Word: mussolini
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...year ago this week Benito Mussolini entered the war crying: "Our conscience is absolutely clear!" So saying, he staked his country's independence in a game of war for Empire. He lost the game. For although the Bullfrog of the Mediterranean might devour lesser organisms (except those, like Greece, that stuck in his throat), he was firmly locked in the alligator-jaws of Nazi conquest. Were he a man to be amused by his own misfortune, he might laugh gutturally at the paradox of his position: If his ally wins the war, Italy may rule an empire of sorts...
...Imperialists. The Italian people followed Mussolini to war reluctantly. Their reluctance arose from their centuries-old indifference to imperialism. Through the Renaissance they had a deep-rooted and passionate love for their own paese. It took another 300 years to extend this local patriotism to love of their country, their peninsula. In the 72 years since Italy began acquiring an empire the Italian people have usually remained stolidly bored by the process...
...necessary to have the courage to say that Italy cannot remain forever shut up in one sea, even if that sea be the Adriatic. . . . There are other seas that may interest us. . . . Treaties are transactions which represent agreements, points of equilibrium. No treaty is eternal.-so said Mussolini, dreaming of expansion in 1923. Benito Mussolini was a man in whom the imperial dream was an obsession. Italy would grow strong through Fascism, then Italy would conquer an empire. Not only bits of Africa would be hers; she would rule Mare Nostrum and its shores. Italian ships would ply back & forth...
When Germany took the Rhineland Mussolini had an attack of ulcers. When Hitler conducted his blood purge Mussolini began losing his hair (and he has grown bald since then). When Hitler grabbed Austria, Mussolini had a heart attack. When Germany and Russia signed their Non-Aggression Pact, Mussolini was fitted for glasses (and he does wear glasses now). When Germany invaded Poland, Mussolini couldn't sleep...
Whether or not these reports were true, certain it is that no official explanation has ever been given his abrupt withdrawal from Italy's Army maneuvers in August 1939. During the weeks of crisis that followed, Mussolini espoused a strange new policy: silence. He has broken silence publicly only nine times since then, and those speeches were short, bitter. Last month he failed to make his habitual appearance on the Palazzo Venezia on the anniversary of the birth of Fascism...