Prager Tagblatt
- Fascism Cries Out for Revenge
- A Revision of the School System
- Anti-French Riots in Ventimiglia
The Prager Tagblatt of 3 November 1926 carried two reports on Fascist Italy and a column on schooling at home. A Rome dispatch quoted Arnaldo Mussolini, the Duce's brother, writing in Il Popolo d'Italia that cold deliberation should replace the Fascists' disorderly cry for revenge, and that striking without mercy was the best way to stop 'the criminals'. A Paris report relayed French accounts that Fascist militia, newly sent from Genoa to strengthen the border guard, attacked French railwaymen in Ventimiglia because some officials had allegedly kept their hats on during a pro-Mussolini demonstration. A signed column by Paul Fürstenau took up words spoken by two 'teachers', the President of the Republic and its Finance Minister, and turned to the moral foundation of all schooling.
Translation
Fascism Cries Out for Revenge
Rome, November 2. Arnaldo Mussolini, the brother of the Duce, writes in the "Popolo d'Italia" that cold deliberation is better than the disorderly cry for revenge raised by the Fascists. To strike without mercy, he says, is the best means of preventing the criminals from continuing their work.
A Revision of the School System
By Paul Fürstenau.
Two teachers, one of whom is President of the Republic and the other its Minister of Finance, have spoken these words. The philosopher lays down the moral foundation of all schooling.
Anti-French Riots in Ventimiglia
Paris, November 2. Serious anti-French disturbances have taken place in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia. According to French reports, Fascist militia, which had arrived from Genoa only in the last few days to reinforce the border guard, attacked French railwaymen under the command of a Fascist officer. The pretext was that, on the balcony of the French railwaymen's lodging house right next to the border station, several officials had refused to take off their hats during a demonstration of sympathy for Mussolini, despite being called on to do so by the crowd.
Context
The Bologna shot behind Arnaldo Mussolini's call
The "criminals" in Arnaldo Mussolini's article most plausibly refer to the shot fired at Benito Mussolini in Bologna on 31 October 1926, two days before the Rome dateline, although the excerpt itself does not name the event. The shot was fired as Mussolini rode through Bologna in an open car, and it ended in the lynching of a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni. Another account describes Zamboni being killed on the spot with blows and blades by Fascist admirers of Mussolini. That killing gives concrete content to the "disorderly cry for revenge" that Arnaldo set against cold deliberation: his piece reads as a demand to replace the crowd's private retaliation with calculated, merciless punishment. Who actually fired remains disputed. The terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell judged the boy likely innocent and the affair either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists, so the paper's report of a call to strike at "the criminals" rests on a version of events that has since been questioned.
Why 'continuing their work' pointed to a year of attempts
Arnaldo's warning that the criminals might "continue their work" came after the fourth attempt on Mussolini's life in less than a year. The former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested on 4 November 1925 for planning to shoot him, a plot that historians believe the government itself engineered as a pretext to consolidate power. On 7 April 1926 Violet Gibson fired a pistol at Mussolini and grazed his nose, and on 11 September 1926 the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his car at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four other people. By speaking of criminals in the plural and of an ongoing "work", Arnaldo treated the attack as part of a continuing campaign that called for a systematic response, although the attempts of the past year were separate incidents carried out by very different people. The Paris report on the same page shows that public displays of loyalty to Mussolini were also taking place at the French border in these days, though it does not say what prompted the demonstration in Ventimiglia.
How the call for merciless blows became the exceptional laws
Arnaldo's call to strike without mercy appeared a week before the regime turned the Bologna attempt into sweeping legislation. The attempt led to laws creating Mussolini's secret police, and the repressive measures that followed included the dissolution of the political opposition and the reintroduction of the death penalty. On 9 November 1926 the Fascist government put emergency powers into effect, and multiple anti-Fascists, including the Communist Antonio Gramsci, were arrested. These steps belonged to the so-called leggi fascistissime, issued between 1925 and 1926, which imposed police confinement on anti-Fascists and set up the OVRA secret police and a special tribunal for state security. The paper of 3 November could only report the demand; readers would see within days how Arnaldo's "cold deliberation" was turned into law.
The finance minister who was also a teacher
Fürstenau's description of a finance minister who is also a "teacher" matches the career of Karel Engliš, although the excerpt itself does not name him. Engliš served as Czechoslovakia's Minister of Finance in six governments between 1920 and 1931. He was an academic before he was a politician: in 1919 he became a professor and the first rector of the newly founded Masaryk University in Brno. As a teacher he influenced two generations of Czech economists and founded the so-called Brno School of Economics. Calling such a minister a teacher was therefore a literal description rather than a figure of speech, and it explains why a column on revising the schools could treat a finance minister's words as an educator's argument and not only as budget policy.
Original
Der Fascismus ruft nach Rache.
Rom, 2. November. Arnaldo Mussolini, der Bruder des Duce, schreibt im " Popolo d'Italia ", besser als das ungeordnete Rachegeschrei der Fascisten sei kalte Ueberlegung. Unbarmherzig zuschlagen, dies sei das beste Mittel, um zu verhindern, daß die Verbrecher ihr Werk fortsetzen.
Revision der Schule.
Zwei Lehrer, von denen der eine Präsident der Republik, der andere ihr Finanzminister ist, haben diese Worte gesprochen. Der Philosoph stellt die moralische Begründung allen Schulwesens auf.
Franzosenfeindliche Ausschreitungen in Ventimiglia
Paris, 2. November. In der italienischen Grenzstadt Ventimiglia haben sich schwere franzosenfeindliche Unruhen zugetragen. Nach französischen Meldungen unternahm fascistische Miliz, die erst in den letzten Tagen aus Genua zur Verstärkung des Grenzschutzes angekommen war, unter Führung eines fascistischen Offiziers einen Ueberfall auf französische Eisenbahner unter dem Vorwand, daß auf dem Balkon des direkt neben dem Grenzbahnhof gelegenen Uebernachtungshauses der französischen Eisenbahner mehrere Beamte sich trotz der aus der Menge heraus erfolgten Aufforderung geweigert hätten, bei einer Sympathiekundgebung für Mussolini die Kopfbedeckung abzunehmen.