AMORC AND ITS ADMIRATION FOR FASCISM

On a trip that several AMORC members made to Egypt, Jerusalem and Europe in 1937, they were invited to a meeting with the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and later the AMORC's founder Harvey Spencer Lewis wrote the following about this meeting in the AMORC's magazine "Rosicrucian Digest", August 1937:

« Of course, another outstanding event was the radiogram I received while our ship was at sea en route from the East to Nice, France, where we had planned to spend a week. That radiogram in vited my wife and myself, accompanied by the Supreme Officers, to a special reception granted to us by Mr. Mussolini in the Palace of Venezia in Rome.

We had to call a hurried meeting at eleven o'clock at night, and it was amusing to see how the members responded to the sudden and unexpected call in pajamas, robes, and other miscellaneous attire, and although most of them were drowsy and half asleep, they quickly awakened at the news and agreed that they would accompany us in a body to Rome, and abandon three of the seven days we had planned to spend in Nice.

We had al ready visited Rome, and this detour in our itinerary represented a cost in money and in effort, and in tiresome travel of an entire day. And so we cut short our visit in Nice after enjoying many wonderful sights, and went to Rome and participated in a number of important ceremonies in the one after noon and evening. All who were present at the time (practically every member of the party) received later a large size photograph of the group with Mr. Mussolini and my family and myself standing in the center of the group.

It was unanimously agreed later that what we had learned, observed, and witnessed in Italy most certainly contradicted all that we had read and heard in America through the newspaper and magazine propaganda. And we did not base our opinions on what was told to us by any propagandists in Italy, but on what we actually saw, and which could not have been prearranged. It was the only country of all those we visited where we found real courtesy, kindness, a genuine spirit of optimism and hopefulness, a complete absence of war talk and war preparation, and a manifest desire for peace, and good will toward tourists of every land.

(Cid's observation: Italy joined World War II in June 1940.)

The reception of the Rosicrucians by Mr. Mussolini, and the fine talk that he made as an address to your Imperator and the Supreme Officers, the fine things that he said about the Rosicrucians and the AMORC, his many refer ences to its history and its activities which he said he had investigated for some time, and his wholehearted welcome to Rosicrucians and Rosicrucianism. constitute some of the remarkable elements of growth and development of the Order in Europe. It will have a greater effect upon Rosicrucianism in Europe than any of our members can suspect at the present time. »

(p.267)

OBSERVATION

AMORC subsequently tried to hide this meeting, but historical documents prove that it did happen.