Some three times a week, if he was in Rome, Il Duce came to see me at my offices. Guards would be positioned at the great double doors, with their carvings of warring centaurs and satyrs. Then we would discuss where we had left off, how we had won the last of our battles, what problems we had discovered, and so on. Now two Land Leviathans stood some two feet high on the game table, facing batteries of guns and larger numbers of troops, as we tried out increasingly complicated strategies. Upon arrival, my chief would unbutton his tunic — he called it ‘loosening my stays’ - and take a small cup of coffee. Then he would give his entire concentration to the matter in hand. I noticed with no great surprise, since Italy had been an ally of Britain in the Great War, he preferred to fill the enemy positions with German soldiers.
The amount of time I spent with Il Duce created a certain jealousy towards me. Some of his people felt overlooked. Notoriously, Il Duce was growing remote from his old friends, those who had been with him from the beginning. I heard this constant, if not very audible, grumble from among the ras, squadristi and gerarchia of the old guard, who had won the revolution but failed to absorb their leader’s lessons in statecraft. I heard similar complaints from several members of the Fascist Grand Council of which our Chief was head. If the American Revolution had been the work of a group of lawyers creating a land fit for lawyers to flourish in, then the Italian rebirth was chiefly in the hands of men who, like Mussolini himself, had been writers, publicists and journalists and who wished to create a nation where the writer was paramount. Their interest was not the day-to-day practical running of state affairs. They wished to maintain the morale of the country, in keeping the goals, as well as the achievements, of Fascism to the fore.
‘We must all march forward singing,’ said Turati, two days before his disgrace.
Mussolini did not want to hear such thoughts. He was forever repeating his view that while Italians thought of themselves as a nation of wine-loving opera singers they would never compete with the austerely successful Teutons, who, of course, had successfully conquered Italy after the Roman Empire withdrew to the East.
I think Turati’s reference to song was a mistake. I had attended one or two of his little parties. He was not an evil man. I believe he meant well for Italy. But, as Mussolini put it to me, ‘If you shove your fist up a little boy’s arse, the next hand you shake will smell of shit.’ By which Il Duce meant, I suppose, that inner corruption, which has nothing to do with sexual preferences or the enjoyment of the world’s other many pleasures, is more important than outer. He did not object to Turati’s symptoms of what Il Duce always called ‘the German sickness’, but the rule was, as Lord Joyce once said to me in the years when he was a simple commoner rather than a broadcaster, never to upset the ladies or frighten the horses. A rule the British would do well to remember, since they are no better than the others these days with their miserable kowtowing to every dusky ex-colonial who decides to castigate them in print. They were once the most successful Teutons in the world. Now, of course, we have the Americans.
Except when we were experimenting with our models or when on a whim he would occasionally decide to take me for a drive at the wheel of his huge Mercedes-Benz, zooming through the streets of Rome late at night, when little attention needed to be paid to lights or signs, Il Duce remained a very private man. He even checked himself from revealing that infectiously broad and charming smile. He habitually pushed his lower lip forward, firming his jaw against the cares of state, striking a deliberately belligerent pose by drawing his brows together in an almost comical scowl. The Bolshevist cartoonists loved to parody these expressions. Yet it was a conscious mask assumed for public appearances or for when he met a fellow Head of State. He could not afford to appear weak or indecisive. He was, after all, a superman. Our job was to support him in whatever positive ways we could. Therefore, to present another image of Il Duce was an act of national sabotage.
Turati had been one of the first to realise the importance of what came to be called ducisimo in promoting a national identity. Mussolini’s favourite theme, that Italians would only be respected abroad when they lost their image as a nation of maftosi and gigoli, made considerable sense. If other people see you as weak and foolish, there is a strong chance you will come to see yourself in this way. I have observed husbands, convinced by their wives that they are of a certain character, begin to behave accordingly. Women, of course, are masters of this sort of thing.
For this reason Mussolini treated Italians to a constant litany of Italian successes — in the Arts, the Sciences, the Humanities. All agreed that Italy led the world in style, for instance. It was imitated everywhere. No longer a nation of opera singers, but of the great condottieri, said Mussolini.
‘And this, Professore,’ he added, laying a firm hand upon my massive piece, ‘is what in the end impresses the world. Spectacular weaponry! Imagine the astonishment of the world when our futurist arsenal is revealed! The threat of war, Professor, brings many a great power to her senses. With machines like this we shall restore our African and our Eastern Empire without losing a single Italian life!’
The idea of war was still unpopular in Italy. Mussolini knew that if gains could be made with minimum losses his prestige would be even higher. His prestige and Italy’s prestige were indistinguishable and interdependent. For this reason we worked in secrecy. A few hints of our project were released to the press. I was not named, save as a famous American inventor advising Il Duce in his great plans. We were designing a homeland defence system which would be second to none. That system would make the Maginot Line seem old-fashioned and hopelessly ineffective. All European countries in those days were prepared for another war. Few had the heart for it. Mussolini argued that war was identified with the bloody folly of the trenches. He reminded me that British tanks first broke that appalling stalemate. The modern equivalent of flying cavalry, the tank, together with the fighting aeroplane, changed the rules of warfare.
The months went by. I enjoyed a status I had never known before. I had won respect, power, approval, the company of international men of affairs. I was party to all the political secrets of Europe. I knew only one small frustration. I should have anticipated it when dealing with a man of so many responsibilities. Il Duce would not let me know when we would be ready to put the prototype into production. Whenever I asked, he would offer me some reason for delaying. Then he would turn the conversation to some other invention of mine and insist that a model be commissioned. Thus the surrounding panelling of the boardroom’s walls was soon supporting shelves containing massive models of all my inventions. One of these was my long-range bombing aeroplane, the so-called ‘Flying Wing’, which contained much more extra fuel than ordinary aircraft. Although we were not yet giving employment to Italy’s engineers and steelworkers, we were making her toymakers rich.
Factories were not yet tooled up to produce the Land Leviathan’s full-size prototype, but over the next months our people brought to life a whole series of designs. I felt the euphoria I had known when I had worked on films, though ultimately, of course, we aimed to produce reality rather than illusion. I was disappointed Il Duce showed little interest in my more domestic inventions, such as the Radio Oven, but glad he remained enthusiastic about the rest, a product of what he insisted on praising as my ‘Fascist sensibility’.