Evening star., 1943-07-26
BY RICHARD G.. MASSOCK
Associated Press SIAN Writer

UHlCH LHfS Is inc FTSt.J
BY RICHARD G. MASSOCK,
Associated Press STAN Writer
The modern Caesar, the man OF
destiny, the leader.
They called Benito Mussolini bv
high-sounding names. his followers
at home and his admirers abroad,
when his meteoric rise dazzled the
world and the personality of The
Great Chin" flashed from the bal
comics of Rome.
But his enemies. those he crushed
imprisoned or drove away to exile,
hao other names for him: The ty-
rant, the clown. the butcher And,
finally, the betrayer OF Italy, the
stooge of Hitler.
At the last. even those in Italy
who had tolerated him for 50 long
without protest settled on perhaps
the aptest epithet of all, that ego
ist!"
Stabbed Schoolmate.
What manner of man attained so
much power, acquired so many ad-
mirers and incurred so many ha-
| treds. until foreign emulator
among Italy's historic enemy. the
German people of the north,
dragged him down to ruin?
One day in 1894, a scowling,
poorly dressed boy of ii was
brought back to his dusty village
home in Predappio from the city of
Faenza. He had been expelled from
Catholic school there as a tough"
after turbulent two years. He had
tabled a schoolmate with a pen
knife, some said.
Even then people must have been
inclined to excuse him. for he had
suffered the taunts of boys who
felt themselves his betters. He had
become bitterly aware of poverty.
His father, Alessandro Mussolini,
was blacksmith and a Social revo-
lutionary. The mother, to whom
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini
was born In bare. two-room house
in Forli Province On July %, 1888.
was q school teacher.
Became 4 Socialist.
Forli lies in the Romagna region
Of Central Italy, long a rival to
Sicily as a center Of violent politics
In Romagna the politics were red
1t was no wonder. then, that Benito.
like his father. one time mayor of
his village, became Socialist
agitator
His mother had prevailed on the
anti-clerical father to send him to
Faenza. She wanted him to be a
school teacher. like herself, so she
sent him on to the Royal Normal
Scnool at Forlim- Popoh and there
the boy acquired rudimentary cul-
ture beyond the usual station of a
peasant in the italy of that day
But teaching held no attraction
for an impoverished young man,
discontented with his lot, wild to
reform the world In Switzerland,
though, he might find wider hori-
zon-so there he went in 1902 as an
INDECENT emigrant. obsessed with
atheism. republicanism. pacifism
and the principle Of social revolu-
ton.
Switzerland brought him only dis
appointment. For two years he lived
there as a vagrsnt, sometimes sleep
ing under bridges. working now and
then for a stonemason or as errand
boy for a wine merchant.
Ousted From Switzerland.
He freouented the Socialist clubs,
was arrested at Lausanne on 4
charge Of vagrancy. expelled from
Bern for provoking strike of brick
layers, finally was put over the
Italian frontier by Geneva police on
a charge of falsifying his passport
The Italian police had been look
ing for him on a charge of lodging
the military draft. but on his return
he performed his compulsory service,
and then, swallowing his distate, re-
turned to the profession of teaching
| for a while.
He also got himself arrested some
more by his political activities-in
1908 for armed threats and again for
holding a meeting without author
ization, in 1911 for his public pro-
tests against the Italian military ex-
pedition to Tripoi to take Libya
from the Turks.
In the meatime he had found his
most amendable profession, that of
journalism, which afforded him a
wider outlet for his radical fire than
! the provincial meeting halls.
Became Journalist.
First he worked on 4 Socialist
newspaper at Trento, then within
Austria, from which he was ex-
PEELED, later As founder of 4 weekly,
La Lotta Di Classe (the class strue-
gle) at Forli.
| It was in the Forh sheet that he