Eight months after Benito Mussolini became dictator of Italy, New York Times Magazine cautioned that only time would tell what kind of leader he would turn out to be:
Is he a symptom of the disease of politics that infects civilization, or is he a remedy? Is he autocrat, liberator, or merely demagogue? How far is he going, and where? After eight months of practically unlimited authority, what has his government accomplished? Enough to prove one-man power to be less dangerous than the powerlessness of many men, to show that a general-manager form of control may be applied to a nation as well as to a town? Is he, in a word, as right as he is popular in proceeding on the assumption that people really desire government more than they desire a voice in government?
History would ultimately judge Mussolini as one of the 20th century's greatest tyrants, and those 1923 questions would all be answered soon enough.
The Swashbuckling Mussolini
Published: Sunday, July 22, 1923