MARGINAL COMMENT •
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE other day, in a garden near my home, we held the village fête. Notices in red and blue chalk were hung along the drive indicating with crude arrows where one should, go in. The iron- wrought gate in the yew hedge stood open, flanked by two boy scouts who gripped their staves in' firm lictorial fashion. Beside the gate was a kitchen table and a chair on which was seated a pillar of the Women's Institute, who received the sixpences of the villagers as they poured in. The great trees beyond threw their vast shadows, not only upon the hayfield which had once been lawn, bin upon rows of little tea-tables and a vast tin urn. Upon their solemn trunks were tacked further notices: " Tea 4d." And around that large and varied garden, in among the flower-beds and the limes, were arranged all manner of side-shows. There was. Aunt Sally with her pipe already broken, with her scant skirt already disarranged, facing with black and dog-faced fury the missiles which we hurled. There was the skittle-run, and over there the treasure-corner, and in the shade of the beech tree a fish pond where with trembling wands we guided the hooks into the eyes. The statue of Minerva, backed by her neat semi-circle of yew, gazed upon this scene with dignity and distaste. Tucked roughly into the clematis of a high garden-pier an amplifier relayed to the assembled crowd the music of a hidden gramophone. The village maidens, in an ecstasy of poise, danced upon the sward. The children paraded in their fancy clothes. And as I strolled from booth to booth, I came upon three targets, bearing in black charcoal the semblances of Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo sketched upon large sheets of paper pinned to boards. For the sum of 2d. one could hire six darts wherewith to assail the enemies of mankind. Hitler and Tojo, when I got there, were already riddled by the pin-holes of expended darts. The Duce was practically immune. " You have not," I remarked to the man who ran the show, "done well with Mussolini." " No," he answered, " they prefer Hitler and the Jap. Now that Musso's down• and out they say, 'It seems hardly fair somehow.' " Once again I stood amazed by the unerring instinct of the British people.
But is it so unerring? Among the Kentish villagers the old sanity may well remain. Yet the politically minded seem to have lost something of their common sense. It is often my privilege to address left-wing audiences. They listen to me with courtesy but with disbelief. It seems- to me that any statements which do not accord, either with their own brand of religion, or with the brand of heresy which they expect me to expound, are regarded (politely but firmly) as lies. I notice that when in reply to questions I give answers which do not correspond to the black or white of their expectation, they assume that smile of inner righteousness which says "Such is the light within me that I can see the transparency of his untruth." It may be that the liberal temperament today has lost all cutting-edge, and snips aimlessly like cardboard shears. It may be that the idealogues are so in love with their ideas that they dismiss experience as a form of class distinction and knowledge as a capitalist device.' Yet it is a sad thing for any democracy to lose its grip on facts or to identify as " propaganda " (by which is meant the statement of ideas other than one's own) all endeavour to reach some objective assessment of values. Our distrust of the totalitarian systems is.based upon the fact that they seek by violence to create the illusion that their own truths are absolute and universal. We know that most truths are conditioned both by time and space.
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Yet surely it is an absolute and universal truth that justice becomes improbable when any man seeks to be both judge, witness and executioner, in a case affecting his own interests, prejudices or Passions. My Kentish villagers were right in feeling that Mussolini has ceased to be an object for levity. or irre- sponsible affront: but he has not ceased to be an object of justice. My left-wing friends would probably ascribe any hesitation on my part to murder the Duce as being .due,
not to any abstract reverence for the processes of law, but to some wholly undefinable and non-existent " vested interest." And since men lack courage to swim against a popular tide they may betray the law in order to please a momentary impulse of the multitude. A serious problem of international law is undoubtedly raised by the intimation conveyed by the United Nations to neutral Powers inviting them not to grant asylum to those of the Axis leaders who are demonstrably responsible for war and massacre. If such refugees have in fact committed criminal acts which can be proved against them, then they can and must be surrendered by neutral countries under the existing treaties of extradition. But if no criminal acts can actually be proved against them then they are, in law, not criminals escaping from trial but political refugees seeking asylum from their enemies. Such is the law of nations, for the re-establish- 'inent of which we claim to be fighting. The only way out of the difficulty would seem to be the constitution of some impartial Tribunal, by whom responsibility could be assessed.
* * * * It is not, I admit, an easy thing to view Mussolini objectively or to consider his fate in terms of formal justice. I have only seen him once, and that was in November, 1922, when, but a few weeks after his accession to power, he came to Lausanne to confer with Curzon and Poincare upon the Eastern qudstion. On that occasion, although he strutted horribly through the corridors of the hotel, he behaved without ostentation in the conference room. He was in fact ill at ease at being confronted, at the very outset of his diplomatic career, with two such tigers of argument and statecraft. Brown and hunched he shifted in his chair, turning his brown wrists uneasily in their starched cuffs ; goggling enormous eyes from right to left. He did not, on that occasion, seem a formidable figure: he seemed bewildered, flustered, uncomfortable and most anxious to please.
My hatred of him (and it became intense) was of later growth. It may be true, as some assert, that he was a sincere patriot and one who really believed that the Italian people were the rightful inheritors of Roman majesty and that they would prove capable of fulfilling the imperial destiny which he imposed upon them. Yet foreseeing that his example would prove even more terrible and t...ontagious than his acts, recognising in the Corfu incident of 1923, in his fierce Abyssinian venture, successful strokes of illegality which would tempt others to commit even more disastrous illegalities elsewhere, I came to regard him as the most dangerous and reckless of all the enemies of peace. It seemed horrible to me that he should be able to arouse in the gentle Italian people passions of envy, suspicion and aggressiveness which could only end in war. I would indulge in day-dreams in which I would picture the destruc- tion of the Mussolini legend in the most humiliating and resounding terms. But even in my wildest day-dreams I never contemplated such a fall as this.
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Now that he has ceased to be a menace and become a cautionary tale, my rage is calm and cold. I do not desire to give to his catastrophe the aura of martyrdom or to render him the victim of anything more than his own turpitude. If in fact he has been accessory to murder, then let him be tried and punished according to the law of nations and the law of his own land. But if no extraditable offence can be proved against him, then other means of justice must be found. Few students 'of recent history would deny that the War-Guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles was ineffective, mainly because it was not impartiaL It is far easier to attribute the responsibility for the present war to those who were in fact responsible ; but it is important that this attribution should not take the form of an ex-parte statement ; we have no desire to perpetuate legends ; what we do desire is that the verdict of the moment should, in letter and spirit, accord with the verdict of history.
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