The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-05-15
Fair Enough

| Editors note,-The Star and the News
accept no responsibility for the personal
views of Mr.. Pegler, and often disagree
/ with them as much as many OF MS read
ers His articles serve the good purpose
| of making people THINK
By WESTBROOK PEGLER
cartwright. 1916 by King Features Syndicate)
SAN FRANCISCO.-The only Italians more
contemptible than Benito Mussolini. whether
! in life or death. were those who sprang through
the lines of the guards standing over his body
and that of young women and kicked them
in the face, spat upon them both and fired
pistols into their corpses. However, these few
were only delegation, so to speak, represent
ing ,any thousands who had stood IN packed
crowds and shrieked 'Duce' until the tears
ran down their faces when he was riding
biqh For it is part of deliberately false
propae anda designed to give back to the
italian people some shred of self-respect 10
clothe their ignominy, to say now that there
were only few Fascists and those few
were underworld gangsters or greedy capita
lists.
The majority of them accepted Fascism
and no element enjoyed and favored 1t more,
after the first few years, than taceless and
dehumanized monstrosity whom the Henry
Wallaces of the earth so loftily refer to as
the common man. Fascism relieved them of
the duties and responsibilities of manhood and
humanity and if the Axis had won the war the
Italians would have claimed their loot and
prosecuted their victims to utter degradation.
The facts of life under fascism seem to have
been forgotten by these professional anti-fas-
cists in the United States who have made the
word 'liberal'' a disreputable political label.
The reason is that so much of that which they
have praised as liberalism and demo
cracy'' in our own country was taken from
Mussolini's system and his creed. There are
many journalists in the United States who
would be happy under fascism and who have
worked for years to establish here the condi-
lions under which the ink-stained wretches of
the Duce's press scrubbed for their cheese and
wine. Italian journalists, with few exceptions,
joyously joined the Duce for he offered them
job-security, vacations with pay, retroactive
benefits and petty importance in return for
their docility. 1t would be lie to suggest
that they did this under protest and the COM
pulsion of force and want. He got good
press by bribing them with pay and allow
ances far beyond their worth and then SUBJ
sidized the publishers out of the national
treasury, or deficit These raises and bene-
fits cost the publishers nothing and theirs was
case Of cooperation or obliteration, so they
cooperated
Among American liberals" this system has
received violent endorsement and they gave
their support to a program which, like Mus
solini's, rugged pipeline from the treasures
of the labor movement into the party treas
Try. Never before was the political and civic
freedom of the Americans so defiantly Knocked
and largely under the leadership Of unassimi-
lated continental immigrants, at that.
Auda ciously, of late, the Americans have
been imposed upon by misuse of the word
'patriot'' to designate those who rose against
fascism after the doom of fascism had been
wrought by the Americans. For this term
includes the communists who are patriotic to
no country but Russia and traitors to every
other. The same counterfeit was passed dur
ing the Spanish Civil war when the communist
revolution, with its long record of atrocity,
was labelled the '1oyalist'' side. Franco
fascism is beyond dispute but the '1oyalist
movement was true communist revolution
directed ultimately at the Latin republics of
this hemisphere. Our best newspapers care
lessly cooperated in both of these receptions.
And while we have bethought ourselves of the
Monroe Doctrine to abate fascism in Argen-
tina, we have pretended that the communist
penetration in Mexico and other countries to
the south has been an advance OF our own
system of freedom
Fascism in Italy was a reaction to COM
munism and the premonitory disorders, which
would have produced another dictatorship as
bad MuSSoliniS, and more brutal, but Tor
his Intervention, the unnecessary massacres
in Russia after the bolshevik minority over
threw Kerensky's revolution were about to be
repeated. So the majority of the Italians were
relieved when the black shirts put down the
conspiracy and made the trains run on time
where, lately, trains had stopped far between
stations and the crews had refused to bulge
until patriotic veterans of the first World War
got off and walked.
Many Italians, of course, wanted no dicta-
torship and yielded to Mussolini for the same
r. lson that American communities succumbed
to violent instructions which in the organic
ing days of the CLIO under John L. Lewis were
called labor strikes, the, orderly, patriotic
citizens were unorganzed, their mayors and
governors we're towards political oppor-
tunists and the national government, though
not helpless here. as in the time of Mussolini' S
rise in Italy, passively collaborated with the
rioters, that federation of lawlessness was a
political investment which paid off in 1914 in
the form of forced political contributions from
the common man and political intimidation in
the interests of the ruling party.
When squad of black shirts in the dead
of night called on a sleeping victim and fore
ed down his throat mixture of castor oil and
kerosene, that was fascism. But when those
! tardy heroes of Milan kicked in the face of
their old Duce and defiled the body of a
young woman whose offense seems to have
been very common informality heartily en-
dorsed by all communists and practised by
most of them that was fascism, too.