USA EMBASSY ROMERichard Washburn Child speaks about Benito Mussolini 1928
It is far from my purpose to elaborate the material in this book, to interpret it, or To add to it.
With much of the drama it contains I, being Ambassador of the United States at the time, was
intimately familiar; much of the extraordinary personality disclosed here was an open book to
me long ago because I knew well the man who now, at last, has written characteristically,
directly and simply, of that self for which I have a deep affection.
For his autobiography I am responsible. Lives of Mussolini written by others have interests of
sorts.
“But nothing can take the place of a book which you will write yourself,” I said to him.
“Write myself?” He leaned across his desk and repeated my phrase in amazement.
He is the busiest single individual in the world. He appeared hurt as if a friend had failed to
understand.“Yes,” I said and showed him a series of headings I had written on a few sheets of paper.
“All right,” he said in English. “I will.”
It was quite like him. He decides quickly and completely.
So he began. He dictated. I advised that method because when he attempts to write in longhand
he corrects and corrects and corrects. It would have been too much for him. So he dictated. The
copy came back and he interlined the manuscript in his own hand -- a dash of red pencil, and a
flowing rivulet of ink -- here and there.
When the manuscripts began to come to me I was troubled because mere literal translators lose
the vigor of the man himself.
“What editing may I do?” I asked him.
“Anything you like,” he said.” You know Italy, you understand Fascism, you see me clearly as
any one.”
But there was nothing much to do. The story came through as it appears here. It is all his and -
- what luck for all of us -- so like him! Approve of him or not, when one reads this book
one may know Mussolini or at least, if one’s vision is clouded, know him better. Like the
book or not, there is not an insincere line in it. I find none.
Of course there are many things which a man writing an autobiography cannot see about
himself or will not say about himself.
He is unlikely to speak of his own size on the screen of history.
Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pro and cons, are all put aside the
only true measure of a man’s greatness from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in
the answer to the question: “How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest number of human beings -- their hearts, their thoughts, their material welfare, their relation to the universe?”
In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent
greatness equal to those of Mussolini.
Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the permanence of his success or
not, consider him superman or not, as you may, he has put to a working test, on great and
growing numbers of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality, in applied
plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in the applied principle that contents are
more important than labels on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost
universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a state. He has not only
been able to change the lives of human beings but he has changed their minds, their hearts,
their spirits. He has not merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.
He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the bricks. It is one thing to
administer a state. The one who does this well is called a statesman. It is quite another thing to
make a state. This is super statesmanship. I knew him well before the world at large, outside of
Italy, had ever heard of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the saddle
and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away chaos’ own junk pile from
Italy. But no man knows Mussolini. An Italian newspaper offered a prize for the best essay
showing insight into the mystery of the man. Mussolini, so the story goes, stopped the contest by
writing to the paper that such a competition was absurd. Because he himself could not enter an
opinion.
In spite of quick, firm decisions, in spite of grim determination, in spite of well-ordered
diagrammed pattern and plan of action fitted to any moment of time, Mussolini, first of all,
above all and after all, is a personality always in a state of flux, adjusting its leadership to a
world eternally in a state of flux. Change the facts upon which Mussolini has acted and he will change his action. Change the hypotheses and he will change his conclusion.
And this perhaps is an attribute of greatness seldom recognized. Most of us are forever hoping
to put our world in order and finish the job. Statesmen with some idea to make over into reality
hope for a day when they can say: “Well, that’s done!” And when it is done -- often enough it is
nothing. The bridges they have built are now useless, because the rivers have all changed their
courses and humanity is already shrieking for new bridges. This is not an unhappy thought,
says Mussolini. A finished world would be a stupid place -- intolerably stupid.
The imagination of mere statesmen covers a static world.
The imagination of true greatness covers a dynamic world. Mussolini conceives a dynamic
world. He is ready to go on the march with it, though it overturns all his structures, upsets his
theories, destroys all of yesterday and creates a screaming dawn of tomorrow.
Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for
reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense
that he believes that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed
theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and
programmes.
He has marched up several hills with the thousands and then marched down again. This
strange creature of strange life and strange thoughts, with that almost psychopathic fire which
is in saints and villains, in Napoleons, in Jeanne d’Arcs, and in Tolstoy, in religious prophets
and in Ingersolls, has been up the Socialist, the international, the liberal, and the conservative
hills and down again. He says: ”The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity
beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. Failed yesterday and succeed tomorrow.
The machine first of all must run!”
I have watched, with a curiosity that has never failed to creep in on me, the marked
peculiarities, physical and mental, of this man. At moments he is quite relaxed, at ease; and yet
the unkown gusts of his own personality play on him eternally. One sees in his eyes, or in a
quick movement of his body, or in a sentence suddenly ejaculated, the effect of these gusts, just
as one sees wind on the surface of the water.
There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of the tread of the cat. He likes
cats -- their independence, their decision, their sense of justice and their appreciation of the
sanctity of the individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with until those who
guard his life protest against their social set. His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being
of aristocratic lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry but, condescendingly,
of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his own prowl, as he walks along in his riding
boots, springy, active, ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One quality is
feline, however -- it is the sense of his complete isolation. One feels that he must always have had this isolation as a boy, isolation as a young radical,
adventurer, lover, worker, thinker.
There is no understudy of Mussolini. There is no man, woman, or child who stands anywhere in
the inner orbit of his personality. No one. The only possible exception is his daughter Edda. All
the tales of his alliances, his obligations, his ties, his predilections are arrant nonsense. There
are none -- no ties, no public predilections, no alliances, no obligations unpaid.
Financially? Whom could he owe? He has made and can unmake them all. He is free to test
every officeholder in the whole of Italy by the yardstick of service and fitness. Beyond that I
know not one political debt that he owes. He has tried to pay those of the past; I believe that
the cynicism in him is based upon the failure of some who have been rewarded to live up to the
trust put in them.
“But I take the responsibility for all,” says he. He says it publicly with jaws firm; he
says it privately with eyes somewhat saddened. He takes responsibility for everything -- for discipline, for censorship, for measures which, were less rigor required, would appear repressive and cruel. “Mine!” says he, and stands or falls on that. It is an admirable courage. I could, if I wished, quote instance after instance of this acceptance -- sometimes when he is not to blame--of the whole responsibility of the machine. “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 on labels after.
Mussolini has superstitious faith in himself. He has said it. Not a faith in himself to make
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 chose it. Wilson’s slogan 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 analyses 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 was 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 his
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 -- and that the first are somewhat
more magnetic, more lasting and more boyish and likeable 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!
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 shoulders 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
Benito Mussolini
New York, 1928
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Foreword to Volume 1 by Richard Washburn Child
Former Ambassador to Italy
Richard Washburn Child (1881-1935)
Non-career appointeeState of Residence: Massachusetts
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (Italy) Appointed: May 26, 1921Presentation of Credentials: July 28, 1921Termination of Mission: Left post January 20, 1924
For all of these unique and precious gifts of vision and leadership and for the twenty-one years
of labour in the political vineyards of Italy as the Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini was shot
dead, assassinated, by a treacherous cadre of enemy agents, loyal to foreign governments, as a
common criminal on June 28, 1945: And then, to the eternal shame of Italy and the Italian
people, his body along with others was hung from a girder of a gasoline filling station in the
Piazalle Loreto for all of Milan and Italy to see; and still further, went beyond the limits of
decent human dignity and self-respect, desecrated and dishonored his body in an unspeakable
public spectacle of human savagery and bestiality for the whole world to see.
