Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/13

 Of course, there were large expenditures of last-minute war funds to Tom, Dick, and Harry, who knew that if they were powerful enough, if they had clever enough lawyers, they could threaten the government and obtain from that government a large percentage if not the absolute totality of the amount they were claiming for services rendered during the war. The government, on its knees, unable to carry on even its regular, ordinary business, yielded. Many printing presses were working overtime.

If we had been dealt with differently by the liberal governments that preceded the Mussolini government, I frankly say—I do not care whether my Fascist friends like it—there would not have been the support of so many neutrals, eager only for order, to the Fascisti of the earlier days, with all of their violence, which I for one do not justify, and am so happy to see on the wane.

It is very easy, of course, to say that Mussolini, who led them and leads them is a mere figurehead, a sort of marionette, or a puppet whose strings and springs are moved by somebody else. It is harder to prove it. Look at the speed with which Italy has forged ahead during the past four or five years, whether you approve or disapprove of her speed and push, and then congratulate Italy on the quantity, the skill, and the retiring disposition of her able men who are pulling those strings behind the marionette. I do not see anybody there, except a tremendously able man, who to the best of his knowledge and ability, gives practically sixteen hours of his time each day to what he believes, rightly or wrongly, to be the good of his country.

I have never seen in the entire history of Italy—and I, a non-Fascist say it—a statesman who aimed as steadily, as unselfishly or as passionately toward what he believes to be the good of his country as Benito Mussolini.

We hear from all sides the query: Why does not Mussolini retire, withdraw to private life, now that the job is done, now that the Italian people are normal again? It is so very easy to talk normalcy in this quiet and rich United States where you own twenty-two million out of the twenty-five million automobiles existing in the world, where no woman is too poor to wear silk stockings, where everybody travels Pullman unless he wants to admit he is a poor immigrant. Nowadays, you cannot find a Pullman seat unless you engage it a couple of days ahead! It is very easy to talk normalcy when you are situated economically and geographically as you are.

But only three years ago, a poor contadino on the mountains of the Pistoia region replied to my question as to whether he preferred porridge made of chestnut flour or of cornmeal, "Signore, I would rather have chestnut flour porridge because it sticks to my stomach three or four hours longer."