Spurs on the Boot - Italy under Her Masters Thomas B. Morgan Author - new book

SPURS ON THE BOOT FIRST MEETING OF HITLER AND MUSSOLINI The author a-p-pears at the left CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. BUNDLES OF COMBAT i II. CARUSO, COMMUNISTS AND CARABINEERS 17 III. EVERY BULLET HAS ITS BILLET SOME WHERE 33 IV. OUT OF FIUME INTO ROME . . . . 51 V. BAYONETS AND BUTTER 67 VI. WHEN MUSSOLINI APED THE ENGLISH . 81 VII. MiD PLEASURES AND PALACES . . . 95 VIII. APPLE OF THE DICTATORIAL OPTIC . . 112, IX. A THING APART 12,8 X. AND DELIVER Us FROM FAME . . .144 XI. BASS HORNS AND A DUMMY . . . .160 XII. ONE GRAND MOMENT 175 XIII. ALLAH IN A BLACK SHIRT 192, XIV. SPANISH FORAY 208 XV. CIGARS, CIGARETTES AND STOOGES . . 2,2,2, XVI. NOT IN TH SE CLOTHES 238 XVII. MANY ARE CALLED 2,52, XVIIL SERGEANT WITH A MARSHALS BATON . . 2,68 XIX. BENITO, I LL NEVER FORGET IT . . .285 XX. ET Tu, Dues 304 XXI. AND, So WHAT 32,7 INDEX 347 CHAPTER I BUNDLES OF COMBAT The first World War was over. No one knew it then hut the peace tainted and even tinted the air, the earth and the sky for the next World War. We can see it all now many things decayed, many things red, many hlack, many brown, from the Caspian to the North Sea at least. Anything could come out of it and did Com munism, Fascism, Naziism and the Second World War. Victors, and thinking they should he somewhere in the money, the Italians were the first disgruntled. They were not getting what they wanted in Europe, Asia or Africa. But, with all the vast lands passing from one power to another, they set their hearts on Fiume, a smiling though unimportant town of 50,000 along the Adriatic. It was Italian, they said. They had asked for an orange whereas in other parts a gold mine gaped for ownership. They cried for the orange. The place wasnoted more than anything else for the quality of its shrimps though it once was an Austrian naval base, and possessed a torpedo factory and an air port. The Italians wanted the town not alone for its . naval base, its torpedo factory, its airport and its 50,000 souls but for everything else including the shrimps. The allies refused to give it to them. Then and there, Fascism was born. Fate willed that your reporter should witness its gen esis, obstetrics and adolescence. In Milan, Benito Mus a SPURS ON THE BOOT solinl just an editor then, gathered several score of politi cal vagabonds in an upper chamber in a dark and spooky structure on Holy Sepulcher Place. In that Stygian seraglio, he promised that if they followed him, some day they would rule the world. It was March, 1919. He called the Italian government names. He called Prime Minister Victor Emmanuel Orlando names. He called King Victor Emmanuel the Third names. They were not getting Fiume for Italy. The hope was the future. The future was in the hands of the vagabonds if they followed him. The vagabonds were ex-Social ists, ex-Communists, ex-Populists, ex-Nationalists and ex-Monarchists. Wandering, they were in search of a haven. Now they had found it. One single unbreakable duty was imposed they must be bound together and to him, II Duce. To us a thing bound is a bundle to them, it was a fascio. But they were not just a dead bundle. They were a fighting bundle, officially Fastio Italiano di Combattimento, Ital ian Bundle of Combat. Each one of them was called a fascista, a fascist. Their emblem was the Lictors rods of the Roman Emperor, fasces in Latin, a fascio of rods tied with thongs, symbol of force. Mussolinis was a fascioof men tied to him. The United States has a similar em blem, the fasces alongside the motto E Pluribus Unum, especially on a dime. From Milan, the vagabonds scattered, starting other fasti plural in Rome, Florence, Genoa, Turin, Naples, all over the country. Little attention was paid to their fiery artifices. They were just a bunch of boys It BUNDLES OF COMBAT 3 was just a phase. But they circulated, they organized. In Rome within a month we knew that something had happened. Down with America was what they were shouting. We did not want their shrimps...