Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 54
54 just waiting, and then spend another hour in work, and spend some time in wrapping up also. T he result being that more of their time is wasted compared to others. When Mussolini, the famous Italian leader who was killed in the last war , became the leader, Italy was considered an undeveloped country. It was not considered one of the great nations. Italy ’s industry was poor , it was behind in trade as compared to other European countries, and its agriculture saw no progress. Mussolini was the son of an ordinar y mason , and he himself worked as a mason early on. He entered politics and created a political party and with its help he rose to become the country’s leader. Although he was called the Prime Minister, in reality he was a k ing. The only shortcoming he identified in his people was a lack of punctuality. He issued an order that everyone should be punctual. If a worker w as even one minute late to his office he w ould be punished, maybe demoted, or even suspended. It was a minor detail , but I saw with my own eyes how it turned around the nation’s destiny. And t his small change, i. e. , of punctuality , fixed the whole system of the country. I personally experienced th is order of punctuality when I went to England in 1924 for some religious work. On the way, I had a chance to stay in Italy, not long after Mussolini had come to power. I felt a strong desire to meet him to see for myself what type of person he was. During the same time period, a renowned leader of the Socialist p arty had been murdered by Mussolini’s party. Mussolini’s party alleged that he had fled from the country out of fear. The Socialist p arty claimed that he had been killed and had no t fled out of fear. Th e two parties had been arguing about this for several months. On the day that we arrived in Italy, the dead body of the Socialist leader was found embedded in the wall of a fort or house. The murderer had dug out the wall to place the body within. Because Mussolini’s party had stated that the leader had fle d , finding the body e mbedded with in the wall of a hom e led the opposition party to believe that Mussolini’s party had killed him. If they h ad not killed him, there would be no reason to hide the body. This incident shook up the newly formed government of Mussolini and it was expected that it would soon collapse. When I requested the British a mbassador for Italy to arrange a meeting for me with Mussolini , he replied to me with the message that when he had requested an appointment with Mussolini to discuss some important official matters, he could not find any time to spare as he was so worried over this most recent incident. When he could not s pare time