Transcriber’s Notes
Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by
♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the
paragraph or section in which they appear.
Details and other notes may be found at the end of this eBook.
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan._
MUSSOLINI.
In his office at the Palazzo Chigi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
When listening intently this is his attitude and expression.
]
My Autobiography
By
Benito Mussolini
With a Foreword by
Richard Washburn Child
Former Ambassador to Italy
[Illustration:
National Fascist Party logo with perched eagle]
_Illustrated_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1928
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1928, by Curtis Publishing Co.
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration: Charles Scribner’s Sons logo]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword by Richard Washburn Child ♦ix
CHAPTER
I. A Sulphurous Land 1
II. My Father 9
III. The Book of Life 20
IV. War and Its Effect Upon a Man 28
V. Ashes and Embers 59
VI. The Death Struggle of a Worn-Out Democracy 88
VII. The Garden of Fascism 121
VIII. Toward Conquest of Power 147
IX. Thus We Took Rome 173
X. Five Years of Government 200
XI. New Paths 242
XII. The Fascist State and the Future 273
XIII. En Route 308
Index 313
♦ “v” replaced with “ix”
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mussolini in his office at the Palazzo Chigi _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The house at Varano di Costa, in Predappio, where
Mussolini was born 2
Mussolini’s mother and father, Rosa and Alessandro
Mussolini 10
The first offices, in Milan, of the _Popolo d’Italia_,
Mussolini’s paper 40
A snapshot of Mussolini and his captain on the
Carso, 1916 48
Commander Gabriele d’Annunzio 80
King Victor Emmanuel III and Mussolini 188
Mussolini walking along the seashore, May 1, 1928 204
FOREWORD
By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
It is far from my purpose to elaborate the material in this book, to
interpret it, or to add to it.
With much of the drama it contains I, being Ambassador of the United
States at the time, was intimately familiar; much of the extraordinary
personality disclosed here was an open book to me long ago because I
knew well the man who now, at last, has written characteristically,
directly and simply of that self for which I have a deep affection.
For his autobiography I am responsible. Lives of Mussolini written by
others have interests of sorts.
“But nothing can take the place of a book which you will write
yourself,” I said to him.
“Write myself?” He leaned across his desk and repeated my phrase in
amazement.
He is the busiest single individual in the world. He appeared hurt as
if a friend had failed to understand.
“Yes,” I said and showed him a series of headings I had written on a
few sheets of paper.
“All right,” he said in English. “I will.”
It was quite like him. He decides quickly and completely.
So he began. He dictated. I advised that method because when he
attempts to write in longhand he corrects and corrects and corrects.
It would have been too much for him. So he dictated. The copy came back
and he interlined the manuscript in his own hand—a dash of red pencil,
and a flowing rivulet of ink—here and there.
When the manuscripts began to come to me I was troubled because mere
literal translators lose the vigor of the man himself.
“What editing may I do?” I asked him.
“Any that you like,” he said. “You know Italy, you understand Fascism,
you see me, as clearly as any one.”
But there was nothing much to do. The story came through as it appears
here. It is all his and—what luck for all of us—so like him! Approve
of him or not, when one reads this book one may know Mussolini or at
least, if one’s vision is clouded, know him better. Like the book or
not, there is not an insincere line in it. I find none.
Of course there are many things which a man writing an autobiography
cannot see about himself or will not say about himself.
He is unlikely to speak of his own size on the screen of history.
Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pros and
cons, are all put aside the only true measure of a man’s greatness
from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in the answer to this
question:
“How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest
number of human beings—their hearts, their thoughts, their material
welfare, their relation to the universe?”
In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit
dimensions of permanent greatness equal to those of Mussolini.
Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the
permanence of his success or not, consider him superman or not, as
you may, he has put to a working test, on great and growing numbers
of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality,
in applied plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in
the applied principle that contents are more important than labels
on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost
universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a
state. He has not only been able to change the lives of human beings
but he has changed their minds, their hearts, their spirits. He has not
merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.
He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the
bricks.
It is one thing to administer a state. The one who does this well is
called statesman. It is quite another thing to make a state. Mussolini
has made a state. That is super-statesmanship.
I knew him before the world at large, outside of Italy, had ever heard
of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the
saddle and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away
chaos’ own junk pile from Italy.
But no man knows Mussolini. An Italian newspaper offered a prize for
the best essay showing insight into the mystery of the man. Mussolini,
so the story goes, stopped the contest by writing to the paper that
such a competition was absurd, because he himself could not enter an
opinion.
In spite of quick, firm decisions, in spite of grim determination, in
spite of a well-ordered diagrammed pattern and plan of action fitted to
any moment of time, Mussolini, first of all, above all and after all,
is a personality always in a state of flux, adjusting its leadership to
a world eternally in a state of flux.
Change the facts upon which Mussolini has acted and he will change his
action. Change the hypotheses and he will change his conclusion.
And this perhaps is an attribute of greatness seldom recognized. Most
of us are forever hoping to put our world in order and finish the job.
Statesmen with some idea to make over into reality hope for a day when
they can say: “Well, that’s done!” And when it is done,—often enough it
is nothing. The bridges they have built are now useless, because the
rivers have all changed their courses and humanity is already shrieking
for new bridges. This is not an unhappy thought, says Mussolini. A
finished world would be a stupid place—intolerably stupid.
The imagination of mere statesmen covers a static world.
The imagination of true greatness covers a dynamic world. Mussolini
conceives a dynamic world. He is ready to go on the march with
it, though it overturns all his structures, upsets all his theories,
destroys all of yesterday and creates a screaming dawn of a to-morrow.
Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves
to conditions for reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have
learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believes
that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than
to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been
expended on theories and programmes.
He has marched up several hills with the thousands and then marched
down again. This strange creature of strange life and strange thoughts,
with that almost psychopathic fire which was in saints and villains,
in Napoleons, in Jeanne d’Arcs and in Tolstoys, in religious prophets
and in Ingersolls, has been up the Socialist, the international, the
liberal and the conservative hills and down again. He says: “The
sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its
power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded
yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow.
The machine first of all must run!”
I have watched, with a curiosity that has never failed to creep in on
me, the marked peculiarities, physical and mental, of this man. At
moments he is quite relaxed, at ease; and yet the unknown gusts of his
own personality play on him eternally. One sees in his eyes, or in a
quick movement of his body, or in a sentence suddenly ejaculated, the
effect of these gusts, just as one sees wind on the surface of the
water.
There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of
the tread of the cat. He likes cats—their independence, their decision,
their sense of justice and their appreciation of the sanctity of the
individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with them
until those who guard his life protest against their social set.
His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being of aristocratic
lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry but,
condescendingly, of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his
own prowl, as he walks along in his riding-boots, springy, active,
ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One
quality is feline, however—it is the sense of his complete isolation.
One feels that he must always have had this isolation—isolation as a
boy, isolation as a young radical, adventurer, lover, worker, thinker.
There is no understudy of Mussolini. There is no man, woman, or child
who stands anywhere in the inner orbit of his personality. No one. The
only possible exception is his daughter Edda. All the tales of his
alliances, his obligations, his ties, his predilections are arrant
nonsense. There are none—no ties, no predilections, no alliances, no
obligations unpaid.
Financially? Lying voices said that he had been personally financed and
backed by the industrialists of Italy. This is ridiculous to those who
know. His salary is almost nothing. His own family—wife, children, are
poor.
Politically? Whom could he owe? He has made and can unmake them all.
He is free to test every officeholder in the whole of Italy by the
yardstick of service and fitness. Beyond that I know not one political
debt that he owes. He has tried to pay those of the past; I believe
that the cynicism in him is based upon the failure of some who have
been rewarded to live up to the trust put in them.
“But I take the responsibility for all,” says he. He says it publicly
with jaws firm; he says it privately with eyes somewhat saddened.
He takes responsibility for everything—for discipline, for censorship,
for measures which, were less rigor required, would appear repressive
and cruel. “Mine!” says he, and stands or falls on that. It is an
admirable courage. I could, if I wished, quote instance after instance
of this acceptance—sometimes when he is not to blame—of the whole
responsibility of the machine.
“Mine!” says he.
And in spite of any disillusionment he has suffered since I knew him
first, he has retained his laugh—often, one is bound to say, a scornful
laugh—and he has kept his faith in an ability to build up a machine—the
machine of Fascism—the machine built not on any fixed theory but one
intended by Mussolini to run—above all, to run, to function, to do, to
accomplish, to fill the bottles with wine first, unlike the other isms,
and put the labels on after.
Mussolini has superstitious faith in himself. He has said it. Not a
faith in himself to make a personal gain. An assassin’s bullet might
wipe him out and leave his family in poverty. That would be that.
His faith is in a kind of destiny which will allow him, before
the last chapter, to finish the building of this new state, this new
machine—“the machine which will run and has a soul.”
The first time I ever saw him he came to my residence sometime before
the march on Rome and I asked him what would be his programme for
Italy. His answer was immediate: “Work and discipline.”
I remember I thought at that time that the phrase sounded a little
evangelical, a phrase of exhortation. But a mere demagogue would
never choose it. Wilson’s slogans of Rights and Peace and Freedom are
much more popular and gain easier currency than sterner phrases. It
is easier even for a sincere preacher, to offer soft nests to one’s
followers; it is more difficult to excite enthusiasm for stand-up
doctrines. Any analysis and weighing of Mussolini’s greatness must
include recognition that he has made popular throughout a race of
people, and perhaps for others, a standard of obligation of the
individual not only exacting but one which in the end will be accepted
voluntarily. Not only is it accepted voluntarily but with an almost
spiritual ecstasy which has held up miraculously in Italy during years,
when all the so-called liberals in the world were hovering over it like
vultures, croaking that if it were not dead it was about to die.
It is difficult to lead men at all. It is still more difficult to lead
them away from self-indulgence. It is still more difficult to lead them
so that a new generation, so that youth itself, appears as if born with
a new spirit, a new virility bred in the bones. It is difficult
to govern a state and difficult to deal cleanly and strongly with a
static programme applied to a static world; but it is more difficult
to build a new state and deal cleanly and strongly with a dynamic
programme applied to a dynamic world.
This man, who looks up at me with that peculiar nodding of his head
and raising of the eyebrows, has done it. There are few in the world’s
history who have. I had considered the phrase “Work and discipline”
as a worthy slogan, as a good label for an empty bottle. Within six
years this man, with a professional opposition which first barked like
Pomeranians at his heels and then ran away to bark abroad, has made the
label good, has filled the bottle, has turned concept into reality.
It is quite possible for those who oppose the concept to say that the
reality of the new spirit of Italy and its extent of full acceptance by
the people may exist in the mind of Mussolini, but does not spring out
of the people themselves but it is quite untrue as all know who really
know.
He throws up his somewhat stubby, meaty, short-fingered hands, strong
and yet rather ghostlike when one touches them, and laughs. Like
Roosevelt. No one can spend much time with him without thinking that
after all there are two kinds of leaders—outdoor and indoor leaders—and
that the first are somewhat more magnetic, more lasting and more boyish
and likable for their power than the indoor kind.
Mussolini, like Roosevelt, gives the impression of an energy
which cannot be bottled, which bubbles up and over like an eternally
effervescent, irrepressible fluid. At these moments one remembers his
playing of the violin, his fencing, his playful, mischievous humour,
the dash of his courage, his contact with animals, his success in
making gay marching songs for the old drab struggles of mankind with
the soil, with the elements, with ores in the earth, and the pathways
of the seas. In the somber conclusions of the student statesman and
in the sweetness of the sentimentalist statesman there is little joy;
unexpected joy is found in the leadership of a Mussolini. Battle
becomes a game. The game becomes a romp. It is absurd to say that Italy
groans under discipline. Italy chortles with it! It is victory!
He is a Spartan too. Perhaps we need them in the world to-day;
especially that type whose first interest is the development of the
power and the happiness of a race.
The last time I took leave of Mussolini he came prowling across the
room as I went toward the door. His scowl had gone. The evening had
come. There had been a half hour of quiet conversation. The strained
expression had fallen from his face. He came toward me and rubbed his
shoulder against the wall. He was relaxed and quiet.
I remembered Lord Curzon’s impatience with him long ago, when Mussolini
had first come into power, and Curzon used to refer to him as “that
absurd man.”
Time has shown that he was neither violent nor absurd. Time has
shown that he is both wise and humane.
It takes the world a long time to see what has been dropped into the
pan of its old scales!
In terms of fundamental and permanent effect upon the largest number of
human beings—whether one approves or detests him—the Duce is now the
greatest figure of this sphere and time. One closes the door when one
leaves him, feeling, as when Roosevelt was left, that one could squeeze
something of him out of one’s clothes.
He is a mystic to himself.
I imagine, as he reaches forth to touch reality in himself, he finds
that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined,
illusive, untouchable, just out of reach—onward!
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
A SULPHUROUS LAND
Almost all the books published about me put squarely and logically on
the first page that which may be called my birth certificate. It is
usually taken from my own notes.
Well, then here it is again. I was born on July 29, 1883, at Varano di
Costa. This is an old hamlet. It is on a hill. The houses are of stone,
and sunlight and shade give these walls and roofs a variegated color
which I well remember. The hamlet, where the air is pure and the view
agreeable, overlooks the village of Dovia, and Dovia is in the commune,
or county, of Predappio in the northeast of Italy.
It was at two o’clock Sunday afternoon when I came into the world. It
was by chance the festival day of the patron saint of the old church
and parish of Caminate. On the structure a ruined tower overlooks
proudly and solemnly the whole plain of Forli—a plain which slopes
gently down from the Apennines, with their snow-clad tops in winter, to
the undulating bottoms of Ravaldino, where the mists gather in summer
nights.
Let me add to the atmosphere of a country dear to me by bringing again
to my memory the old district of Predappio. It was a country well known
in the thirteenth century, giving birth to illustrious families
during the Renaissance. It is a sulphurous land. From it the ripening
grapes make a strong wine of fine perfume. There are many springs of
iodine waters. And on that plain and those undulating foothills and
mountain spurs, the ruins of mediæval castles and towers thrust up
their gray-yellow walls toward the pale blue sky in testimony of the
virility of centuries now gone.
Such was the land, dear to me because it was my soil. Race and soil are
strong influences upon us all.
As for my race—my origin—many persons have studied and analyzed its
hereditary aspects. There is nothing very difficult in tracing my
genealogy, because from parish records it is very easy for friendly
research to discover that I came from a lineage of honest people. They
tilled the soil, and because of its fertility they earned the right to
their share of comfort and ease.
Going further back, one finds that the Mussolini family was prominent
in the city of Bologna in the thirteenth century. In 1270 Giovanni
Mussolini was the leader of this warlike, aggressive commune. His
partner in the rule of Bologna in the days of armored knights was
Fulcieri Paolucci de Calboli, who belonged to a family from Predappio
also, and even to-day that is one of the distinguished families.
[Illustration:
The house at Varano di Costa, in Predappio, where
Mussolini was born.]
The destinies of Bologna and the internal struggles of its parties and
factions, following the eternal conflicts and changes in all struggles
for power, caused, at last, the exile of the Mussolinis to Argelato.
From there they scattered into neighboring provinces. One may be
sure that in that era their adventures were varied and sometimes in
the flux of fortune brought them to hard times. I have never discovered
news of my forbears in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth
century there was a Mussolini in London. Italians never hesitate to
venture abroad with their genius or their labors. The London Mussolini
was a composer of music of some note and perhaps it is from him that
I inherit the love of the violin, which even to-day in my hands gives
comfort to moments of relaxation and creates for me moments of release
from the realities of my days.
Later, in the nineteenth century, the family tie became more clearly
defined; my own grandfather was a lieutenant of the National Guard.
My father was a blacksmith—a heavy man with strong, large, fleshy
hands. Alessandro the neighbors called him. Heart and mind were always
filled and pulsing with socialistic theories. His intense sympathies
mingled with doctrines and causes. He discussed them in the evening
with his friends and his eyes filled with light. The international
movement attracted him and he was closely associated with names known
among the followers of social causes in Italy—Andrea Costa, Balducci,
Amilcare, Cipriani and even the more tender and pastoral spirit of
Giovanni Pascoli. So come and go men whose minds and souls are striving
for good ends. Each conference seems to them to touch the fate of the
world; each talisman seems to promise salvation; each theory pretends
to immortality.
The Mussolinis had left some permanent marks. In Bologna there
is still a street named for that family and not long ago a tower
and a square bore the name. Somewhere in the heraldic records
there is the Mussolini coat of arms. It has a rather pleasing and
perhaps magnificent design. There are six black figures in a yellow
field—symbols of valor, courage, force.
My childhood, now in the mists of distance, still yields those flashes
of memory that come back with a familiar scene, an aroma which the
nose associates with damp earth after a rain in the springtime, or the
sound of footsteps in the corridor. A roll of thunder may bring back
the recollection of the stone steps where a little child who seems no
longer any part of oneself used to play in the afternoon.
Out of those distant memories I receive no assurance that I had the
characteristics which are supposed traditionally to make parents
overjoyed at the perfection of their offspring. I was not a good
boy, nor did I stir the family pride or the dislike of my own young
associates in school by standing at the head of my class.
I was then a restless being; I am still.
Then I could not understand why it is necessary to take time in order
to act. Rest for restfulness meant nothing to me then any more than now.
I believe that in those youthful years, just as now, my day began and
ended with an act of will—by will put into action.
Looking back, I cannot see my early childhood as being either
praiseworthy or as being more than normal in every direction. I
remember my father as a dark-haired, good-natured man, not slow
to laugh, with strong features and steady eyes. I remember that near
the house where I was born, with its stone wall with moss green in
the crevices, there was a small brook and farther on a little river.
Neither had much water in it, but in autumn and other seasons when
there were unexpected heavy rains they swelled in fury and their
torrents were joyous challenges to me. I remember them as my first
play spots. With my brother, Arnaldo, who is now the publisher of the
daily _Popolo d’Italia_, I used to try my skill as a builder of dams
to regulate the current. When birds were in their nesting season I was
a frantic hunter for their concealed and varied homes with their eggs
or young birds. Vaguely I sensed in all this the rhythm of natural
progress—a peep into a world of eternal wonder, of flux and change. I
was passionately fond of young life; I wished to protect it then as I
do now.
My greatest love was for my mother. She was so quiet, so tender,
and yet so strong. Her name was Rosa. My mother not only reared us
but she taught primary school. I often thought, even in my earliest
appreciation of human beings, of how faithful and patient her work was.
To displease her was my one fear. So, to hide from her my pranks, my
naughtiness or some result of mischievous frolic, I used to enlist my
grandmother and even the neighbors, for they understood my panic lest
my mother should be disturbed.
The alphabet was my first practice in worldly affairs and I learned it
in a rush of enthusiasm. Without knowing why, I found myself wishing
to attend school—the school at Predappio, some two miles away. It was
taught by Marani, a friend of my father. I walked to and fro and was
not displeased that the boys of Predappio resented at first the coming
of a stranger boy from another village. They flung stones at me and
I returned their fire. I was all alone and against many. I was often
beaten, but I enjoyed it with that universality of enjoyment with which
boys the world around make friendship by battle and arrive at affection
through missiles. Whatever was my courage, my body bore its imprints. I
concealed the bruises from my mother to shelter her from the knowledge
of the world in which I had begun to find expression and to which I
supposed she was such a stranger. At the evening repast I probably
often feared to stretch out my hand for the bread lest I expose a wound
upon my young wrist.
After a while this all ended. War was over and the pretense of enmity—a
form of play—faded into nothing and I had found fine schoolmates of my
own age.
The call of old life foundations is strong. I felt it when only a few
years ago a terrific avalanche endangered the lives of the inhabitants
of Predappio. I took steps to found a new Predappio—Predappio Nuovo.
My nature felt a stirring for my old home. And I remembered that as
a child I had sometimes looked at the plain where the River Rabbi is
crossed by the old highway to Mendola and imagined there a flourishing
town. To-day that town—Predappio Nuovo—is in full process of
development; on its masonry gate there is carved the symbol of Fascism
and words expressing my clear will.
When I was graduated from the lower school I was sent to a boarding
school. This was at Faenza, the town noted for its pottery of the
fifteenth century. The school was directed by the Salesiani priests. I
was about to enter into a period of routine, of learning the ways of
the disciplined human herd. I studied, slept well and grew. I was awake
at daylight and went to bed when the evening had settled down and the
bats flew.
This was a period of bursting beyond the bounds of my own little town.
I had begun to travel. I had begun to add length after length to that
tether which binds one to the hearth and the village.
I saw the town of Forli—a considerable place which should have
impressed me but failed to do so. But Ravenna! Some of my mother’s
relatives lived in the plain of Ravenna and on one summer vacation we
set out together to visit them. After all, it was not far away, but to
my imagination it was a great journey—almost like a journey of Marco
Polo—to go over hill and dale to the edge of the sea—the Adriatic!
I went with my mother to Ravenna and carefully visited every corner
of that city steeped in the essences of antiquity. From the wealth
of Ravenna’s artistic treasures there rose before me the beauty and
fascination of her history and her name through the long centuries.
Deep feelings remain now, impressed then upon me. I experienced a
profound and significant enlarging of my concepts of life, beauty
and the rise of civilizations. The tomb of Dante, inspiring in its
quiet hour of noon; the basilica of San Apollinare; the Candiano canal,
with the pointed sails of fishing-boats at its mouth; and then the
beauty of the Adriatic moved me—touched something within me.
I went back with something new and undying. My mind and spirit were
filled with expanding consciousness. And I took back also a present
from my relatives. It was a wild duck, powerful in flight. My brother
Arnaldo and I, on the little river at home, put forth patient efforts
to tame the wild duck.