“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!