bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
chapter XXXVI
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

I NOW went to the Armenian church. It was carpeted with thick Persian rugs like a mosque. Several pictures in gaudy frames were hung against the wall. The building was crowded with devotees; the galleries being filled with women; their faces were invisible, owing to the lattice-work. However, some bright eyes peering inquisitively through the holes in the screen were quite sufficient to turn a man’s thoughts in their direction.

The priest put on his robes-several little boys assisting him in his toilette; a heavy, yellow silk garment, with a cross emblazoned in gold upon the back, was drawn on over his every-day apparel. Some more little boys bustled about with long candles, and seemed to do their best to get into each other’s way, then the service began.
chapter XXXVII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

ON we went, fortunately not down any more glaciers, and, after being upset about twenty times in the snow-drifts, reached Hasta Khan. This was a house built on the road-side for travellers. It was kept by an old Turk. According to him, the Kurds in the neighbourhood were engaged all the summer in robbing their neighbours, and were hardly ever brought to justice.

“They take our cattle,” said the man, “and they bribe the police. There is no sort of order here. What we want is our Sultan to be Padishah in his own dominions.”

I subsequently heard from the English Consul at Erzeroum a story which rather corroborated the Turk’s account of the Kurds.
chapter XL
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

LATER in the day, the Mutasarraf called at my house, and at once commenced his favourite theme, politics.

“What do the people in your country say about Russia’s conduct in Servia?”

“Many of them do not like it,” I replied.

“It was a cowardly act on the part of the Tzar, was it not?” said the Pacha; “he pretended to be at peace with our Sultan, and allowed Russian officers and soldiers to take part in the fight against us. I tell you what it is,” added the speaker, “Ignatieff wishes to cut off another arm from Turkey, by making Bulgaria independent, like Servia. If we are

destination. They were armed with needle rifles, but had no uniform, and were clad for the most part in rags and tatters. Many of them had no shoes or even slippers, but were walking with bare feet through the snow. A few men were riding on mules, and on a closer inspection I found that these poor fellows had been frost-bitten. Some of them had lost their toes on the march.
chapter XLIII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

THREE was not much European society at Erzeroum. It was made up of the English, French, and Russian Consuls and their families; no other European, so far as I could learn, being in the town. The Russian official was an energetic man. A short time previous he had discovered that some Circassians had the intention to leave the Caucasus, and enter Turkey. He had telegraphed the news in cypher to the Russian authorities. Troops had been sent to the Circassian villages. The inhabitants had been caught in the act of packing up their goods and chattels. Very strong measures had been taken. It was not likely that any similar attempt would be made by the inhabitants. There were now hardly any of them left.

An empty house is better than a bad tenant; this seems to be the policy of the Tzar’s generals in the Caucasus. It is undoubtedly cheaper to hang a prisoner than to imprison him. The Russian officers have great ideas of economy in this respect. The Russian Consuls at Erzeroum had been engaged for some time past in intriguing with the Armenians. Many Christians belonging to the higher monied classes were in favour of Russian rule--almost all of them being supplied with Russian passports. The traffic in such documents carried on in the Erzeroum district was very great. No large town in Armenia is free from pseudoRussians. Consul Taylor, writing from Erzeroum to the Earl of Clarendon on March the 19th, 1869, remarks about the Russian Consul, who was then in that city, as follows: “The exaggerated pretensions,
chapter XLVII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

IN the next room, which was only separated from us by a railing about three feet high, there were buffaloes, cows, calves, and pigeons, besides the relatives of the Armenian, the postman, and a Kurd. The latter individual had a wonderful turban in the shape of a bonnet on his head. It was made of blue satin, and adorned with gold thread. He was evidently very proud of this attire, and told the Armenian that he had purchased it at Erzeroum, and that, when he had finished wearing the turban, he should give it to his favourite wife.
chapter XLVIII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

OUR track led over some low hills. The ground was covered with deep snow. We had to dismount, and struggle as best we could through the treacherous soil. The sun shone bright above our heads; the reflection from the white surface at our feet was blinding in the extreme. We staggered about, and followed in each other’s track, like a number of drunken men, and after eight hours’ incessant toil reached Daha, a Kurdish village.
chapter LI
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

WE leave the barracks. A beautiful view extends before us. We look down upon the red, green, and white plateau which divides us from the Tzar’s dominions. In some places the sun has slightly melted the snow, the sand is exposed to view; in others, and nearer the lake which lies in the midst of the plateau, patches of vegetation can be seen. The clouds which overhung Ararat have been dispelled by the sun: the huge mountain, enveloped in its white pall, stands out in bold relief.
chapter LIII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

LATER in the day dinner was brought in-a chicken surrounded by a huge pile of rice. A Turk as rich as our Persian host would have provided his guest with fifteen or twenty courses, but the Persians are satisfied with one. I was not aware of the custom, and only tasted the chicken. Presently it was taken away; instead of a fresh dish making its appearance, some water was brought, in an ewer, for us to wash our hands. “You Englishmen are very temperate,” said the host, rising.
chapter LIV
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

WE rode along a flat country. A few hills could be seen on our bridle-hand. The track was in capital order for the march. After passing several small hamlets-amongst others, Arab Dize, Shadili, and Shalendili-we pulled up at a large village called Karenee. It was inhabited by Kurds, all of them being Persian subjects. Here there were 350 houses. Judging by the number of people who came to ask for medicine, so soon as I dismounted from my horse, the whole population was unwell. It appeared that the Persian in whose house I had stopped on the previous evening had sent word to the chief proprietor in this Kurdish village, to say that a celebrated hakim was on his way. No amount of expostulation saved us from the intrusion of the inhabitants. Every one wished me to look at his tongue and to feel his pulse. Radford, who was in another room, was interrupted in his cooking by a crowd of the humbler Kurds, whe believed that, when the master was so great a hakim, his servant must necessarily have some medical skill.
chapter LXII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

WE were once more in winter, deep snow lay along our path. There were several Yezeed villages by the track, which began to rise abruptly by the side of the river Murad, and was here and there cut out of the solid rock. In many places waterfalls dashed over the path, and we were literally riding beneath a canopy of water, which fell several hundred feet over precipices into the river below. At others the torrent dashed across the track itself. We had to advance with the greatest caution to avoid being swept down the abyss.
chapter LXIV
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

THERE were at the time of my visit to Kars about 20,000 troops quartered in and about the town; but large reinforcements could be sent from Erzeroum should occasion arise for their services. Later in the day Dr. Lanzoni, of the Quarantine, called upon me; he is an Italian, and in the International Service. On my alluding to the state of the streets in Kars, he remarked that he had written twice to the authorities at Constantinople, but that no notice had been taken of his letters. “We shall have an outbreak of typhus or plague in the summer,” continued the doctor. “The mortality will be very great, if we are besieged before the filth is cleared away.”
chapter LXVI
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

WE rode by several Turkish and Kurd villages in the direction of Ardanusch. The track was firm and tolerably level. After a four hours’ march we crossed the Ardahan river on a wooden bridge about seventy yards long by sixteen feet wide. The structure was very much out of repair; the planks were loose in many places, here and there large holes in the timber let us see the river below. We halted at Shadavan, a Turkish village containing about thirty houses, and close to the water’s edge. I had intended to have made a longer march, but the hired steeds were wretched brutes. They had shown unmistakable signs of fatigue. The proprietor of the house in which we stopped owned large flocks of sheep, the country round Ardahan being chiefly grazing land. He informed me that for every thousand sheep he possessed, the tax collector took from him the sum of thirty liras annually. There was no tax for sheep under a year old, nor for cows and oxen.
chapter LXVII
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

THE road took a very circuitous course as we approached Livana. We were several hundred feet above the Tschoroch river, and could gaze down almost perpendicularly into the abyss below. Suddenly the sound of a shout reached our ears. We glanced in the direction of the noise. “It is the cayek,” said Mohammed eagerly. “The men are taking it to Livana. They will next propose that we should hire it from there to Batoum. Holy Prophet!” he continued, “how the waters roar, how near the boat goes to the rocks! My body groans, Effendi, at the idea of going to Batoum by water.”
Façade, 1921–79
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

Edith Snwell wrote her Façadepoems as studies in word rhythms and onomatopoeia. They may appear to be nonsensical, but a continuous thread of allusions and images runs through them and evokes the bourgeois culture of turn-of-the century England-references to Queen Victoria, Tennyson, the Greek goddesses, flowers, trees, the music-halls, Spanish lovers, Negroes, English girls and nursemaids. Many of these are allusions to events and people in Edith’s unhappy childhood. The poet and her brothers decided they would be suitable for presentation as a drawing-room entertainment, a highbrow extension of country-house charades, and ought therefore to be accompanied by music.
Viola Concerto, 1928–9
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

In spite of its twentyish trappings—echoes of Gershwin here and there—the Viola Concerto belongs musically and spiritually to the late romantic tradition: it is essentially within the orbit of Bax, Elgar, and Ireland, a mature, not to say middle aged, outpouring. (To test this, listen to even the early works of the later-developing Michael Tippett: one cannot believe that he is of Walton’s generation, being only three years younger. The gulf seems more like two decades.) Not the least of the extraordinary virtues of this concerto is the choice of solo instrument: the dark and huskily passionate sound of the viola became the perfect medium for the music’s prevailing mood of plaintive melancholy.
Columbus and Henry V, 1942–5
Authors: Kennedy Michael
Published: November 2023

With the Howard film out of the way, Walton was free from July to compose Christopher Columbus.During June someone at the BBC had at last realized that 12 October 1942 was the exact anniversary of Columbus’s discovery, so the broadcast was fixed for that evening, much to Walton’s relief, though, as he drily pointed out to Bower, ‘I see Oct. 12 falls on a Monday so you had better get busy in case any “Monday Night at 8” business has been scheduled. C.C. should have a priority for this date.’ In 1942 there were only two radio channels, the Home and the Forces. Most serious programmes were on the Home, but ‘Monday Night at 8’ was a popular ‘magazine’ show. Walton had apparently not realized there was another possible rival-12 October 1942 was Vaughan Williams’s seventieth birthday.
Delhi
Authors: Stripp Alan
Published: November 2023

WEC occupied the buildings of Ramjas College, a former part of Delhi University, perched on an isolated hill some miles outside the city on the Rohtak road. The hill was idyllically named Anand Parbat, ‘the hill of happiness’, and was crowned by the college buildings and outbuildings which now formed the security area At the bottom of the hill, further away from the road, was the lower camp where we lived in rows of standard-issue Public Works Department bungalows. In each were ten or so rooms opening off the long front verandah with ‘bathrooms’ behind; these were cubicles with a canvas bath and a ‘thunderbox’. Majors and above had two rooms. In hot weather we often moved our beds on to the verandah, never forgetting the obligatory mosquito-net. The rule was to wear long sleeves and long trousers as an anti-malarial precaution after twilight, though most people preferred shorts and short sleeves during the day.
Naini Tal, Agra and Abbottabad
Authors: Stripp Alan
Published: November 2023

Wilfrid Noyce, also of C Section, was off to climb somewhere in the Himalayas; he was a promising climber who went twice to the South Col, once without oxygen, in the 1953 Everest expedition, and was later killed in an accident while climbing in the Soviet Union. Bernard Newman and I agreed on a more modest objective in the same area: Naini Tai, one of the hill-stations close to the Himalayas. There was a slow train across the plain to Bareilly, where we changed to a narrow gauge. The terrain altered as we reached the foothills and arrived at the terminus, Kathgodam; thence by rickety coach driven by a Sikh who worried us by gesturing at the views on the left while he negotiated hairpin bends to the right, with a sheer drop below. As the road twisted and climbed there were signposts to other hill-stations: Almora and Ranikhet.
Japanese Codes and Ciphers—What were they like?
Authors: Stripp Alan
Published: November 2023

In previous chapters I have often referred to the various crypto systems used by the Japanese. What were they like? What did they tell us? How were they sent? How were they intercepted? How were they broken? I shall try to answer these and similar questions in the next chapters. To understand the volume and the value of the information they gave us—the whole purpose of signals intelligence—we need to remember that by 1942 Japan occupied or controlled an area with an outer radius some 3,000-4,000 miles from Tokyo, compared with a German radius, excluding U-boats, usually under 1,000 miles from Berlin. Moreover in Asia and the Pacific overland communications were poor—in some places they scarcely existed—and telephone, cable and telex networks were scanty and unreliable. One telex link, newly installed between WEC Delhi and WWSC Bangalore, ran for twenty seconds and then went on strike for days. A really good radio network was therefore vital, and it carried almost all the countless orders and reports which a country’s armed services require.
How were they intercepted?
Authors: Stripp Alan
Published: November 2023

WEC at Delhi was part of a comprehensive array of Allied sigint units, large and small, which co-operated to ensure good coverage and exchanged news when progress was made. Furthest back were the very large units at Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall, Virginia, formerly a spacious girls school. Both of them tackled the really intractable problems of high-grade crypto systems that had never yet been broken, and fundamentally new materials which had lost us the ability to read a hitherto broken system. At a halfway stage came the large American and British units at Delhi, the former called ‘US 8’, the latter WEC with its two main out-stations: Western Wireless Sub-Centre at Bangalore in south India and Eastern Wireless Sub-Centre at Barrackpore near Calcutta. These were concerned with Japanese Army and Army Air traffic. There was also a large naval sigint unit at Anderson, near Colombo, and smaller ones at Kilindini near Mombasa and on Mauritius. They worked closely with US naval stations at Guam, Leyte and elsewhere, and acted as longstop for signals, travelling 4,000 miles or more, which through the vagaries of short-wave transmission, had evaded the main chain of intercept stations. These, quite apart from the huge US network in the Pacific, ran in a great arc from Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Darwin through Ceylon to Calcutta and south China.
Clandestine Groups and their Signals
Authors: Stripp Alan
Published: November 2023

I have briefly touched on the use of spies and captured documents; we must not forget the role played by the groups that operated behind the lines in Burma and elsewhere in south-east Asia, with the original task of organising sabotage and guerrilla activities, and an extra responsibility, added later after acrimonious controversy, for collecting intelligence. There was a link with signals intelligence: signals were their lifeline, and signals security was even more crucial for their survival than it was for any military unit. The Americans had a simple arrangement in the area: the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) looked after all their clandestine groups, whatever their function, while the OWI (Office of War Information) dealt with propaganda For the same functions in the same area the British had no fewer than ten secret organisations, five of which had no hand in sabotage, the training of guerrillas or the getting of intelligence.
The Crusading Movement,1096–1274
Authors: Lloyd Simon
Published: November 2023

Following the Council of Clermont and his call to arms (described in Chapter 1), Pope Urban II remained in France until September 1096. The projected expedition to the East was not the only reason for his extended stay, but Urban was naturally concerned to provide leadership and guidance in the formative stages of what would become the First Crusade, very much his own creation.
The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East,1095–1300
Authors: Riley-Smith Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Crusading attracted men and women of all classes. The involvement of the masses in the First Crusade was attributed by a contemporary to disorder, to an epidemic of ergotism which was sweeping western Europe, and to economic distress. He described what appeared to be a passage of migration, with many of the poor travelling ‘weighed down by wives, children and all their domestic goods’.
Parrot Pie For Break Fast
Authors: Robinson Jane
Published: November 2023

There is nothing quite like parrot pie for breakfast. First one must catch one's parrot, of course, and build the hearth to bake it, but that is all in a days work for the woman pioneer. This riveting anthology tells the story of over 100 such women spanning four centuries, from the lowliest kitchen skivvy to ambassadors' wives: emigrants who settled the wildernesses of the world in search of new and better lives. Many were lured abroad by the promise of work or fortune; some went because imperial duty called, while for others it was a most unfeminine lust for adventure that drew them away. But all faced challenges in their homes from home that were to test to the limit their spirits, their resourcefulness, even their survival.
First impressions
Authors: Robinson Jane
Published: November 2023

For Mrs Moodie, arriving in Canada in 1832 (along with some fifty thousand other emigrant pioneers driven by hope or despair that year alone), a sense of precedent—even the odd ghost or two—would have been a great comfort. She had answered the advertisements promising grants of land and an honest, homespun fortune to those who were unafraid of work and the wilderness, and, one long, apprehensive voyage later, had found herself suddenly marooned.
Introduction
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

A LOW room, with but little furniture, and that of the simplest kind; a few telegraphic instruments scattered about here and there in out-of-the-way corners, and mixed up promiscuously with rifles and wooden boxes, some filled with cartridges, others containing provisions for a journey ; two or three bottles, labelled “Quinine, “ on a rickety wooden table ; several men of various nationalities all talking at the same time, and a Babel of different languages ; —such was the scene around the writer of this work, who was leaning against the window-sill, and glancing from time to time at an old number of an English newspaper.
A Start with the Courier—Tea-money—A Breakdown—-The Book for Complaints —Improvement in Scenery—Trade in Shawls—An Eastern Tale—Podgor- naya—A Precipice—Oura—The Inn at Orsk—A Basin and a Table Napkin —A Servant with a Joyful Countenance—No Horses at the Stable—A Man who has Horses for Hire—You have a Grandmother—A Blue-eyed Siren.
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

I determined to take advantage of the presence of the man with the mails, and said that I would continue the journey with him, hoping by this means the quicker to reach my destination. The courier had no objection, and, after a considerable delay in obtaining horses for our sleighs we started. There was an advantage in accompanying him, for he was well provided with shovels and spades to dig out his vehicle in the event of the horses straying from the path and stumbling into a snowdrift. The main difficulty I should have would be to keep up with him, this being owing to the superiority of the teams which are supplied for the post However, I hoped to do this by the means of tea-money, an open sesame to the affections of Russian sleigh-drivers, and which I had hitherto found their most vulnerable point. Let it be known that you tip handsomely, and your Jehu will drive you along regardless of his master’s interest, whilst the regulation ten versts an hour can often be converted into half as much again.
The Present Khan—The Law of Succession—The Turkomans and their Tribute —The Royal Gardens—A Summer Palace—How the Sovereign administers Justice—God’s Vengeance—The Prison—The Prisoners—The Stocks—The Schools—The Moullahs—Reading, Writing, and the Koran—How Schoolmasters are remunerated for their trouble—Preparations for a Start to Bokhara—L’homme propose, mais Dieu dispose—A Letter—It must have cost a large sum of money sending that Telegram—General Milutin— The Bazaar—A Strict Order—A Nose-ring—The Unclean Animal—A Present from the Khan—His Invitation to Englishmen—His Hospitality.
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

The present Khan is the eleventh in succession of the same family. He commenced his reign ten years ago, at the death of the previous sovereign, the khanate descending from father to son, and not to the eldest male relative, as is the case amidst some other Mohammedan nations. The monarch receives the crown lands and gardens intact. With the rest of the nation, the property at a fathers death is divided equally amongst his sons, thus doing away with the possibility of any one possessing a large extent of the soil.
Departure from Khiva—The Khan’s Brother—His rumoured intention of visiting St. Petersburg—Villages—Goryin—The Governor of Anca—Lord Northbrook—Herat—Lahore—Lucknow—Calcutta—Our Soldiers in India— The Cossacks—Indian Teas—The Amou Darya—Lager—Three Squadrons Picketed out in the open—The Telegram from H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge—Colonel Ivanoff—Misunderstanding between Major Wood and Colonel Ivanoff—Atmosphere of Central Asia, and the Colonel’s Memory—Letter to General Kolpakovsky—Dinner at Ivanoffs—Russia and England—Merve—If taken a Strong Fort would be built there—Roads to Merve—The Khivans are Quiet People—Court Martial upon the Turkomans—Borrowing to pay the Interest of former Loans—Troops at Petro- Alexandrovsk—Ivanoff would shortly receive his Promotion—The Russki Mir (Russian World}—Article on the large number of German Officers in the Russian Army—Marked antipathy to the Germans—The New Military System in a transitory state—Contempt expressed for Austria—The Ladies at Petro-Alexandrovsk.
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

We left the city by its eastern gate, and presently passed by a building constructed with some regard to taste, and surrounded by a number of large gardens, all separated from each other by low walls. The house belonged to the sovereign’s brother, who, it was said, had the intention of visiting St. Petersburg, so as personally to ask the Tzar to withdraw his troops from the Khan’s dominions.
The Meet—Bokharan and Kirghiz Sportsmen—The Country—The Chase— The Falcons—A Club-house—A Ball—The way of Dancing Quadrilles —Vaises—A Mazurka—Theatricals—Osbaldestone’s Feat—The Davenport Brothers’ Trick—The Khan’s Treasurer—An Envoy from the Ameer of Bokhara—”Whois the Khan in the Moon?”—A Russo-German Scientific Expedition—A Prussian Officer—Nazar and Ivanoff’s Servants—Captain Yanusheff—Shurahan.
Authors: Burnaby Frederick
Published: November 2023

The following morning, after a hurried breakfast, an officer came and informed us that everything was ready for a start. I now mounted a little bay horse which, though hardly fourteen hands, danced about beneath me as if he had been carrying a feather-weight jockey for the Cambridgeshire. There were horses and men of all kinds and shapes, long-legged men on short-legged horses, and shortlegged men on giant Turkoman steeds. All the officers were in uniform, and some Bokharan and Kirghiz sportsmen, attired in crimson dressing-gowns, rode in the rear of our cavalcade.
After Yeats and Joyce
Authors: Corcoran Neil
Published: November 2023

Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts which have been the subject of much contention. For a start how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in Englsih by the Irish? It is a period in which ideas of Ireland--of people, community, and nation--have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have been articulated, defended, and challenged; a period which has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil. `after Yeats and Joyce' also suggests the immense influence of these two writers on the style, stances, and preoccupations of twentieth-century Irish literature. Neil Corcoran focuses his chapter on various themes such as `the Big House', the rural and provincial, with reference to authors from Kinsella and Beckett to William Trevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, providing a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing.
Introduction
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

There is one respect in which selecting samples of writing symptomatic of fascism in Italy is less problematic than for any other country. At least it is undeniable that a movement, a loose body of political myth (I have deliberately avoided the term ‘doctrine’), and in due course a party and a regime, arose in inter-war Italy referred to by supporters and opponents alike as ‘Fascismo’. (Italians write both ‘Fascismo’ and ‘fascismo’, though the adjective ‘fascista’ is never capitalized. I nevertheless capitalize both noun and adjective in the context of Mussolini’s movement, as explained above, p. 1.) As a result Part I is unencumbered by the problem of defining (generic) fascism which is implicit in Parts II, III, And V. Yet this simplifying factor is more than compensated for by a number of others peculiar to the Italian situation which complicate both exposition and analysis.
Fascism as an Opposition Movement
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

The first part of this section (Ai) opens with a flavour of the various brands of ultra-nationalism with their own project for the renewal ofltaly which came together in the interventionist campaign that helped generate support for the government’s decision to enter the war on the side of the Entente powers in May 1915. It samples the nationalism formulated by G. Papini and his entourage (notably Prezzolini and Corradini) ever since the founding of the periodicals ll Leonardo and La Voce, here expressed in the Futurist magazine Lacerba on the eve of the war (Text 1); revolutionary syndicalist thought in the manifesto of the main organization of interventionism, the Fascio rivoluzionario d’ azione internazionalista: the ‘international’ was soon dropped, but the term ‘Fascio’ became closely associated with the interventionist spirit (Text 2); Marinetti’s characteristic brand of political Futurism (Text 3), and Mussolini’s call for intervention published in the first issue of his newly founded n Popolo d’Italia, which went on to be the main daily newspaper of official Fascism (Text 4). The way these components of political myth converged on the idea of the war as the catalyst to national renewal and thereby prefigured Fascism is discussed in an important article by Adamson (1992).
revolutionary syndicalism, The War as a Proletarian Cause
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

The war is today a tragic reality, one which we cannot watch as indifferent onlookers without betraying the very cause of the revolution, without denying our socialist principles which speak to the peoples in the name of civilization and freedom. Thus it is useful to ask if the most vital interests of the working class of various countries, if the cause of social revolution, are better served by the position of strict neutrality desired for Italy by the official Socialist Party, in full accord with clerical opinion, and working completely to the advantage of the German military, or whether they are not furthered instead by intervention to support those States’ which represent in Europe the cause ofliberty and peace: to support France which is the cradle of a hundred revolutions; England, safeguard of every political freedom; and Belgium, so generous and heroic.
Filippo t. marinetti, The War as the Catharsis of Italian Society
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Since an illustrious past was crushing Italy and an infinitely more glorious future seethed in her breast, six years ago, under our all too voluptuous skies, Futurist energy was to be born, to organize itself, to be channelled, to find in usher motors, her vehicles of illumination and propagation. Italy, more than any other country, was in dire need of Futurism, because she was dying of pastism.3 The patient invented its own remedy. We happen to be its doctors. The remedy is valid for any country.
Roberto farinacci, The War as the Midwife of a New Italian People
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Roberto Farinacci (1892-1945) had been the leader of Cremona's interventionist lobby and a front-line soldier in the war. One ofthe founding members of Fascism in March 1919, he then became the undisputed ras (leader) of the Cremona Fascio, whose squadristi he led in numerous punitive expeditions against "Bolsheviks' during the near civil war conditions of the biennio rosso (the "red two years' of 1919-20). An admirer of Nazism in the 1930s, he became the most vociferous advocate of anti-Semitic laws in 1938 and of rapprochement with Germany. Under the Salo Republic he ran Cremona for the Nazis, and was eventually shot by partisans while escaping to Switzerland. This passage is taken from his autobiography, published in 193], and records the intoxicating sense of national renewal experienced nearly two decades earlier.
Fascism’s Myth: The Nation
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

We Fascists have no intention of coming to power by the tradesman’s entrance; we Fascists do not intend to turn ourbacks on the first recruits of our movement, such fearsome and ideal followers, for a miserable dish of ministerial pottage! [Prolonged and enthusiastic applause] Because we have a vision of the problem which could be called historical, in contrast to that other vision which could be called political and parliamentary. It is not a matter of assembling any old government, more dead than alive: it is aquestion of injecting into the liberal State-which has fulfilled tasks which were magnificent and which we will not forget-all the force of the new Italian generations which resulted from the war and our victory.
Benito Mussolini, The End of the Liberal Regime
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

The disappearance in May 1924 of Giacomo Matteotti, refonnist socialist and the Chamber of Deputies’ most outspoken critic of the Fascists’ recent electoral success, was widely and correctly assumed to be the work of Fascist hard-liners, and plunged Mussolini’s premiership into crisis. The king’s inertia and the opposition’s insistence on using the legalistic tactic of boycotting parliament (the ‘Aventine Secession’) meant that the revolutionary faction within Fascism embodied in ex-squadristi such as Farinacci gained the confidence to demand that Mussolini take the initiative. This he .finally did in the speech to the
Giovanni gentile, ,Fascism as a Total Conception of Life
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

We see two Italies before us: an old one and a new one: Italy of the past centuries which is our glory but it also a sad legacy which weighs on our shoulders and our spirits: let’s be frank, it is also our shame, a shame we want to expunge and make up for. It is precisely that great Italy which occupies such an important place in the history of the world. The only Italy, one might say, which is known, studied, and researched by all civilized peoples, and whose history is not a particular history, but an epoch in universal history: the Renaissance.[ ] The Italy of foreigners, and not of Italians.
Benito mussolini, Fascism as the Creator ofthe Third Italian Civilization
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Why do I say that it is only today that the people have a sense of victory? The political regime preceding ours, the liberal democratic [demoliberale] regime, ignored the masses. Later it no longer ignored them, but abandoned them to the mercies of others who whipped them up against the State.29 Now, when you see veterans marching two or three abreast, when you see the magnificent discipline within the Italian people, no longer moving through the streets like herds of sheep as they used to, but in tight formation, you realize that a profound transformation has come about in their hearts, you realize that the Italian people is about to enter the State, or has already become part ofit. Gentlemen, this is something to be proud of! After the war, who, by working with the raw materials of the war, on the passions, the triumphs, but also the disappointmentsof the war, succeeded in bringing this neglected people, grown hostile or indifferent, back into the fold of the State? Who? The Fascists, not liberalism, not socialism.
Augusto turati, The Leader as the Voice of the Reborn Race
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

It is always fascinating, even for non-academics, to observe the life of races, the tumultuous dramas which unfold in the life of peoples who appear as victorious conquerors on the stage of history and then suddenly plunge back into a state of obscurity and oblivion as if they were condemned to a wretched and inexorable fate. Occasionally one of these peoples suddenly rises up again: it desperately takes its stand once more on the shining shore; it ascends once more to join battle and achieve domination. The reasons for the resurrection?[... ] It seems as if each of these peoples has heard a superhuman voice which shouted out its orders.[... ] What miracle has been achieved? An idea. Which idea? The idea which in that moment represented the possibility of rebirth.
Achille starace, Going to the People
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Go to the people, to educate them, to raise them, to improve them physically and morally; to encourage them to love their land, their village, their family, their home; to impart the desire to know the true face of the Fatherland by travelling along its roads and pausing with fresh eyes to admire its infinite beauties, allowing them to know the mountains and seas, the impressive geographical features, varied and unchanging, which mark the limits of their country; to make them expert at swimming and climbing, and in the skills which may be necessary in a future war! To loosen their muscles in joyful and simple sporting contests, to familiarize them once more with the glorious and charming traditions of their people [gente], whether expressed in a colourful costume, the harmony of a song, or a religious procession which wends its way chanting psalms, or a churchyard watched over by a bell tower constantly ringing out its message to the faithful, or a simple country dance held on a threshing-floor freshly swept clean and decked with flags.
Benito mussolini, The Birth of a New Civilization
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

We have entered fully into a period which can be called the transition from one type of civilization to another. The ideologies of the nineteenth century are collapsing and find no one to defend them. Is it not symptomatic of this that there are socialists tired of the socialism which had been mummified by Marxist dogma? In the same way there are democrats who no longer want to have anything to do with democracy, and liberals who believe the demo-liberal phase of Western States is over. There are both negative and positive reasons for the decay and demise of demo-liberal civilization. The negative ones can be summed up as Capital’s evolution into an impersonal form, which was thus in a certain sense already socialized and ready to fall into the arms of the State; in the impotence of executive power, in the arrogance of parliaments, in the class mysticism and mythology of the proletariat. The last four years of crisis45 have accentuated the characteristics of the situation. But the new Fascist ideas, which are active in every nation in the world, would not have reached their present state of maturity without the impact of what I would call positive reasons. In order of time and importance the most significant of these has been the decennial celebrations of the Fascist Revolution.46 Millions of people in every country have finally seen and understood.
Benito mussolini, The Vital Need for Empire
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Some reasons which have been put forward for the Italo--Ethiopian conflict by the Italian press to repudiate those alleged in the foreign press are of secondary importance on which it is unnecessary to dwell. That in Ethiopia slavery exists, that is the buying and selling of human beings, is admitted by the negus47 himself. That this trade takes atrocious forms is documented in a thousand reports, mostly carried out by the English, the latest being published in 1932.[... ] Another non-essential reason: race. Firstly Ethiopians still do not consider themselves Negroes but Semites.48 Secondly there are thousands of Negroes who fight as soldiers under the Italian flag and who have always fought magnificently for us and themselves. This can be said too of the Arabs, some of whom are organizing an ‘Arab youth of the Littorio’.
Benito mussolini, Blood-Brothers: Fascism and Nazism
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Mussolini had first referred to a Rome-Berlin Axis in November 1936 and, by the time he visited Berlin in a display of solidarity, the co-operation agreed in foreign policy had already taken concrete form in the Fascist and Nazi intervention on the side ofFranco. The Axis was to have enormous consequences for Italy in the introduction of racial legislation in 1938, the ultimately unsustainable human and military cost of committing troops after 1940 to the Russian and North African fronts in the wake of the Nazis’ imperialist aggression, and the declaration of war on the United States in December 1941. These events were to lead eventually to Italy’s crushing defeat on all fronts and the transformation of much of its territory into a battleground for the Allies’ momentous onslaught against the Third Reich from July 1943 till April 1945.
Gioacchino volpe, The Introduction of Fascist Racial Policy
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

This word [razza or ‘race’] had recurred for some time in the writings and speeches of many Fascists, including Mussolini, from which collections of quotations were assembled to demonstrate the complete consistency both of his thought and of Fascism. Actually race had been talked about more often than not in the sense of ‘people’ [popolo], ‘nation’ [nazione] or ‘nationality’ [stirye], with essentially moral characteristics. Now,52 however, efforts were made to identify the materialistic content of this concept and a group of academics, mostly physiologists, zoologists, and biologists, formulated the Italian doctrine of race, which had all the hallmarks of an official doctrine and was published in all the newspapers. In contrast to the racism of German Nazism and, although they have never theorized about it extensively, of the Anglo-Saxons, Italian racism, at least in its first formulation, did not talk about superior and inferior races, and did not establish a relationship between biological and moral values. But, like German Nazism, Italian racism immediately trained all its heavy artillery on the Jewish target. In doing so it did not forget the importance of explaining its appearance in terms of the new situation created by the Empire and the new needs of the Italian nation, now a great colonial power, and hence in close contact with coloured races, and bent on creating in citizens a keen awareness of their individuality, while keen to keep at bay the danger posed by the half-caste with all the political and moral disasters associated with him.
People of Italy! Run to your Arms!
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

An hour marked by destiny is striking in the skies of our Fatherland. [Loud cheers] The hour of irrevocable decisions. The declaration of war has been sent [cheers, loud shouts of ‘War! War!’] to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. We are entering the field ofbattle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West, who at every turn have impeded the march, and often threatened the very existence of the Italian people.
Carlo costamagna, The New Europe which will Arise from theAxis Victory
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

British power principally manifested itself as an attack on Roman civilization [romanita) and Catholicism, and hence it established itself as the intransigent defender of the state of political fragmentation into which the European continent had fallen since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire [impero-chiesa], expending its energies negatively in the maintenance of territorial balance while the spirit of the British people wasted itself in equally negative rhetorical claims to constituting a ‘universal’ civilization.
The Fascist Republican Party, Fascism Reborn
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

The Constituent Assembly is convoked, a sovereign power of popular origin, to declare the decadence of the Monarchy, and solemnly condemn the treachery of the last king, to proclaim the Social Republic and nominate its Leader. The Republican Constituent assembly has the duty to guarantee to citizens, soldiers, workers, and taxpayers the right to exercise control and responsible criticism of the acts of the public administrations; every five years the citizen will be called upon to pronounce on the nomination of the Leader of the Republic.
Paul De Lagarde, The Need To Transcend Liberalism
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Paul de Lagarde (ne Botticher: 187r91) followed in the footsteps of the Grimm brothers by exploring the questions of German nationalism through an academic concern with philological and cultural issues. The main focus of his quest for a distinctive national identity was the corrosive effects of materialism and secularization and the corresponding need to create a German religious identity through a ‘German Christianity’. His German Writings, published between 1876 and 1881, made him one of the most famous critics of Bismarckian Germany, especially its liberalism and the allegedly harmfal influence of foreigners, particularlyJews (though his anti-Semitism remained ‘ethical’ rather than biological). He exerted considerable influence on the volkisch movement4 and his writings became part of the Nazi literary canon (see Stern 1961).
Stefan George, Planting The New Reich
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

Stefan George (1868-1933) was the centre of a circle of poets and aesthetes convinced that ‘spiritual Germany’ had to be rescued from the abyss of vulgarity and materialism into which it had fallen by a leader of exceptional visionary and creative powers, thus ushering in a ‘new Reich’. The writings of the Georgekreis fed the currents of cultural antiliberalism symptomatic of the Los-von-W eimar movement (seep. 94 above), and once the Nazis came to power they instituted a Stefan George Prize. However, their regime was too vulgarly demagogic for George’s aristocratic taste and he went into exile in Switzerland. The cryptic allusion to the flag bearing the ‘true symbol’ of the people is particularly intriguing since it was one of George’s circle, Alfred Schuler, who helped establish the swastika as a symbol of volkisch rebirth a decade before the Nazi movement was formed. Predictably, this poem was later included in IAngenbucher’s anthology of approved Nazi poetry (see Text 80).
Arthur Moeller Van Den Bruck The Eternal German Reich
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

German nationalism is the protagonist of the final Reich. This Reich is always promised. And it is a promise which is never fulfilled. It is the perfection which is only achieved in imperfection.[... ) German nationalism fights for the possible Reich. The German nationalist of this age is, as a German being, still a mystic, but as a political being he has become a sceptic. He knows that the realization of an idea is always being postponed; that, translated into reality, spirituality normally appears very human, and that means very political; and that nations can realize the idea with which they are charged only in so far as they assert themselves historically and prevail.
Edgar jung, The Organic Gennan Nation
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

because for us the highest value is irrefutable. If this transvaluation of all values also leads to material changes, then we may be called revolutionary as well. Our revolutionary cast of mind only applies, however, to the external aspects of the crumbling edifice of society. In truth we wish to put an end to the 400-year individualistic revolution of the West and usher in a creative age of conservation. The path to this goal is called a battle. Our justification is that the deepest will to conserve leads one to destroy. True value demands the destruction of what is the void of value.
Gottfried Feder, Let There Be Light
Authors: Griffin Roger
Published: November 2023

From out of chaos the world came forth, from the subordinate came order, from raw eddying energy the organic. Today chaos reigns on earth, confusion, struggle, hate, envy, conflict, oppression, exploitation, brutality, egotism. Brother no longer understands brother. Fellowcountrymen fight each other, beating men to death just because they wear a swastika.[... ) The victims of the chaos were simple, unassuming, good-natured.