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