The Cruise of the Nona

ordering of their fellow men. It was a chief quality always looked for by our fathers in those who rose high, and were worthy so to rise; nor were they disappointed. Ambition of old was a mark of greatness. But today it is the mark of the capable man that ambition disgusts him. That mark is most notable in Mussolini. It is most notable in Foch. It was notable in most of the commanders of armies; in the admirals of fleets. It was most notable, of course, in the saintly eminence of Mercier. It was notable in almost everyone I had the privilege to meet and watch during and after the struggle who had been capable of doing something great in that time.

It is not difficult to discover when you speak with Mussolini that his interest is in his job, not in his name. It is apparent to all that the great work of the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines is remote from all personal motive⁠—and ambition is essentially personal. As for Foch, it is manifest, not only in his every gesture and expression, but in the life he has lived after saving Europe. But this novel feature, the absence of ambition in our greatest men today, goes further. It has been notable in our chief discoverers in physical science⁠—all can bear witness to that; it is even becoming apparent in the best writers, though writers are among the vainest of mankind.

All men of real capacity in this our time seem to be agreed that the peculiar odour of modern success is a thing for a decent man to avoid. It is becoming a sort of habit of the mind throughout the West⁠—that is, throughout civilised Europe today⁠—in such few men as can do some great work, to do it silently and apart, and to disconnect it wholly from immediate renown.

Conversely, you will have monstrous advertisement surrounding the mere name of a man incompetent, and usually thoroughly dishonest as well, because he is athirst for publicity of the modern sort, and loves it, and because he is quite content to serve those lumps of wealth and vulgarity who, through their possession of the mob newspapers, can grant or withhold publicity.

Here is a situation thoroughly diseased: the spur of ambition withdrawn from those who can do. It cannot last. How it will be resolved I do not know, nor does any other man; but that it cannot last is apparent. The mere force of competition, the mere mathematics of the world will see to it that blaring incompetence shall not permanently wield even nominal power; and it holds more than nominal power today.

I was interested, among the many things I heard from the more advertised civilians of the Great War, to note two things: the first was a rooted conviction in the most advertised Parliament men that things and people foreign to their experience were inferior to them. We know, of course, that that is the natural instinct of the schoolboy, and of the very simple good person without experience; but the astonishing thing was to find it in men whom one would expect, in spite of their origins, to have become a little polished by long conversation with their fellows, a little trained by responsibility. Before the end of the conflict one would have thought that even your politician must acquire some judgment from so much vivid and informing experience. Not a bit of it! It went off him like so much water off a duck’s back, and you may hear him today, six years after the Armistice, peddling the same inanities as he peddled in 1913.

The second thing I noticed was the alarming difference between politicians and the soldiers in the sense of reality. I say alarming because, after the war, Europe, instead of continuing the rule of soldiers as it should have done, returned to its vomit; and the miserable parliamentary figures of the old degraded day put on again costume and greasepaint, filed back upon the stage, and began to play their old antics as though nothing had happened. The French, who ought to know better (for they have found parliaments out), behaved disgracefully in this matter. You may take up any French newspaper today, and find yourself appalled with the recurrence of such names as Caillaux, Briand, Herriot, Loucheur, who ought never to have been mentioned again after such an experience as the Great War.

Italy has done better: but only under the stress of a threatened dissolution. Society in Italy had to reach the point of acute peril before that reaction took place which saved the country; but what a fine reaction it was, not only in its virtues, but, what is more important, in its spirit! What a strong critical sense Italy has shown! What intelligence in rejection of sophistry, and what virility in execution! May it last! But will it last? Even in Italy?

Everything good in this world is doomed to perish, and I cannot tell how long this excellent experiment will stand, or whether it will take firm root, and make Italy all that it desires to be, and all that Italy should be⁠—seeing the strength of the blood, the industry, the intelligence, and the warmth of all that people. But, at any rate, it is good to visit a society still under such an impulse, and to feel that, in one section of Europe at least, things are going well.

I made a sort of pilgrimage to see Mussolini, the head of the movement, and I wrote about him for the Americans. I had the honour of a long conversation with him alone, discovering and receiving his judgments. What a contrast with the sly and shifty talk of your parliamentarian! What a sense of decision, of sincerity, of serving the nation, and of serving it towards a known end with a definite will! Meeting this man after talking to the parliamentarians in other countries was like meeting with some athletic friend of one’s boyhood