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But in his dream of empire Benito Mussolini made the mistake of believing that bulging eyes and a loud, guttural noise could imbue the Italian people with the spirit of empire. In the Treaty of Lausanne he clinched Italy's hold on the Dodecanese and Rhodes. He rattled his saber at Greece, occupied Corfu, withdrew reluctantly with a 50,000,000-lire indemnity. He made an agreement with Yugoslavia which gave Italy title to Fiume. He bribed King Zog of the Albanians away from Yugoslavia, which had grubstaked Zog after World War I.
The Manchurian Incident in 1931 taught Mussolini two things: 1) the League of Nations offered its members no real protection; 2) Britain would condone aggressive wars as long as they did not affect her commercial interest. Thereupon, still lured by the image of empire, he whipped his people into the Ethiopian War, sent them to Spain and another historic defeat at Guadalajara. Intervention in Spain was far from altruistic: if Franco lost, Italy would be sitting in the Balearic Islands, astride France's shipping lanes to Africa; if Franco won, France would have another unsatisfied colonial power at her back door. Before the Spanish Republic had been liquidated, the Duce's Fascist claque was yelling for Corsica and Tunisia, for Nice and Savoy. But he has not got them yet.
We prefer to be feared rather than loved, and we care not if we are hated, because we have nothing but contempt for those that hate us.—so said Mussolini in 1938, still dreaming of expansion, but wiser after 15 years, reconciled to the fact that the road to empire was paved with hate.
Benito Mussolini's great crime has been the winning of contempt for a people who are brave but peaceful. His great weakness has been his inability to bend their will to his, or his will to theirs. His great mistake has been his failure to understand them. To him it must be a sore reflection that after 22 years of constant harangue he has not convinced them that imperialism is preferable to peaceful emigration. When at last he drove them into a major war they were ill-prepared and ill-equipped and they had no stomach for it.
When she failed to conquer Greece and Egypt, Italy lost her war. Only Mussolini and his God know whether he dared admit that to himself. But he had to choose which side to surrender to. He chose to surrender to Germany. German troops and the Gestapo poured into Italy, German bureaucrats took offices in the Government Buildings of Rome. In his heart, if not in his aging head, Mussolini knows that now he is only a Gauleiter in Dictator's clothing. Since then he has done his master's bidding, taken the crumbs that his master has dropped him, managed his Empire for his master's aggrandizement.
No Athlete. After more than 18 years of dictatorship, Mussolini is no lusty athlete, as newsreels have so often pictured him, but a sick, neurotic old man of 57. He has had stomach ulcers for years, has used no meat, tea, coffee, hard liquor or tobacco. There is a suspicion abroad that both his heart and brain have been affected by syphilis. Coincidence-seekers have even connected his reported ailments with European events, viz: