An American Admirer of Fascism

RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD, Foreword to the Autobiography of Benito Mussolini (1928)

Fascism’s appeal was not limited to Germany, Italy, and Spain, or even to Europe. Observers around the world, including the United States, saw in fascism a way to counter the perceived threat of Communist influence and expansion and to put an end to the social and economic conflicts that plagued postwar Europe. Richard Washburn Child was the United States Ambassador to Italy from 1921 to 1924. An ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini, Child was among those who urged Mussolini to march on Rome in 1922 and to topple Italy’s democratic government. After he returned to the United States, Child became editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a position he used to spread Mussolini’s message and promote his policies. In this excerpt from Child’s foreword to Mussolini’s 1928 autobiography, which was published in serial form in the Post, Child expressed his unbridled admiration for “Il Duce.”

Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pros and cons, are all put aside the only true measure of a man’s greatness from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in the answer to this question:

“How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest number of human beings—their hearts, their thoughts, their material welfare, their relation to the universe?”

In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent greatness equal to those of Mussolini.

Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the permanence of his success or not, consider him superman or not, as you may, he has put to a working test, on great and growing numbers of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality, in applied plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in the applied principle that contents are more important than labels on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a state. He has not only been able to change the lives of human beings but he has changed their minds, their hearts, their spirits. He has not merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.

He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the bricks.

It is one thing to administer a state. The one who does this well is called statesman. It is quite another thing to make a state. Mussolini has made a state. That is superstatesmanship.

I knew him before the world at large, outside of Italy, had ever heard of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the saddle and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away chaos’ own junk pile from Italy. . . .

The first time I ever saw him he came to my residence sometime before the march on Rome and I asked him what would be his programme for Italy. His answer was immediate: “Work and discipline.”

I remember I thought at that time that the phrase sounded a little evangelical, a phrase of exhortation. But a mere demagogue would never choose it. Wilson’s slogans of Rights and Peace and Freedom1 are much more popular and gain easier currency than sterner phrases. It is easier even for a sincere preacher, to offer soft nests to one’s followers; it is more difficult to excite enthusiasm for stand-up doctrines. Any analysis and weighing of Mussolini’s greatness must include recognition that he has made popular throughout a race of people, and perhaps for others, a standard of obligation of the individual not only exacting but one which in the end will be accepted voluntarily. Not only is it accepted voluntarily but with an almost spiritual ecstasy which has held up miraculously in Italy during years, when all the so-called liberals in the world were hovering over it like vultures, croaking that if it were not dead it was about to die.

It is difficult to lead men at all. It is still more difficult to lead them away from self-indulgence. It is still more difficult to lead them so that a new generation, so that youth itself, appears as if born with a new spirit, a new virility bred in the bones. It is difficult to govern a state and difficult to deal cleanly and strongly with a static programme applied to a static world; but it is more difficult to build a new state and deal cleanly and strongly with a dynamic programme applied to a dynamic world.

This man, who looks up at me with that peculiar nodding of his head and raising of the eyebrows, has done it. There are few in the world’s history who have. I had considered the phrase “Work and discipline” as a worthy slogan, as a good label for an empty bottle. Within six years this man, with a professional opposition which first barked like Pomeranians at his heels and then ran away to bark abroad, has made the label good, has filled the bottle, has turned concept into reality.

Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1928), pp. x-xi, xvi-xvii.