Literary Digest/February 26, 1927

IF I HAD BEEN AN ITALIAN, I am sure I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism,” declared Mr. Winston Churchill, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an interview he accorded at Rome to a number of journalists at the time he visited Premier Mussolini. This frank avowal of Mr. Churchill greatly distresses some British editors and makes some of them hopping mad, but others praise Mr. Churchill, although with reservations. He went on to say that in Great Britain they have not had to face the danger of Bolshevism as it appeared in Italy, but he added that of one thing he had not even a doubt, namely, that “in the struggle with Communism we shall succeed in strangling it.” As further quoted in the press, Mr. Churchill remarked:

“I will, however, say a few words on the internal aspect of Fascism. Your movement has abroad rendered a service to the whole world. The great fear that ever tormented every democratic or Socialist leader was that of being outbid or surpassed by some other leader more extreme than himself. It has been said that a continual movement to the Left, a kind of fatal landslide toward the abyss, has been the character of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces.

“This way can recall the mass of the people to cooperation that is loyal to the honor and interests of the State. Italy has demonstrated that the great mass of the people, when it is well led, appreciates and is ready to defend the honor and stability of civil society. It provides the necessary antidote to the Russian virus. Henceforth no nation will be able to imagine that it is deprived of a last measure of protection against malignant tumors, and every Socialist leader in each country ought to feel more confident in resisting rash and leveling doctrines.”

The Manchester Guardian concedes that without doubt Mr. Churchill meant to serve some serious diplomatic purpose by calling together a number of journalists at Rome to hear him give “a certificate of character to the Fascist Government.” But any such gain, it thinks, is bought at too great a price in loss of credit to Mr. Churchill’s country, from which he can not be wholly separated in the eyes of the world. This daily then remarks: “The root fact about Fascism, as it is the root fact about Bolshevism, is that it rests on a basis of murderous violence. Neither Fascism nor Bolshevism denied itself the use of just as much murder and terrorism as were needed to set up its domination. Nobody doubts that both Governments now rely for their security on a general conviction among their subjects that to oppose them manfully would be to incur a great risk of being murdered, with or without formalities.

“Whether government resting on a reserve of contingent murder, arson, and looting is a good institution or not, it is certainly not an English institution, and an English statesman gives a false idea of his country to foreigners when he asks to have it reported that he thinks ‘a service to the whole world’ has been done by the Fascist repudiation of every English political idea, and by its recourse, after the Leninist manner, to murderous intimidation as a means of seizing and keeping political power. A few English politicians may sometimes, when in a particularly bad temper, have a passing desire to bludgeon their opponents, but the general and inveterate feeling of this nation is that the bludgeoning trick is both base and futile. Mr. Churchill libels his countrymen when he encourages the wild men of poor Italy to entertain the delusion that England admires them, or that she regards the criminal politics of Fascism as a serious alternative to her own methods.”

The Guardian expresses its belief that some extremist politicians—whether of the Left or the Right—in all European countries view the political future as a probable wild-beast fight between the Fascist and Bolshevik forces of disorder. Some of them even speak as if they liked this prospect, we are told, and they are already carrying on the war of verbal abuse which would no doubt accompany the squalid bloodshed to which they look forward so eagerly. Like Mr. Churchill, they see in their dreams a “victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions” of Bolshevism or Fascism, as the case may be, this newspaper charges, and it proceeds as follows:

“But we hope it is not too Chauvinist of us to harp on the fact that Englishmen have a characteristic objection to being dominated by the bestial appetites and passions of anybody, no matter how fine the sentiments that he professes. Englishmen have now a somewhat long record of tough resistance to that commonest of bestial appetites and passions—the passion for bullying other animals or persons into abject submission to one’s own will.

“And they are quite sharp enough to diagnose that passion equally easily under a black shirt and under the presumably red shirt worn in the excessive Army of Soviet Russia. In Italy there is no free press to save Italians from the wildest delusions about public opinion outside their country. Many Italians may innocently imagine that in England we are all tired of our Englishness and on the point of turning either ‘Englishmen Italianate’ or ‘Englishmen Muscovite.’ Mr. Churchill’s speech will strengthen any such unfortunate delusion. The truth—however poor ‘copy’ it might have made for the assembled journalists at Rome—is that we are, with few exceptions, quite English still, quite obstinately attached to civilized politics.”

British criticism of Premier Mussolini has often been harsh, inconsiderate and not particularly intelligent, observes the Belfast Northern Whig. This must have deeply offended the Duce’s legions of fervent admirers, says this daily, who no doubt, like the inhabitants of many Continental countries, imagine that the British press is the mouthpiece of the Government of the day. So it is claimed that Mr. Churchill’s reasoned and evidently sincere tribute to Premier Mussolini will go far toward removing the unpleasant impression caused by less tactful persons. But we are also told that:

“It will be noted that the British statesman did not, like some of Signor Mussolini’s eulogists in this country, who are at least as unwise as his detractors, hold up his policy as one to which the British Prime Minister should ‘play the sedulous ape.’ On the contrary, he laid stress on the fact, so frequently ignored, that no policy could be independent of atmosphere and environment. The political atmosphere of Britain is very different from that of Italy. The national temperaments have more points of unlikeness than of likeness. We have, as Mr. Churchill said, our own way of doing things—including the combating of the evil forces which Signor Mussolini crushed with Draconian severity.

“Mr. Churchill, and his fellow-Ministers, and their supporters abhor those evil forces as thoroughly as do Signor Mussolini and his faithful Fascists. They rejoice over the victory that Fascism won, recognizing that it was a victory for civilization, for humanity, all over the world, and not in Italy alone. They are not prepared to condemn any of the methods which Fascism employed to gain that victory, conceding that its leaders understood the situation, and how to deal with it, far better than any alien observer could do. But they are not necessarily of opinion that the same methods could advantageously be adopted here, even if—which may never be the case—a crisis closely resembling that which developed prior to the historic march to Rome were to arise in Britain.”

From the French standpoint, as indicated by Andre Chaumeix in the Paris Figaro, the dominant fact in Mr. Churchill’s declaration to the journalists he received at Rome is that Fascism vanquished Bolshevism in Italy, and this writer goes on to say:

“England, which is imbued with liberal ideas and Puritan influences, has no particular leaning toward Fascism considered as political discipline. But England, strong in its diplomatic traditions and in its experimental methods, can see without partisanship what succeeds, and can take from it a useful lesson. Fascism is an Italian phenomenon which does not seem to be assimilable by other nations. But such as it is, history shows that it has saved Italy from Communism. Mr. Winston Churchill, who holds himself above all quarrels of domestic politics, therefore was able to recognize publicly at home the truth of this fact.”

This contributor to the Figaro then notes that there is much importance in the remark of Mr. Churchill that Italy’s fight against Communism was of service to the entire world, because Communism is a menace to the entire world, and he adds:

“Every day events reveal the objectives of Moscow and the activity of Soviet propaganda throughout the world. Only lately Europe was astonished to discover into what dangers Moscow undertakings had plunged Poland. England more than any other nation is cognizant of Soviet aims and actions, because everywhere she turns she finds the Soviets in her way. She saw them working against her at the time of the general strike and during the miners’ strike. She has seen them in action in Egypt, in India, and now in China. Therefore her mind is made up and she proclaims the fact.”

England understood, we read then, that Moscow’s aims were directed against all Western civilization, and that the conflict was on between civil society and Communism. England hopes to triumph by its own methods and according to its own means, but it is pointed out—

“England knows how to value the effort of others, and that is why she looks upon the results obtained by Italy with great favor. In a nation sensitive, enthusiastic, and proud, there were found men who were able to change the minds of those inspired by the adventure of revolution, and to persuade them to an activity and to hopes and to beliefs of a better sort, as well as to make certain the intimate and confident cooperation between the workers and the State. It is this success that seems so good an omen to Winston Churchill and which caused him to say that the evolution of Italy in late years ‘had rendered a service to the whole world.’

“This contention has often been supported in France and especially in this newspaper. It is one that others would support perhaps if they were not cramped by party considerations or electoral interests. It is one that could be defended by every believer in social order, and even by Germany, if it were not interested in making up to Moscow.”