As we saw earlier, Mussolini argued that it was the officers, and in particular captains, lieutenants and non-commissioned lieutenants, who provided the cement of the fraternal order and guaranteed its popular, anti-militarist, socially horizontal and fraternal character. It should be noted, however, that in August 1914 in the fighting forces almost all captains (4,042) were professional soldiers as were 6,978 subalterns (Rochat, 1991: 114). These were therefore going to bring their army values, and not their civilian ones (as argued by Mussolini), to bear on their conduct when commanding men at war. If at all, the latter values would be brought by the NCOs. What, then, was the sociological composition of captains, lieutenants and non-commissioned lieutenants? And to what worldview did they generally adhere?
It has been estimated that between 1898 and 1915, 49.4 per cent of men who graduated from the artillery and engineering military academy in Turin were from the middle bourgeoisie or the nobility, though at that stage the latter’s social condition was for the most part equivalent to the former’s. The 43.3 per cent of graduates whose social position was undefined were also most likely middle class in social status if not in economic condition (Langella, 1988). Career officers were therefore primarily bourgeois, urban and linked to industry, commerce and public functions (Rochat, 1991: 33-5). These considerations are generally valid both for the Turin academy and for the school of infantry and cavalry in Modena, which produced the majority of officers. In the latter case, however, the years between 1904 and 1910 witnessed a decrease in the city component (pay was better in the industrial sector) which accounts for what was a rise in the admissions from the south of Italy from 30.06 to 34.12 per cent. However, this ‘southernization’ of the army, so central to John Whittam’s thesis concerning the army’s mental obtuseness and aversion to change in the lead up to the First World War (Whittam, 1977: Ch. 10), while certainly evident before 1914 was not in fact completed until after the European conflagration (Balestra, 1993).
But, even assuming a radical decrease in the aristocratic social component with respect to the bourgeoisie, this did not signify either social or ideological democratization of the Italian army. The exclusion of the labouring classes was guaranteed by the educational requirements and the unaffordable fees. Also virtually excluded, therefore, was the petty bourgeoisie, since salaries of council or bank clerks were equivalent to the costs of military college courses (Maciulli, 1993a). Only 7.3 per cent of graduates from the Turin academy between 1898 and 1914 are thought to have been petty bourgeois, almost all of whom were from families of State employees (Langella, 1988: 329). Grants certainly existed for less well off families, but these were almost always given to sons of army or navy officers, sons of State bureaucrats who had been killed in action or sons of war medal holders.
In short, the army chose who received the scholarships and did so using criteria of professional corporatism, patriotism, loyalty to the King and the reproduction of the military caste and its values (Maciulli, 1993b: 559). Hence as Piero Del Negro argues, there was no co-existence of ‘aristocratic’ and ‘democratic’ models in the Italian Army, pace Whittam. The officer corps formed part of the conservative and reactionary bourgeois-aristocratic bloc represented by the executive power and headed by the King (Del Negro, 1979; 1988).
Nothing much alters when we assess the politico-military culture of the noncommissioned lieutenants and junior lieutenants. The literature of this category reveals not a guarantor of the war’s popular character, but a profoundly paternalistic and self-centred stratum which saw itself as the fount of all knowledge and the patient sufferer of the shortcomings of all and sundry. Our knowledge of the military experience and perceptions of the peasant and worker soldiers is limited by the fact that our image of them is based on information passed on by NCO writers (Isnenghi and Rochat, 2000: 269ff). The peasant soldier is generally portrayed as ‘naturally’ resigned because the NCO saw himself as a ‘natural’ mediator with the ‘natural’ right to demand submission to his orders which he himself had been ordered to administer. We are dealing with what Mario Isnenghi has called the ‘myth of subordination’ or the ‘ideology of resignation’, a ‘dehistoricization’ process whereby the ‘static vision of social relations’ held by the High Command was rationalized and then reproduced by its NCO representatives on the ground (Isnenghi, 1970: Ch. 3).
There is evidence in Mussolini’s war diary to suggest that he was one such medium through which the professional officers’ static vision of social relations was filtered. In the entry of 3 October he was ordered by his captain to rewrite a resolution which the captain himself had drafted and which eulogized ‘the spirit of comradeship’ between old and young soldiers in his company. The resolution in question said that the comradeship was functional to the ‘“vision of those shining ideals of Nation and family, which will in their turn be the most appropriate prize for the sacrosanct duty performed.”’ To diffuse family, nation and duty slogans was the reason why, on 12 April 1915, Cadorna had readmitted the clergy to the army after its expulsion between 1865 and 1878 (Morozzo della Rocca, 1980: Ch. 1). The captain’s motion amounted to the same programme. In the note which he wrote to Mussolini informing him not just to redraft the original resolution but how to redraft it, we read that this was to be ‘“in the way most felt by [the soldiers’] simple and good spirit.”’ Paternalistic (the soldiers’ ‘simple and good’ spirit) and socially conservative perspectives (‘shining ideals’, not social reform, would be the prize for duty) originating in the military caste were here passed down the ranks by and through Mussolini. And Mussolini concurred with the resolution’s content: ‘I ask myself: “But isn’t [the captain’s resolution] already beautiful? What can I say that could improve on it?” However, I obey.’
Two questions arise here. First, is it possible that Mussolini’s cultural and political detachment from the men was counterbalanced by full identification with the junior officers? Secondly, if he was to all intents and purposes an ‘officer’ even though officially a private, how did his literary construct of his own charisma correspond to the junior officers’ approach to mobilization?
The answer to the first question is affirmative. Mussolini in fact applied to become a non-commissioned junior lieutenant and from his war diary we know that he was called to officer training school on 6 November 1915. But the entry of 14 November reveals that he was ordered to go back to the front with no explanation and no promotion. In a 13 January 1916 letter to Salandra, Zuppelli informed the Prime Minister that he had been furnished with documentation relative to Mussolini’s ‘deplorable’ past as a political militant (ACS, PCM, Guerra Europea, b. 19, fasc. 4, s.fasc. 1, prot. 4). Mussolini nevertheless paid little heed to his objective rank, locating himself squarely in the socio-military ambit of the junior officers, and they in turn recognized him as one of their own. On 19 September: ‘Some officers want to meet me. Here’s junior Lieutenant Giraud. Young and valorous . . . “I’d like to have you in the seventh company”, Giraud tells me.’ On 22 September: ‘Captain Mozzoni calls me to his tent. I find Lieutenant Fava of the 27th battalion with him. Long, friendly conversation.’ Mussolini and his newspaper campaign for intervention had found resonance among precisely this sector. On 16 September: ‘A medical captain seeks me out among the ranks. “I want to shake the hand of the Editor of IL Popolo d’Italia”’ Three days later: ‘“Is Bersagliere Mussolini here?” “I’m Mussolini.”’ ‘“Come here, I want to embrace you.” And we embrace. It’s Captain Festa of the 10th company of the 157th infantry . . . “Your newspaper campaign for intervention honours you and Italian journalism.”’A couple of lines later a southern university student affirmed: ‘“Who would ever have thought that I’d find myself with Mussolini as a private! I’ll write to my father about it immediately. He often spoke to me about you.”’ On 30 September: ‘I brought some back issues of ILPopolo d’Italia to Captain Mozzoni, since he asked me for them.’ On 24 October Mussolini was called to an officer’s tent and invited to remain for dinner: ‘Restaurant menu: “Rice, roast meat, omelette, fruit, dessert. Wines: Chianti and Grignolini in bottles.”’
Coming now to the second of the above questions, an analysis of the mobilizational methods of the officers reveals an absence of socio-political discourse and a role for abstract, demagogic or tear-jerking speeches, and the recounting or carrying out of valorous feats. This practice permeated down through the ranks. On 19 September Mussolini wrote that the major gave a morale-boosting talk which was ‘affectionate and touching’. The captain’s talk which followed was ‘frank and emotional’ and ‘touched the depth of our hearts’. The captain in fact spoke to the soldiers of the ‘“memorable gestures”’ of the regiment to which they belonged. That same day Mussolini wrote of a meeting with a junior lieutenant who began to narrate how he had taken command of a ‘“furious battle which lasted 20 hours”’ and which had wound up as a ‘“deadly and indescribable man-to-man.”’ On 16 September we read of an ‘afternoon of chat. Episodes of war. Unanimous exaltation of the Alpini.’ Mussolini identified with corporals and sergeants in the same way, and they, too, furnished accounts of valour. On 8 October: ‘I meet up again with Lieutenant Fava who introduces me to the captain of his company, Jannone. Friends from other battalions - as soon as they hear of our arrival - come looking for me. Corporal Major Bocconi . . . Corporal Major Strada . . . Corporal Giustina Sciarra, from Isernia, comes looking for me as he wants to meet me.’ In an entry of 18 September 1915, we read: ‘This morning they divided us into the three companies of the battalion. The operation was long. Some corporals and sergeants helped us pass the time by recounting glorious episodes of the 11th Bersaglieri during the first months of the war.’ And when, on 29 October, Mussolini himself called for propaganda among the soldiers, he limited this to ‘communications from our Army and those of the allied nations, together with a few articles and accounts of valorous episodes, with a view to keeping morale high among the troops’.
To conclude, it has been argued that in the modern world the aesthetic may serve an ideological function by producing an ‘ineffable reciprocity of feeling’ which ‘encode[s] emotive attitudes relevant to the reproduction of social power’ (Eagleton, 1986: 75, 95). The section of Mussolini’s war diary examined in the present chapter had precisely that function. The inception of the new, indicated by the symbolism of the Isonzo baptismal scene and by the creation of an idealized military community in this opening phase of the war, was only apparent, and the existing social and political system was in fact left untouched. What Gramsci described as the ‘nerveless’, ‘dispersed’ and ‘crisis-ridden’ basis for the emergence of modern charismatic and mythical mobilizing figures - in this case the transitional ‘danger’ represented by anti-war sentiment among the men or possible peasant and worker demands for social change in exchange for risking their lives - was rechannelled into, and ostensibly contained, by the symbolic world of the rite of passage. Together with appeals for futile offensive operations, feeling was evoked as the lowest common denominator to deal with military stasis, the warfare of attrition, the destructive power of artillery and, most importantly, as a surrogate for democratic discourses among peasant and worker soldiers. Where the ‘new Italy’ was to differ from the old one was in its territorial enlargement, and indeed the baptismal ceremony on the Isonzo took place in newly conquered territory. But another important rupture with the past was that the socially hierarchical, paternalistic and profoundly conservative worldview of the Italian State was not to be imposed solely using force. Rather, the warrior community hinged on the emotion- based self-mobilization of captains and non-commissioned lieutenants and, most importantly, on the charismatic figure of Mussolini himself. This emotionally and symbolically charged but socially and politically conservative nation at war was then presented to readers of IL Popolo d’ltalia as a spontaneously lived and functioning series of social relations which had been passively accepted by soldiers from the labouring classes. In turn, the readers of IL Popolo d’ltalia appear to have been from those very sectors of the middle and lower middle classes that provided the junior officers of which Mussolini was one in all but name.