Aftenposten
- Secret Storting Sessions.
- The Argus Lottery 1926.
- Revolver Attack on Mussolini Yesterday.
Aftenposten's front page for Monday 1 November 1926 combined Norwegian politics, charity and foreign news. Reporting from the impeachment court trying the former Berge government, the paper explained that its Saturday evening edition had found room for the answer to only one of defence counsel Gustav Heiberg's questions to Docent Dr. Jacob Worm-Müller, and announced that it now printed every question and answer under the heading 'Secret Storting sessions'. The appeal for the 1926 Argus lottery described homes short of clothes, food and fuel and crushing unemployment, and called on the kindness of Oslo, 'the city with the big heart'. A brief report said someone of about 18 had fired a revolver at Mussolini the day before; Mussolini was unhurt, the crowd lynched the gunman, and Mussolini left by special train for Forlì.
Translation
Secret Storting Sessions.
After Docent Dr. Jacob Worm-Müller had given before the Court of Impeachment at midday on Saturday the statement reproduced in Aftenposten's evening edition the same day, the defence counsel, attorney Gustav Heiberg, put a number of questions. Owing to the short time, we were able to include the answer to only one of these in our Saturday evening edition. We reproduce here all the questions and answers:
The Argus Lottery 1926.
Times are still very hard for many – a great many. In a thousand homes there is a lack of clothes, food and fuel. Factories and other businesses have had to cut back, so that unemployment is, unfortunately, great and crushing. But Oslo people are kind-hearted. It is not for nothing that Oslo is called "the city with the big heart".
Revolver Attack on Mussolini Yesterday.
…to be about 18 years of age, a revolver shot at him. Mussolini was not hurt. The crowd immediately surrounded the gunman and lynched him. Mussolini continued to the railway station, where he boarded the waiting special train, which then departed for Forlì.
Context
Why the Berge government was before an impeachment court
The impeachment case grew out of a secret rescue of a bank. Abraham Berge was prime minister and finance minister in a coalition of the Frisinnede Venstre and Høyre parties, and in 1923 his government lent Den Norske Handelsbanken in Trondheim 25 million kroner. The decision was laid before neither the King in Council nor the Storting, and the government justified the secrecy by the need to avoid panic among the bank's customers. In 1924 the Storting granted the bank a state guarantee of 15 million kroner without being told of the earlier loan; it was informed only in January 1925. The bank went bankrupt despite the support. Berge and six ministers from the two governing parties were then impeached on two counts: that granting the support without the Storting's approval was unconstitutional, and that the government had failed in its duty to inform the Storting. The headline 'Secret Storting sessions' and the defence's questioning of Dr. Worm-Müller belong to this dispute over what the parliament had been told, and when.
A public trial that ended on a time limit
The Berge case is the only impeachment trial held in Norway since parliamentarism was introduced. The court had 25 members, nine Supreme Court justices and 16 members of the Lagting, and publicity was a guiding principle: the proceedings were printed in Rigsretstidende, and the reports were printed daily and sold for one krone. The Storting's own history says the case put the conflict between the established elite and a growing labour movement on the agenda and received wide public attention during the nearly eight months it lasted. Aftenposten's promise to reproduce every question and answer from Saturday's session belongs to that daily flow of coverage. This page shows a witness being questioned before the court on a Saturday in October 1926, earlier than the 21 March 1927 opening date that one reference work gives for the proceedings. The judgment of 25 March 1927 acquitted Berge and the six ministers on formal grounds, because under the law then in force the charge had become time-barred. The work that followed led to a new Responsibility Act in 1932, which wrote down the government's duty to inform the Storting.
Aftenposten's Argus Christmas collection
The Argus collection was an annual Christmas appeal that Aftenposten organised and ran from 1916 to 1986, so the 1926 lottery announced here belonged to a fund-raising effort then about a decade old. A large part of the money came in through the Argus lottery, for which a number of larger advertisers donated prizes. The idea was to give an extra helping hand before Christmas to needy people who received no other support, preferably, in the paper's own phrase, 'ubemidlede dannede', educated people without means. The journalist Augusta Stang initiated the collection, and editor-in-chief Einar Diesen was strongly committed to it personally. The appeal's picture of homes short of clothes, food and fuel and of crushing unemployment is the newspaper's own description. It was written in a decade that the Storting's history of the Berge case describes as one of banking crisis, the same crisis that lay behind the impeachment trial reported beside it.
The Bologna shot and the youth killed by the crowd
The attack reported as happening 'yesterday' took place on 31 October 1926, when a shot was fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car through Bologna. It was the latest in a run of attempts on his life: the former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni had been arrested on 4 November 1925 for attempting to assassinate him, Violet Gibson's pistol shot grazed Mussolini's nose on 7 April 1926, and the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his limousine on 11 September 1926. In Bologna the crowd lynched a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, whereas this report put the assailant at about 18 and treated the lynched youth as the gunman without qualification. That identification has been challenged: the terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell wrote that the boy was likely innocent and that the affair was either a put-up job or a plot between Fascists.
How the Fascist regime used the Bologna attempt
The Bologna attempt was followed by a swath of repressive legislation, swiftly enacted by the Italian government. All political parties, associations and organisations opposed to Fascist Italy were dissolved. On 25 November 1926 the new State Defence Law instituted a Special Court, and the same law restored the death penalty. The laws that followed the attempt also created Mussolini's secret police; the political police later known as OVRA was founded in 1927. Bell's suspicion that the attempt may have been staged matters for this reason: within a month of the shot reported in this edition, the regime had used it to dissolve organised opposition and to set up a special court with powers of life and death.
Original
Hemmelige stortingsmøter.
Efter at docent, dr. Jacob Worm-Müller i riksretten lørdag middag hadde avgit den i» Aftenposten «s aftennummer samme dag gjengitte forklaring, kom forsvareren, advokat Gustav Heiberg, med en del spørsmaal. I vort aftennummer lørdag fik vi paa grund av den knappe tid bare med svaret paa et av disse. Vi gjengir her samtlige spørsmaal og svar:
Argus-lotteriet 1926.
Tidene er fremdeles meget onde for mange - svært mange. I tusen hjem er der mangel paa klær, mat og brændsel. Fabrikker og andre virksomheter har maattet gaa til indskrænkninger, saa arbeidsløsheten desværre er stor og knugende. Men Oslo-folk er snilde. Det er ikke for intet, at Oslo kaldes» byen med det store hjerte «
Revolverattentat mot Mussolini igaar.
til at være i 18-aarsalderen, et revolverskud mot ham. Mussolini kom ikke tilskade. Mængden omringet straks revolvermanden og lynchet ham. Mussolini fortsatte til jernbanestationen, hvor han steg op i det ventende ekstratog, som derefter avgik til Forli.