Benito Mussolini

MUSSOLINI, BENITO (1883— ), Italian statesman and journalist, was born July 29, 1883, at Dovia, in the commune of Predappio (province of Forli). His father, Alessandro Musso lini, was a blacksmith of internationalist revolutionary and anti religious opinions, and played an active part in the local Socialist movement, while his mother, Rosa Maltoni, was a school teacher of deep religious convictions; the views of both parents affected young Mussolini in different ways at different stages of his career. He was sent to the Salesan college of Faenza, where he showed considerable intelligence but a passionate, insubordinate spirit. Later he went to the normal school at Forlimpopoli, and eventually qualified as a school teacher at the age of r8. obtaining an appoint ment at Gualtieri (province of Reggio Emilia). As a youth he developed a love of literature and read widely, and soon became interested in the Italian Socialist movement. But he tired of teaching, and determined to go to Switzerland to improve his education. There he earned a precarious livelihood by manual labour of various kinds, but attended the courses at the universities of Lausanne and Geneva, and secured a diploma as teacher of French. He lived mostly among the working classes, and, born organizer as he was, he founded trade unions and even promoted strikes, with the result that he was expelled from one canton after another, and finally from the Confederation. After performing his military service in the Bersaglieri, he returned to teaching, but found time to improve his knowledge of the classics. In 1908 he was involved in the political agrarian conflicts in Romagna, was arrested, tried and condemned to io days' imprisonment, and afterwards was under police surveillance as a revolutionary.

At the end of 1908 he went to Trento, where he had been sum moned by the local Chamber of Labour as secretary, and he also joined the staff of the local Socialist paper L'Avvenire. But when he realised that the Trentino Socialists, in their loathing for the national idea, took their cue from the Vienna Government, Mus solini went over to the Popolo, a paper edited and founded by Cesare Battisti, also a Socialist, but above all an Irredentist patriot who was afterwards to serve in the Italian Army during the War, until captured by the Austrians and hanged as a traitor. Here Mussolini took up the study of German literature, and became deeply interested in philosophy, especially in that of Nietzsche. His association with Battisti first inspired him with Irredentist ideas, and after publishing an article stating that "the Italian frontier does not end at Ala" he was arrested and expelled from Austria. On returning to Italy he published an essay of Irredentist tendencies on "The Trentino as seen by a Socialist" in La Voce, a periodical printed in Florence which gathered around it some of the most brilliant young litterateurs of the day.

The next period of Mussolini's life was wholly devoted to Socialist activity. In 1910 he founded and edited a paper at Forli called La lotto di classe, but while he vigorously supported the ideals of Socialism, he deplored the materialism, as he considered it, of the bourgeois spirit into which the Italian Socialist party had degenerated. He drew further and further away from Marx and Lassalle, feeling more sympathy with the ideas of Baboeuf, Blanqui, Proudhon, and above all with the syndicalism of Sorel. An opponent of parliamentarianism, he reproved the Italian socialists for compounding with the bourgeois parties in order to secure seats in the Chamber and lucrative contracts for bogus co-operative societies; he not only advocated direct action, but also put it into practice whenever he saw a chance of securing real advantages for the proletariat thereby, and, unlike other Socialist leaders, he was ever ready to lead his followers and run risks.

The Tripoli Campaign.

When Giolitti's Government decided to send a military expedition to Tripoli, although not rejecting the idea of war in general, Mussolini opposed this policy because, as he said, unlike the Nationalists, who wanted a vast Italy, he pre ferred an Italy that should be well cultivated, rich and free. On Sept. 25-27, 1911 he therefore organized a popular movement at Forli against the Tripoli expedition, inciting the mob to resist the authorities. He was in consequence arrested and condemned to five months' imprisonment. At the congress of Reggio Emilia in 1912, when Bissolati and Bonomi were expelled from the party for supporting the Government's African policy, Mussolini re mained one of the die-hard revolutionaries, and in December of that year was made editor of the Avanti, the official organ of the party. Under his able editorship the circulation rose from 40,000 to mo,o0o, and his vigorous leaders gave the paper an entirely new character. He insisted particularly on the necessity for im proving the economic and social conditions of the southern provinces, which other Socialist leaders neglected because their inhabitants gave few votes to the party. During the so-called "Red Week" in the Marche and Romagna (June 7-14, 1914), Mussolini was one of the most active leaders of the outbreak. It was on this occasion that he lost many illusions concerning his fellow Socialist leaders. He also realized that the masses were anything but ripe for revolution.