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.
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