ABSTRACT
On February 28, in Gargnano, Benito Mussolini decided to mark the seventh anniversary of d'Annunzio's death. He went to the Vittoriale and, before a crowd of armed Militiamen, he paid tribute to the poet in a failing voice; it seemed to many that Mussolini was telling of his own legend. On April 13, after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, Mussolini, like Hitler, hoped again: he knew Churchill, who had once supported Fascism and whose fear of Communism should lead him to end the war by diplomatic means. The delegates of the Resistance stared in amazement at the old man whose heavy countenance was only the face of a man who feels the terror of death rising and who struggles desperately. The matter of Mussolini was the business of Italians. The Italian people was a mature people that stood in no need of lessons from the Allies.
