With my notion of Mussolini gathered largely from English and American as well as hostile Italian sources, the word seemed utterly incongruous. Could one chat with this bombastic and terrifying individual who never listened, told you what to think, to say? Impossible. But of course I went.
The most exciting and interesting hour and a half I spent in Italy was in an anteroom watching twoscore or more persons who were waiting to be received, watching them go in so scared, come out exultant, go in inflated, come out collapsed. There was no one of them but was anxious, even the Admiral of the Fleet then at Ostia. He walked nervously about while he was waiting, adjusting his uniform, and when his turn came strode in as if marching in a parade.
Nothing I saw in Italy, as I have said, was more interesting to me. Though I must confess that all the time there was an undercurrent of nervousness. What I was afraid of was that my French would go to pieces, provided he gave me a chance to speak at all—of which I had a doubt. What if I should forget and say “vous” instead of “votre excellence”? Should I be shot at sunrise?
It was all so different from what I had anticipated. I must have misread and misheard the reports of interviews to have had such an unpleasant impression of what was waiting me. As I crossed the long room towards the desk Mussolini came around to meet me, asked me to take one of the two big chairs which stood in front of his desk—and, as he seated me, was apologizing, actually apologizing, in excellent English for keeping me waiting. As he did it I saw that he had a most extraordinary smile, and that when he smiled he had a dimple.
Nothing could have been more natural, simple, and courteous than the way he put me at my ease. His French, in which he spoke after his first greeting, was fluent, excellent. I found myself not at all afraid to talk, eager to do so. If he had not been as eager, I think I should have done all the talking, for luckily at once we hit on a common interest—better housing. His smiling face became excited and stern. He pounded the table.
“Men and women must have better places in which to live. You cannot expect them to be good citizens in the hovels they are living in, in parts of Italy.”
He went on to talk with appreciation and understanding of the various building undertakings already well advanced, some of which I had seen in different parts of the country. He talked at length of the effect on women of crowded, cheerless homes. “A reason for their drinking too much wine sometimes,” he mused.
He was particularly interested in what prohibition was doing to working people in the United States. “I am dry,” he said, “but I would not have Italy dry [sec].” And he amused me by quickly changing sec to seche. “We need wine to keep alive the social sense in our hard-working people.”
Altogether it was an illuminating half-hour, and when Mussolini accompanied me to the door and kissed my hand in the gallant Italian fashion I understood for the first time an unexpected phase of the man which makes him such a power in Italy. He might be—was, I believed—a fearful despot, but he had a dimple.
I left Italy, my head alive with speculations as to the future of the man. There was a chance, and it seemed to me a very good one, that he would be assassinated. Three dramatic attempts were made on his life while I was there, attempts known to the public. There may have been others, the authorities kept quiet. As I was sailing there came a rash attack on him at Bologna, the assassin being torn to pieces, so it was said, by an enraged crowd. For months after my return I watched my morning paper for the headline, “Mussolini Assassinated.”