"There Were Giants in Those Days"
In an August 1924 New York Times Magazine article, Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote that the type of European leaders who caused World War I were now all gone. She even specifically namechecked Mussolini as an example of this "new" type of leader.
Ebert the saddler fills what is left of the place occupied by the greatest of the Kaisers.
McCormick references the now-forgotten Friedrich Ebert, president of Germany at the time until his death in office the next year, 1925.
While Adolf Hitler had accumulated at least some modicum of power by 1924, having already become leader of the Nazi Party in 1921, he wouldn't became the true leader of Germany as an entire nation until 1933.
An unknown Russian, a lesser than Lenin, asserts the power of the most imperial of the Czars.
Lenin had died that January. His successor Joseph Stalin clearly hadn't made the full force of his power felt by a mere seven months into his 29-year reign.
A Socialist and conscientious objector is Prime Minister and an engine-wiper Colonial Secretary of Great Britain.
The U.K. prime minister referenced is Ramsay MacDonald, who would serve for less than a year, from January to November 1924, though he would return to the post from 1929-35.
Neville Chamberlain wouldn't ascend to the post until 1937, while Winston Churchill wouldn't gain the position until 1940.
The editor of Avanti triumphantly dictates the policies of Italy.
Mussolini was indeed previously editor of the official publication of the Italian Socialist Party. McCormick's description of him seems to imply something akin to "He can't be that bad, he's only a journalist." (In other words, the same profession she herself had.)
McCormick went on to describe how these new national leaders posed little to no risk of creating a World War II:
Where are the political gods of yesterday? Where, now, are the warmakers, those portentous figures that shadowed the horizon of the world ten years ago and were powerful enough to mobilize an entire generation of the human race?
Hiding in plain sight.
There Were Giants in Those Days: Ten Years Have Swept Away the Political Gods Who Wrought the War in Darkness, and Mere Men Now Rule the World
Published: Sunday, August 3, 1924