: There has been much talk about the incapability of Italy to control itself. May I say that Italy has been a seat of learning and law for many years?
Question: If it is true that Italy has for a long time been a seat of law and learning, why is it that it has not evolved the writ of habeas corpus, in order that the anti-Fascists may be taken out of jail and given a fair trial?
Judge Cotillo: If I hadn't just recovered from an operation, I would reply at length to the question. The writ of habeas corpus originates in the Justinian Code, and that goes back to the Roman law. Whether they are using it at this time or not, Mr. Chairman, I am not able to say, for I have been out of touch with matters for about a year, but it is in the law, and you will find it in the Justinian Code.
The Chairman: Here is a question addressed to Professor Salvemini: "What is the present relation and what is likely to be the future relation between Fascism and the Catholic Church?"
Professor Salvemini: The Roman Catholic Church is an abstract word which covers many millions of people. The Roman Catholic Church, like the Italian people, is not a homogeneous unit.
So in the Roman Catholic Church you find the peasantry and the parish priests who are in a great majority, anti-Fascist. The bishops are divided. In the Vatican, a certain number of cardinals are pro-Fascist, and other cardinals, for instance, Cardinal Gasparri, are anti-Fascist. But Cardinal Gasparri does not deal with Italy. When somebody tells him about Italy, he says, "Italy is not in my department. Go upstairs." A majority of the Jesuits are pro-Fascist. A Jesuit padre, Tacchi Venturi, is one of the intimate counselors of Mussolini.
The Pope, in his personal leanings, is pro-Fascist, but in order not to scandalize the great mass of the parish priests and the peasants, he must be cautious in his pro-Fascism. So, in his allocutions he deplores the acts of violence of the Fascists, but at the same time he is friendly with Mussolini. When the Pope deplores the violence of Fascism, he is expressing the opinion of that part of the Roman Catholic Church which is formed by the parish priests. When he is cordial with Mussolini, he is expressing the feelings nearest his heart.
The Chairman: We have three minutes more, and I think perhaps the best way to dispose of those three minutes is to ask one question of each of the two speakers and ask them if they won't answer them within the time.
One question addressed to Professor Roselli is this: How does Professor Roselli defend the treatment of the German minorities in the Southern Tyrol?
Professor Roselli: It was a famous American humorist who said that the news of his death had been grossly exaggerated. The treatment of the German minorities in the Tyrol (and if they are there, other men and other countries ought to shoulder the blame as much as Italy, and more than myself) is. better than that of many other minorities whose grievances are seldom aired by people who are only trying to find fault with what Italy is doing. There are 3,000,000 Germans in Czechoslovakia out of a total of 9,000,000 inhabitants, but precious few crocodile tears are being shed over those. The minorities of Roumania only came up at the time of the visit of a well-known crowned head who graced this country with her presence.
But ever since a small group of Germans was annexed by Italy by a peace in which Italy was not treated with generosity in any quarter except in the northern quarter, in which her geographical frontiers were reestablished, ever since those few hundred thousand Germans came to be a part of a United Italy of 42,000,000 inhabitants, people have taken serious exception to such things as the supposed and not real denial of the right to have Christmas trees at Christmas time, which later turned out to be untrue.
I am not here to defend what the Treaty of Versailles or any of the other treaties which formed the foundation of the present-day patched-up peace did do. I am only asking you in fairness why it is that when Italy, with tremendous need for expansion, was denied the inheritance of German colonies, was denied her share in the partition of Turkey (which was not denied to her Allies), was held before the whole world as land-grabbing and imperialistic in the Adriatic, while other people did practically everything they wanted to their hearts' content—why is it that when Italy was treated with generosity in one and only one quarter we shouldn't find a bigger and more kindly spirit on the part of people who ought to consider the entire treatment of minorities as an undetachable and undistinguishable whole?
The Chairman: The last question which is addressed to Professor Salvemini is this: Professor Salvemini says that the Fascists are a minority, that a majority of Italians are anti-Fascist. How does he anticipate, if his version is true, that the majority will ever become the dominant party in Italy
Professor Salvemini: The Italian people have a wonderful capacity for passive resistance. They resist passively for years and years, and one fine day they awake when you don't believe they are capable of awakening. I cannot foresee when they will be capable of taking in their own hands their own future. But I am quite sure that they will one day take in their own hands their own future, and it is our work to stand by and give them the example of not giving up.
THE RESEARCH DEPARTMENT
Of the Foreign Policy Association
Edward Meade Earle, Ph. D., Director
Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of History in Barnard College
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