Il Piccolo
- The Awarding of Prizes in the Grain Competition
- The Germersheim Incident and the Franco-German Negotiations
- A Communiqué from the Exchange Agents
Il Piccolo's page for 30 September 1926 combined Fascist agricultural propaganda, a flashpoint in the occupied Rhineland and a note of anxiety from the stock exchange. It reported that Mussolini had conferred with Undersecretary Peglion on the Permanent Grain Committee's plans to intensify wheat growing, and that on 10 October he would personally reward the winners of the national grain competition, with Communications Minister Ciano granting the usual reduced rail fares so farmers could travel to Rome. Just above the grain item, the closing lines of a preceding report recorded Mussolini's praise of Modena's Fascists and his three Blackshirt virtues of courage, work and disinterestedness. A Berlin dispatch on the Germersheim shooting set the official German account against the Havas self-defence version, reported that the French second lieutenant Rouzier was in prison and his artillery regiment ordered out of the town, and described a crowd shouting "murderer and bandit" at him. A fragment of a communiqué from exchange agents complained that brokers had to answer for other people's failures with their deposits, their whole fortunes and their names.
This is a partial reading of the page that covers three excerpts. Tile boundaries, creases, faded print and damage near the lower page obscure words, and the OCR interleaves columns and corrupts names and numbers; uncertain portions are marked [?] and not reconstructed. The first excerpt opens with the closing lines of a preceding report in which Mussolini praised Modena's Fascists; the occasion of those remarks is not legible, and the grain item proper begins at its own heading. The Germersheim dispatch breaks off mid-sentence, and the legible text does not include the Franco-German negotiations named in its headline. Only the closing sentence of the exchange agents' communiqué is legible, so its occasion and signatories are not established.
Translation
The Awarding of Prizes in the Grain Competition
[?] The Hon. Mussolini warmly praised the Directorate and Modenese Fascism, and concluded by saying that the characteristic qualities of every Blackshirt must be three: courage, work, disinterestedness.
The Awarding of Prizes in the Grain Competition
This afternoon the Head of Government received the Undersecretary of State for the National Economy, the Hon. Peglion, with whom he conferred on the work of the Permanent Grain Committee, which is preparing to carry out an important programme for the intensification of grain cultivation in Italy.
It is learned meanwhile that, in order to express tangibly the National Government's gratitude to those who have supported the ministry's action aimed at increasing national grain production, the Hon. Mussolini will award prizes, on 10 October, to the winners of the national grain competition. In order to give greater solemnity to the event and to allow numerous Italian farmers to come to Rome to take part in the celebration, the Minister of Communications, the Hon. Ciano, in agreement with the Head of Government, has arranged for participants to enjoy the customary railway fare reduction. [?]
The Germersheim Incident and the Franco-German Negotiations
[?] BERLIN, 29 — The tragic episode at Germersheim is again today the subject of news reports and political arguments. Against the official German version of what happened, which tends to clear of any provocation the Germans struck by the French officer's Browning, the Havas Agency immediately set another version, according to which the officer fired in self-defence.
The report that the officer has been set free is untrue. The second lieutenant is instead in prison, and the competent French authorities have also ordered that the entire artillery regiment to which Rouzier belongs be removed from Germersheim by tomorrow. From this it can be seen that France wishes to avoid a repetition of incidents and to give satisfaction to the local German population, which is always extremely irritated.
Hostile demonstration by the crowd
Yesterday, when Rouzier came out of the French command, where he had been questioned, he was greeted by the crowd gathered around the building with cries of "murderer and bandit", while a
A Communiqué from the Exchange Agents
[?] of [?] the [?] securities, they have only to fear the enormous damages which fall more especially upon them, since they must answer for any failures of others with a high security deposit of their own, with their entire assets and with their own name." [?]
Context
Why was Mussolini rewarding wheat farmers in person?
The prize-giving announced here belonged to the Battle for Grain, a propaganda campaign Mussolini launched in 1925 to make Italy self-sufficient in wheat and to free it, in the regime's phrase, from the "slavery of foreign bread". The article shows the campaign's machinery at work: a Permanent Grain Committee planning to intensify cultivation, a national competition for productive farmers, and the Head of Government personally handing out the awards on 10 October. The railway fare reduction arranged by Ciano, as the paper reports it, was meant to fill Rome with farmers and give the ceremony "greater solemnity", turning an agricultural policy into public spectacle. The paper presents all this in the government's own language of gratitude to those who had supported its drive for higher national production. Later assessments agree that wheat output did rise, but note that this came at the expense of diversification, as many farmers who had grown other produce had to clear their land for grain.
Why were French troops at Germersheim in 1926?
The French artillery regiment that the dispatch places at Germersheim was part of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, in force since 1 December 1918 and imposed and regulated by the Armistice, the Treaty of Versailles and a parallel Rhineland Agreement. That agreement left civil and criminal jurisdiction with Germany except for offences against the occupation troops, which fell under Allied military jurisdiction. Germersheim was the reverse case, a French officer accused of shooting Germans, and the dispatch shows the matter being handled inside the occupying army: Second Lieutenant Rouzier was questioned at the French command and held in prison by the French authorities, while Berlin and the Havas Agency put out rival versions of events. Relations between occupiers and residents were often strained, more so in the French and Belgian zones than in the British and American ones, and the hostile crowd shouting "murderer and bandit" fits that pattern. The timing gave the incident extra weight. After the Locarno Treaties the northern zone around Cologne had been evacuated in January 1926, and the headline sets the shooting alongside Franco-German negotiations. The paper reads France's quick removal of the whole artillery regiment as an effort to calm local anger. The remaining zones stayed occupied for several more years; the occupation ended on 30 June 1930, five years earlier than the Treaty of Versailles had originally laid down.
What financial climate surrounded the exchange agents' complaint?
The brokers' communiqué appeared six weeks after Mussolini opened his campaign to revalue the lira. On 18 August 1926, in a speech at Pesaro, he announced the policy later known as Quota 90, which aimed to peg the lira at 92.46 to the pound sterling. The stakes were political as well as economic: in a letter to his finance minister Giuseppe Volpi, Mussolini wrote that "the fate of the regime is tied to the lira", while Volpi himself considered the target a drastic overvaluation. The surviving lines of the communiqué voice a specific professional grievance: exchange agents, bound by a high personal security deposit, their whole fortune and their name, feared being made to answer for the failures of others. The legible lines do not mention the lira or the revaluation, so the connection is one of timing. The communiqué is best read against the backdrop of the revaluation campaign rather than as an explicit commentary on it, since the brokers' own words focus on their liability for defaults.
Original
La premiazione del concorso pel grano
[?] L'on. Mussolini ha vivamente elogiato il Direttorio e il Fascismo modenese e ha concluso dicendo che le doti caratteristiche di ogni camicia nera devono essere tre: coraggio, lavoro, disinteresse. La premiazione del concorso pel grano Il Capo del Governo ha ricevuto nel pomeriggio di oggi il sottosegretario di Stato all'Economia Nazionale on. Peglion, con il quale ha conferito in merito ai lavori del Comitato permanente per il grano, che si prepara a svolgere un importante programma per la intensificazione della cultura granaria in Italia. Si apprende intanto che, allo scopo di esprimere tangibilmente la riconoscenza del Governo Nazionale a coloro che hanno fiancheggiato l'azione ministeriale, intesa ad aumentare la produzione granaria nazionale, l'on. Mussolini premierà, il 10 ottobre, i vincitori del concorso nazionale per il grano. Alo scopo di dare maggiore solennità all'avvenimento e di permettere a numerosi agricoltori italiani di venire a Roma per partecipare a tale festa, il ministro delle Comunicazioni on. Ciano, d'accordo con il Capo del Governo, ha disposto che i partecipanti fruiscano della consueta riduzione ferroviaria. [?]
L'incidente di Germersheim e le trattative franco-tedesche
[?] BERLINO, 29 Il tragico episodio di Germersheim è anche oggi argomento di cronache e di argomenti politici. Alla versione ufficiale tedesca dell'accaduto, che tende a scagionare da ogni provocazione i tedeschi colpiti dalla browning dell'ufficiale francese, l'Agenzia Havas ha subito contrapposto un'altra versione secondo cui l'ufficiale ha sparato per legittima difesa. Non risponde a verità la notizia che l'ufficiale sia stato rimesso in libertà. Il sottotenente, invece, si trova in carcere, e le autorità competenti francesi hanno anche disposto che l'intero Reggimento d'artiglieria cui appartiene il Rouzier, sia allontanato da Germersheim entro domani. Da qui si vede che la Francia vuole evitare il ripetersi di incidenti e dare soddisfazione alla popolazione tedesca locale sempre estremamente irritata. Dimostrazione ostile della folla Ieri, quando il Rouzier uscì dal comando francese, dov'era stato interrogato, fu accolto dalla folla adunata intorno all'edificio al grido di «assassino e bandito», mentre un
Un comunicato degli agenti di cambio
[?] di [?] i [?] titoli, essi non hanno che da temere gli enormi danni che a loro più specialmente derivano, per dover rispondere degli eventuali dissesti altrui con una propria elevata cauzione, con tutto il proprio patrimonio e con il proprio nome». [?]
Source: Source: Internet Archive