CHAPTER VI

COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION
The Fascists
Risorgimento—Socialism, 1890—Internationalists in Romagna—Mussolini the agitator—Inefficient government of Italy—Bolshevik terrorism after the war—Origins of Fascism—Campaign against Bolsheviks—Fascist army—Collapse of Bolsheviks—March on Rome—Modification of Parlia- ment—Attitude to the Crown—Education—Syndicalism—Strict des- potism—Relations with the Church—Future of Fascism.
a order to understand Italy, we must depart from the ordinary point of view which was focussed by our schoolmasters at a period of political blindness. It is not true that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the fall of the gates of Rome in 1870 Italy was a distracted country, deprived of unity and liberty by foreigners and petty ty- rants. It is not true that Garibaldi and Mazzini were heroic liberators, acclaimed by a nation rightly struggling to be free. It is not true that prosperity and good government increased after the establishment of the united kingdom.
As Signor Bonomi tells us, “‘ The country districts were indifferent or hostile to the Risorgimento. It was the educated who escorted political prisoners to gaol or the gallows with cries of passion, while peasants watched per- sons of quality making acquaintance with chains and gibbets. The peasants fought against revolution in 1848 and formed the reserves of counter-revolution. Unlike French peasants, the Italian ones profited nothing from revolutions, and they never had any idea of national unity.”’
It was not until 1890 or thereabouts that Socialism began to spread seriously in the valley of the Po, and then only on lines of class jealousy and internationalism. Romagna had been the only restless district, a hotbed of revolution and sedition, the headquarters of the small Republican party, and here the Internationalists were persecuted by the Re- publicans far more savagely than by the police. They were not only arrested and prosecuted by the authorities, but
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excluded from labour organisations and knifed by their Re- publican «comrades. Ideas, however, always throve on opposition in Romagna, and here the Internationalists found their first Italian apostles, chiefly young men, for whom Republicanism seemed too mild. Why, the Republican leader, Mazzini, had actually admitted a-belief in God !
Mussolini was born in Romagna, and the atmosphere of his youth may be illustrated by an incident. Two crowds had assembled in the pine forest of Ravenna to decide with knives and pistols whether the ideas of Mazzini or the ideas of Bakunin should prevail. The police interfered to re- store order, and both crowds united to attack them.
The Internationalists were not numerous at first. They used to go out on horseback after their work and visit friends or relations to disseminate their views, then return home late in a state of fatigue and intemperance. Their first sensational prosecution was in 1878 as “‘ an association of malefactors.”” They were taken to the court in chains, but not tried until the autumn of 1879, when they were ac- quitted and rewarded with a public banquet.
Meanwhile, active Internationalist propaganda had been carried on in Romagna by Andrea Costa after his release in 1878 from the Paris Santé prison, where he had been confined with Louise Michel and Blanqui for disseminating Bakunin’s works. It was Costa who started the Socialist organ, Avanti, at Imola. This and other subversive papers were regularly suppressed but as regularly re-appeared. The Garibaldians, believing in the fetish of an absolutely free press, supported the Internationalists with money and joined them in sending volunteers to help the Greeks in 1897 and the Boers in 1900. The Internationalists also included ordinary criminals like Germanico Piselli, who ran a paper called La Rivendicazione (Vindication) for blackmail and various vindictive purposes. But for the most part they were too busy fighting the Republicans to concern themselves much with the dissemination of their Internationalist doctrines. On the 7th of July, 1902, Mussolini’s father, a village black- smith, was arrested for rioting at an election, burning the voting-papers and driving the praetor to hide in a cupboard.
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The blacksmith remained 167 days in prison before being tried, and was then acquitted.
We have a picture of Mussolini at the age of twenty, standing at the edge of a crowd at a Socialist meeting, and Bonavita, the principal speaker, urging him to come forward and air his views. Bonavita had heard of his industry and intelligence and was a friend of his father. But the boy shook his head and slipped away. He had come to listen, not to expound.
However, he was glad to accept journalistic jobs and ex- pound Socialism in print. Indeed, he was glad of any job that would help to support his family. He would have liked to be a teacher at Forli, but lost his chance through some irregularity in his papers. He had already been an elementary school teacher at Gualtieri in Reggio d’Emilia, where he danced and played the violin and was dismissed on a charge of pleasure-seeking. He went to Switzerland and starved for awhile, working eleven hours a day at three- pence an hour ; then he threw up his work because his em- ployer was rude, was thrown into prison for lacking visible means, became hodman, tramp, a wine-merchant’s errand- boy ; somehow he contrived to scrape along at Geneva and attended evening classes at the University.
It was then that he cast himself into the whirlpool of revolutionary Internationalism, mixed much with dissolute, fantastic Russian students, idolised Babeuf, the French Jacobin Communist, read Nietzsche, Sorel, Schopenhauer, ridiculed Christ and discovered Buddha. He was expelled from canton to canton, earned money as a stonemason, told fortunes by cards, was at last deported to Italy and found discipline in his military training as a bersaglieve. Then came more teaching, fugitive employment for the most part, more journalism, a history of philosophy, a melodramatic serial, secretaryship to the Socialist Chamber of Labour. In 1910 he was the mainstay of his family, a paid Socialist agitator, receiving five pounds a month and refusing offers of more, claiming independence, denouncing Marxism and well-fed Socialists, taking himself very seriously.
He seems to have been honestly groping for views all this
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time. There were no terrible grievances around him, no starving peasants such as imaginative scribes picture in France before the Revolution. But Italy was certainly very far from being an Utopia. The farce of parliamentary government had been pushed to an extreme. It was Whig- gery at its worst. The voters were a small proportion of the people, so there could be no pretence of a democracy. The elections were manipulated by Governments through the Prefects, yet a Government never remained in office long enough to carry out a policy. There were many parties and none of them ever had a decisive majority. The only way to cling to office was by unnatural coalitions, and when one set of politicians had had their turn, they were expected to make way for another set. All politics were reduced to intrigues and scrambles for office, and office lasted so short a time that the politicans were chiefly concerned in feathering their nests. Not only the votes of electors, but the deputies themselves were openly and cynically bought and sold. Justice had become a byword. Judicial and military pre- ferment, every appointment in the country, down to the State tobacco-shops and the dazii or local custom-houses, were rewards for political services. And the politicians, though many of them appeared highly intelligent and decla- matory, were notoriously corrupt time-servers without a spark of patriotism or self-respect. The Church was flouted, if not persecuted. The King was a parliamentary puppet.
Until the Socialists came upon the scene, public meetings were almost unknown in Italy ; newspapers were rare and trivial, and as most peasants were illiterate, newspapers could not help to enlighten them ; the only possible spread of opinions was in the churches and the taverns, and the persecuted priests were scarcely more helpful than the genial, careless potmen.
The success of the Socialist agitators was due to a variety of causes. In the first place, it cannot be denied that there was something very rotten in the state of Italy. That was obvious to the meanest intelligence. Every Italian is a traditionalist, believing in legends not only of the Saints and the ancient gods, but of Romulus and Cesar ; an imperialist
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filled with pride over the glories of a dim and distant past. An immense field lay fallow, with infinite possibilities of being fertilised by a judicious and vigorous propaganda on behalf of ordered progress. But the priests and Levites passed by on the other side, leaving wounded Italy to be tended and nurtured by bad Samaritans.
No doubt all the Socialist, Internationalist, Communist and other revolutionary agitators were not mere criminals. Some of them were lunatics. A few may have had philan- thropic ideals. None of them must be blamed for fulfilling their destiny any more than the pneumococci are blamed for invading the lungs of those whose resistance has been lowered by chills, alcoholism or fever. The body politic, like the human body, is a perpetual battlefield for good and bad germs, and the advance of the bad germs depends on feeble- ness of resistance or suitability of territory. Now, in Italy, after 1870, the good germs or friends of order were paralysed and could offer no healthy resistance, the constitution had been impaired, the invasion was a mere military parade.
Italian Socialism, then, was vigorously introduced about 1890 by a small band of Marx-fed intellectuals—students, journalists, lawyers and other parasites—trying to teach the people to revolt, and finding the people very difficult to persuade of their grievances. The Socialists were not even tactful. For instance, in 1911, they denounced the Libyan war, though they knew the masses favoured it. Govern- ments regarded Socialism as a menace to the unity of the realm and resorted alternately to coercion and blandish- ments. In May, 1898, they had declared a state of siege throughout Italy. In 1912 they conceded universal suffrage and tried to win the votes of Socialist deputies in the Chamber.
Meanwhile, Mussolini had become a power in the Socialist party, was appointed editor of their chief organ, the Avaniz, and helped to organise the Red Days of June, 1914, uniting the various revolutionary elements—Anarchists, Syndi- calists and Republicans—in an attempt at armed revolt with episodes of extreme violence. But for the war, he might easily have destroyed existing society and estab- lished something very like Bolshevism in Italy.
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But when the war came, he veered round suddenly, or perhaps one should say, seemed to veer, for he retained many of his idea’, retained them even after he had become: dic- tator. The war, of course, changed many people, the In- ternationalists most conspicuously of all. In every country they had boasted that their principles would render war impossible, but no sooner did war come than they preferred patriotism and hurried to their flags. This was Mussolini’s case. He lost his position and income, was wounded, and seemed to have no further prospects. But, as usual, he fell on his feet. He started a newspaper with practically no capital, became the leader of a new party and a power in the State merely by following his own impulses of the mo- ment. He was no longer an Internationalist, for his pa- triotism grew daily, but he was still a Syndicalist, and in many ways his programme never drifted very far from that of the Bolsheviks.
But when the Bolsheviks obtained the upper hand in Italy, he fought and beat them with their own weapons. The advent of Bolshevism in Italy was due to a general disappointment overthewar. The people expected a golden age and were not satisfied by a mere expansion of ter- ritory. They found soaring prices, unemployment, a menace of starvation. Their wretched Government was flouted at the Peace Congress and failed to maintain order at home. The Russian rulers saw and seized their op- portunity. Their intensive propaganda found a welcome in Italy for the first time. ‘‘ Long live Lenin!’ was chalked on almost every wall. Patriotic songs provoked uproars and were actually suppressed by timid policemen. Well- dressed people, all who drove in cars, all who were not obviously workmen were insulted and mobbed and stoned. Soldiers dared not appear in public in uniform, and were advised by the authorities not to do so, lest they should thereby provoke attacks. Wound-stripes and medals were torn off with contumely. Crippled heroes were spat upon and chased into shops or coffee-houses. The national flag was not tolerated anywhere.
As everybody submitted tamely, the Bolsheviks grew
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bolder. They hunted holiday crowds out of public squares or dispersed them with bombs. Then they proceeded to seize fields and factories and attempted to administer them under the red flag. Sporadic strikes were proclaimed for the most trivial motives. All work became slovenly and superficial. Sabotage was organised with diabolical in- genuity. For instance, the postal officials remained at their desks, but took fifty minutes to register a letter, two hours to send off a telegram, laughing good-humouredly at the ever increasing queues.
There was a general strike in April, 1919, and Red Guards made the whole country unsafe, committing acts of violence and terrorism of every kind. With better leadership they could have made Italy an annex of the Union of Soviet Republics of Russia. But they could not even till the fields or conduct the factories they had usurped. Still less could they organise a raid on Rome or a seizure of the instruments of government. If Mussolini had been at their head, they would probably have been in power to-day. Lenin said, “A pity he is lost to us. He is a strong man, who would have led our party to victory.”” And Trotski added, ‘‘ You have lost your trump card ; the only man who would have carried through a revolution was Mussolini.”
Meanwhile, Mussolini was at work, determined to stamp out Bolshevism—not so much because it was a revolution as because he considered it the wrong kind of revolution. In the first place, he believed in capitalism, though ‘he considered it a defective instrument. Then he agreed with Lenin in despising democracy, but he wished to establish what he called “a new spiritual aristocracy of men from the trenches.” And this he had begun to collect as early as 1915 by banding his young followers together in a more or less secret society, which he called Fasci di Aztone Revoluzionaria (Faggots of Revolutionary Action), after- wards developed into Fasci di Combattimento (Faggots of Combat). The name Fascio was taken from the old Roman Lictor’s emblem of an axe tied in a bundle of wands, to express authority and union.
This organisation was founded silently and swiftly, but
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without the paraphernalia of ordinary secret societies. There were no snowball groups with strange names to unite unknown"persons for a common object under a mysterious head, no blood-curdling oaths or fantastic passwords or barbaric rites. The only oath taken was as follows, ‘“ In the name of God and Italy, in the name of those who have died for the greater glory of Italy, I swear that I will conse- crate myself, entirely and for ever, to live for the benefit of my country.” Yet the unity, discipline, determination and secrecy were none the less effective. And at this time the Fascist programme was frankly revolutionary, proposing to establish a republic, abolish the Senate, sequestrate religious property, expropriate riches, and seize eighty-three per cent. of the gains of war profiteers.
The first open demonstration of Bolshevism in Italy took place on the 18th of February, 1919, when tens of thousands marched through the streets of Milan shouting “‘ Long live Lenin!’’ And Fascism in its modern form began at Milan on the 23rd of March, 1919, when one hundred and forty-five persons met in the small hall of an old palace. Mussolini then changed the sub-title of his paper, the Popolo da’ Italia from ‘‘ the Socialist daily,”’ to “‘ the journal of fighters and producers.”
It was very slowly that the Fascists began to be talked about. I was in the most disturbed districts at the time of Bolshevik permeation, meeting people of all classes, making investigations as a newspaper correspondent. But the first time I heard the word Fascist was in 1920. I had been sitting outside Florian’s in St. Mark’s Square at Venice one afternoon and had just strolled off when I heard a loud explosion behind me. Then I returned and found my table blown to bits, and blood on the pavement. I said to one of the spectators, “‘ Really, these Socialists... .’?; but he answered disagreeably, “It is just as likely to be the Fascists.”” It surprised me to find a respectable looking man defending the Socialists, but I soon learned that the counter-revolutionaries were also using violent methods.
And it was not long before I became acquainted with Fas-
ists. I wrote for the first number of L’Italia Nuova (New
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Italy), their organ at Venice, and found that they were starting newspapers all over the country. They belonged to all classes, with lawyers generally predominating, and they evidently possessed great influence. The Italian Govern- ment, for instance, had turned me back at Abbazia when I tried to visit d’Annunzio at Fiume; but a Fascist document enabled me to go to Zara without impediment from the authorities, and at Zara I found the Italian Governor and all his staff were zealous Fascists, and they sent me direct to Fiume by steamer.
The Fascists were not a party, I wastold. They had nota quack remedy for all the ills of humanity. A frequent question was whether they desired the monarchy or a re- public, and I am sure they had not made up their minds at this time, for their invariable answer was that they were interested only in the nation. Republicanism might answer the ideals of justice, or Italy might be traditionally monar- chical, but that was the province of philosophers and his- torians, a matter of indifference to patriots. The criticism of the monarchy was that it did not seem monarchical enough. In order to be a reality, I was told, monarchy should possess prestige in substance and in form instead of becoming the mouthpiece of imperious demagogues. But to set up a President instead of a King would be to fall from the frying pan into the fire, from monarchical to republican Bolshevism. ‘‘ Our Socialists,’”’ the Fascists declared, ‘‘ offer us only the Lenin-like monkeys who answer to the names of 157 dishonourable members in no way representative of the people,’’ those 157 deputies who had flouted the King by sing- ing the Red Flag when he came to open Parliament.
The new missioners were equally detached on the class question. The middle-class had produced profiteers, they said, but it also possessed healthy intellectual forces. The proletariat had its profiteers too, and a proletariat that drinks and won’t work is no less offensive than the parasites who eat and won’t work. But the proletariat which worked and produced, deserved respect no less than the work- ing and productive middle classes. ‘‘ If the proletariat were working to eradicate all the speculators and swindlers and
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drones of every class and to set up honest and intelligent men in their stead,’ I was told, ‘‘ we should be their brothers in arms, but when we find them aiming at a dictatorship of drunkards, gamblers and wastrels, we must resist them to the uttermost.” So far the Fascists had no very definite programme beyond resisting the menace of the rivalry of Bolshevism.
The chief mistake of the Bolsheviks was wounding the strong patriotic feelings of the nation. They were openly contemptuous of Italy’s share in the war, and thus they set every old soldier and his friends and family against them. And many who might have hesitated about opposing them were lashed into fury by the unspeakable outrages which they committed. Meanwhile, patriotism had been further exasperated by the Government’s tame surrender of Al- bania and Fiume.
One case which contributed enormously to the discredit of the Socialists was that of the student Sonzini and the gaoler Scimula, who were condemned to death by a local Soviet for the crime of being Fascists. It was in vain that Scimula pleaded his record for kindness to prisoners, offered to bring witnesses from the criminal classes, begged for mercy in the name of his mother and his little children. The sentence was that both the accused should be cast into the great furnaces of the metal works, and this would have been carried out but for the fact that the stokers were too lazy to keep the furnaces alight, so the execution had to be carried out with revolvers. ‘‘ These,” the Socialist organ, Avanti, smugly observed, “‘ are the risks run by those who fight for Fascism.”” Italians are naturally sentimental, and the indignation aroused by this incident may be imagined.
The manufacturers and landowners of Italy proved too timid to fight Bolshevism openly, but they were useful in providing the sinews of war at a critical moment, and their assistance entitled them to mitigate the ultra-democratic desires of some of the Fascist leaders. ;
Nothing, however, could have mitigated the passionate desire for retribution which animated the Fascists and proved the life and soul of their cause. Soon they behaved with all
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the relentless fury of a terrorist secret society. Punitive expeditions were sent out in the night and suddenly appeared wherever they were wanted as though they had dropped from the clouds. The Bolsheviks might be complacently holding their councils or drawing up their bombastic pro- grammes. A rumble would be heard; here were a dozen armoured cars in the street ; bands of desperadoes leaped out armed to the teeth, as though from the wooden horse of Troy. They produced machine-guns, petrol, torches, set fire to Chambers of Labour, Labour headquarters, newspaper offices, co-operative stores, saw to the thorough execution of their tasks and departed as swiftly as they had come. And their punishments were all carefully thought out in advance. Murderers were shot without hesitation, lesser culprits were beaten with many stripes. But the favourite form of chastisement was to make the offenders temporarily helpless by the administration of castor oil. That was a very happy thought, for it disarmed and exposed to intense ridicule without maiming or leaving serious grievances. There was an elaborate system of espionage, and whenever the local Fascist committee heard that two or three were gathered together to form a new Bolshevik centre, or that the nation had been insulted in the course of tavern gossip, a band of young men would be sent out with flasks of the persuasive purge and the loudest demagogues would soon be reduced to paralysing and laughable convulsions.
Meanwhile, Mussolini sat in his office at the Popolo d'Italia like a spider waiting at the edge of its web. He had started the paper in November, 1914, in four miserable little rooms in a hovel of one of the lowest slums of Milan, and even when more space was needed for extended operations, the atmosphere of his sanctum was one of vigilance, to the ex- clusion of comfort or any other consideration. There seemed scarcely room for his writing-desk, two chairs and a book- case that was usually fuller of bombs than books.
Though he despised parliamentary institutions, Mussolini felt that he could afford to despise no instrument of propa- ganda, and he posed candidates in various parts of the country. They were not very successful, but at least they
T
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enabled him to go to the Chamber of Deputies as the leader of a group of thirty-three in May, 1921. But he was not then a dictator even in his own party. There was a crisis in June over the 1epublican tendency, which threatened to divide his tollowers. That was smoothed over, but a more acute crisis arose in August over the question of continuing violent methods. It must be remembered that the spirit of revolution dominated the whole country at this period. The Liberals were offering the land to the peasants, the Popolari (unofficial Clericals) were proposing fundamental changes, and the Fascists were demanding expropriation on a large scale. A pact was now proposed between Fascists, Social- ists and Popolari for a cessation of violence. Mussolini said the poor country needed rest, and he would sign a pact with the Devil or Antichrist to obtain it, but his subordinates objected. Then he threatened to withdraw. “If Fascism will not follow me,’ he said, ‘‘ no one can oblige me to follow Fascism. I am a leader who leads, not a leader who fol- lows.”
It was a period that called loudly for compromise. Fas- cist excesses had provoked a panic and a desire for retalia- tion, not only among Socialists, but among all those who belonged to no party and sighed only for peace and order. Many policemen and Fascists were stabbed at night on lonely roads. Anti-Fascist groups arose, known as God’s Arditi (storm-troops) and the Arditi of the People, and they fought Fascist raiding parties with terrific ferocity. Italy was growing seriously frightened of the Fascists, especially after the affair at Treviso on the 12th of July, 1921. The local Clericals and Republicans had combined to defend the labourers of Ca’ Tron village against the land-owners, and re- pulsed an attempt to recover stolen property. Then, with astonishing swiftness, fifteen hundred Fascists were mobi- lised from districts as far distant as Istria and Tuscany. They arrived at dead of night ina hundred lorries, armed with rifles and hand-grenades, and wearing steel helmets, this equipment having been issued them out of the stores of the regular army. They proceeded to sack the offices of Ii Piave, the local Clerical paper, then, after a siege
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of several hours, those of La Riscossa, the Republican organ.
One of the chief secrets of Mussolini’s success has been his instantaneous insight, almost second-sight, into public opinion, and he now perceived that Fascism was in danger, through its excesses, of alienating the country. Accordingly, he overruled refractory followers and signed the pact on the 3rd of August, 1921, at a conference called by the President of the Chamber of Deputies. His followers, however, while professing to acquiesce, continued and multiplied their ex- cesses. Whereupon Mussolini resigned from the Central Committee and began a vigorous campaign in his Popolo a’Italia, denouncing them as “‘ false Fascists,’ though they apparently constituted the bulk of his party. ‘‘ Fascism,” he wrote on the bs of August, “is no longer liberation, but tyranny.”
Fascism, nae became a mere ghost without the personality of its magnetic founder, and Mussolini soon resumed the leadership with a new programme. The Fas- cist militia of January, 1921, had provided the party with a centralised military force, and he now proceeded to organise it on Roman lines:
3 squads of 15 to20men.... 1 maniple under a decu-
rion. GANI DIES © og ccc o's 's 6-00 .- lcentury, under a centu- rion. BIE gain 5 cnn 0 wince 1 cohort, under a senior. Bt O- COUOTES \a'e'9 a'5:0' oats .. 1 legion, under a consul. PLO ACRIONS: 64 6.59. 9'0/4'sn:0% 1 group, under a group commander.
By the end of 1922, the Fascist militia amounted to more than 300,000 men, governed by rigid military and personal discipline.
During the winter of 1921-2, the re-organised Fascists became an irresistible weapon in Mussolini’s hands, and he made full use of it to consolidate his power. But he found he had to give way on the question of violence, which became more and more systematic. Socialist mayors and councils
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were threatened and beaten into resignation. Castor oil flowed like spring rivers. Labour centres were ruthlessly attacked and burnt if they were not immediately surren- dered. And violence proved the best policy, for a general stampede began among the opponents of Fascism. Perhaps the chief reason for this was the anxiety of the Socialists to save their co-operative stores, which represented years of saving and patient labour. Union after union seceded from the general Confederation of Labour and went over to the Fascist camp. At Ferrara no less than seventeen Red Leagues joined in one day. Everywhere they were peacefully absorbed on the one condition that their leaders should be thrown overboard.
But all this absorption of Socialists had its effect on the character of Fascism, destroying the preponderance of the middle-class, shaking off the control of landowners and manufacturers, whose finances had been very useful during the struggle. They were now compelled to surrender land to the labourers, and contribute, no longer as a favour but as a duty to the Fascist cause. Most important of all, Fascism secured a monopoly of labour. No man was allowed to work for his living unless he could display the Fascist badge.
The last desperate effort of the Socialists was to declare a general strike in July, 1922, as a protest against the in- activity of the Government in the face of Fascist outrages. It may be mentioned that the Premier was then Signor Facta, upon whom Scialoja made the epigram that his signature was mistaken for Verba.
Mussolini regarded the strike as a challenge and imme- diately mobilised his militia. He issued an ultimatum of forty hours to the strikers and filled their places with his own men, with the result that the strike was called off. But still he persevered with his offensive.
One of the plans of the Socialist campaign had been to demonstrate the failure of the Capitalist system by de- liberately mismanaging and ruining every concern they controlled. Thus the deficit of Milan municipality had been raised from 16,000,000 lire in 1918 to 375,000,000 lire in 1922.
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In one year Mussolini changed this to a surplus of 17,000,000 lire, and he performed similar miracles in other cities. He also restored orderly government to the annexed provinces, which had been shamefully mismanaged. At the beginning of October the Socialists expelled their moderate members, voted against any further collaboration with the Liberal State and practically ceased to exist as a party. Now was Mussolini’s opportunity. The Fascist Directory had given him plenary powers, the army would certainly not resist him, and he had only to stretch out his hand to grasp his prize.
He felt his way by a number of insidious speeches, care- fully noting their effect on the people. One thing was soon made clear, that he would meet with serious opposition if he attempted to depose the King. So he announced that he would spare the monarchy if it did not thwart Fascism.
Rumours of revolution were now speedily spreading every- where, and he was offered a place in the Ministry without a portfolio—responsibility without power, as he phrased it sarcastically.
On the 24th of October, 1922, he declared at Naples, “We have conquered the burning, vibrating soil of all the South of Italy. It is a matter of days, perhaps of hours. Either the government must be handed over to us, or we shall seize it by marching on Rome.” On the 27th he received a telephone message in the theatre at Milan, ‘“‘ It has begun.” His Blackshirts had seized the public offices at Cremona after a short conflict that cost them twelve lives. Manifestoes were issued at Milan, preparations were made for barricades. Everybody expected an immediate march on Rome.
But Mussolini preferred to hem in the capital. If he had begun by seizing it, he might have been confronted by a long series of campaigns in every direction, and a single check would have heartened his foes.
Facta, the Premier, wanted to proclaim martial law, but the King prudently refused to sign the proclamation.
And there was Mussolini waiting at the offices of the Popolo d’ Italia at Milan, waiting at the end of telephone wires while his legions gathered round the capital awaiting orders to advance.
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On the 28th firing was heard. He seized a rifle and ran out to a barricade, with the result that he was nearly shot through the head by a nervous young adherent. He an- nounced that he would neither discuss not compromise. “Unless I am given an absolute mandate to form a Govern- ment—my own Government,” he said, “I will not leave Milan save to place myself at the head of an army.”
At noon on the 29th the King’s aide-de-camp telephoned acceding to his wishes. Mussolini asked for telegraphic confirmation and received it within half-an-hour.
On the 30th he formed his ministry, ordered a general advance, and made his triumphal march through Rome. His revolution was accomplished with little or no bloodshed. If parliament means democracy, it was an anti-democratic revolution carried out by the people.
It certainly established a stringent personal Government such as had been rarely rivalled by any absolute monarch or revolutionary tyrant. Mussolini’s first step was to con- solidate his position and place himself out of danger of popu- lar revulsion or reprisals. He had already been forced to resign once by insubordinate followers, and his historical studies had taught him that collective enthusiasm is apt to fade away in the withering glare of success. He realised that it would have been highly dangerous to disband his legions and let loose hundreds of thousands of unemployed warriors upon a recently distracted kingdom. Satan would certainly have found some mischief for their idle hands, and grievances would have been found to re-organise them against him. To indemnify them for their patrotism would have thwarted his schemes of economy, besides clashing with the spirit of Fascism, which had led each legionary to bear the expenses of his march to Rome. Now, after victory, he exacted calm as emphatically as he had previously commanded tumult. The squad system was abolished, but it was transformed into a tremendous militia of volunteers, giving free service as guardians of public safety. The rising generation was not forgotten, and he enlisted 100,000 small boys between the ages of six and fifteen as a supernumerary contingent under the name of Balilla, a species of boy scout.
FARCE OF LIBERALISM 295
“T feel like a surgeon,” he said, “‘ called to the bedside of a sick man in danger of death.” And his first surgical duty was to cut out the polypus of Parliament, to which he attri- buted most of the national disease. Italy, in his opinion, required long and patient treatment in a nursing home, and his experiment would be foredoomed to failure if he were liable to sudden dismissal by a change of mood in the elec- torate. Moreover, the Liberal or Risorgimento idea of a recognised opposition,—His Majesty’s Opposition—wel- comed as part of the constitution and encouraged to fri- volous criticism, would be a constant handicap.
He summed up his attitude as follows: ‘‘ Liberalism in- spires all the enemies of Fascism. Does it stand for univer- sal suffrage and such conceptions? Does it mean keeping Parliament permanently sitting so that it may continue to present the ignoble spectacle which aroused general disgust ? Does it, in the name of Liberty, mean leaving to the few liberty to destroy the liberty of others? Liberty is not only a means but an end. As a means it needs to be controlled and dominated. And here we come to the ques- tion of force. I beg our friends the Liberals to tell me if in all history there has ever been a government based exclu- sively upon the consent of the people and ready to dispense altogether with the use of force. The consent of the people is as:mutable as the sands on the seashore. It is never complete, never permanent. There never was a govern- ment that made all the governed happy. You must have recourse to force. Now Fascism throws all the noxious theories of so-called Liberalism upon the rubbish-heap. When a group is in power, it is its duty to fortify and defend itself against all. Men are perhaps tired of liberty. If by liberty be meant the daily suspension of the tranquil, or- dered rhythm of the work of the nation, the right to spit upon the symbols of religion and of our native land and of the State, I as head of the State and chief of the Fascisti declare that such liberty shall never come into existence.”’
And on another occasion he said, “I prefer fifty thousand
rifles to five million votes.” However, he determined to retain Parliament as well as
\ 206 “. SECRET -SOCGIETIES:
the Crown. Parliament had been a fetish so long that its destruction could not have failed to arouse misgivings among the superstitious masses. English children are still taught in schools that the one unforgivable crime of King Charles I was that he administered the country for eleven years without a Parliament, though no blame is attached to Oliver Cromwell, who made his Parliaments his washpots. And similar fancies linger in Italy, so that Mussolini was perhaps prudent in devising a plan of group-voting, whereby a bare majority of the people, perhaps even an active mino- rity, could count upon an overwhelming majority in the Chamber. And he tolerated opposition there as little as he did in the country. ‘‘I have spared your toy,” he said, referring to Parliament, “‘ but on your vote of confidence depends your fate.”
And he found that, whatever measures he might decree on the impulse of the moment, he could always have them ratified by an obsequious Chamber and point triumphantly to his constitutional correctness. The only opposition he really resented and almost feared was that of the Liberal groups, which withdrew to the Aventine and continued to murmur against his disregard of English nineteenth-century doctrines.
The Fascist attitude towards Parliament has been shrewdly summed up by Vincenzo Grasso, who defines Fascism as “ a rebellion of the people or of a majority of the people against vitiated institutions, which cannot be re- formed by legal means for a better safeguard of the interests of the country.’’ Thus defined, Fascism is represented as desirable everywhere, for ‘ Parliaments are numerous assemblies unsuited to competent and serene discussion, rather polemical than deliberate in character. They should confine themselves to the acceptance or rejection of proposals. And elections by the vote of mobs are unsuited to the choice of persons expert in the knowledge of social questions.” Grasso suggests that members of Parliament should be selected by lot from county court judges, as they would be wiser and more moderate.
The attitude towards the Crown was very similar. In his
MENACE OF STUDENTS 297
unregenerate days, Mussolini had been a vehement Repub- lican. Even when he found himself at the head of a par- liamentary party he was inclined to keep away from the royal opening of the Chamber in order to demonstrate his repub- lican sentiments. He finally decided to spare the throne only because he realised that its continuance would streng- ‘then his own position. He considers that it adds lustre when it is trundled at the wheels of his triumphant chariot. He must take a grim pleasure over the many pictures pub- lished of State ceremonials with him, the great Dictator, strutting in the foreground, and a tiny, modest little King scarcely perceptible in his shadow. And he must have inspired the newspaper announcement that “‘ Signor Musso- lini is considering the question of marrying one of the King’s daughters to the King of Bulgaria.”
Yet he spares no pains when the dynasty can be used to glorify the régime. Rarely have such obsequies been wit- nessed as that of the Queen Dowager Margherita in 1926. All the way from Bordighera to Rome, even in the darkest and smallest hours, crowds gathered round blazing altars at every station while the funeral train paused for two minutes to receive their silent homage, smothered in flowers, escorted by gorgeous prelates and majestic sentinels in glit- tering helmets and cuirasses. She was the first Queen of United Italy, being borne to her tomb in the capital where the Fascist chief had completed the union of Italian hearts !
But wherever opposition lurked Mussolini never hesi- tated to strike. It will have been noticed throughout this volume that secret societies and subversive movements have everywhere found dangerous recruits among students. In all countries the chief, if not the only, avenue for ambi- tious youth has long been through the universities. When the age of machinery dawned, young peasants who desired to raise their status threw away their sickles and deserted their ploughs in order to flock into the towns, but the best they could hope for was to become artisans. And agitators taught them that one man is as good as another, that the only difference between a gentleman and a clown is a matter of opportunity. Given the opportunity of education, there
208 ' SECRET SOCIETIES
seemed no reason why the clown should not join the pro- fessional class and strut about in a frock coat and a bowler. The blessings of education were a Liberal watchword, which the most strenuous Conservative scarcely dared to deny. Accordingly, the Universities were thrown open, fees were reduced to a minimum, examinations became so easy that very little knowledge indeed sufficed to confer a dangerous degree and the status of a gentleman.
The result in Italy was to flood the country with briefless barristers, unemployed doctors, teachers, journalists, most of whom drifted into the political arena. These hungry, halt-illiterate waifs were almost pre-destined to become Socialist agitators, party hacks, poisonous parasites preying upon the tissues of the nation. Mussolini realised that they were a menace to Fascism, and he hastened to apply his surgery to higher education by raising rees and stiffening examinations. The effects have been salutary, but they have left painful scars. Students who could persevere only by privation and sacrifice at the best of times found their ambitions ruthlessly nipped in the bud, and not all of them were mentally equipped to avail themselves of the oppor- tunities which were opened for technical education.
These opportunities have been offered lavishly as part of a campaign for making the most of Italy’s resources and em- phasising the crude notion that imports are necessarily a curse. The country is so rich in electric power that it should be able to restrict the importation of coal and thus make itself independent of the follies of foreign strikes.
Irrigation is also being pressed forward in the hope of making Italy more nearly self-supporting. More important still, the workers have been peacefully persuaded of the necessity of increased production. Instead of ruining them- selves and the nation by such idle slogans as ‘‘ Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay,” they are always ready to work overtime, they take a far-sighted view of profits and refrain from haggling, and they are rewarded by free- dom from unemployment and labour disputes.
This Utopia must be ascribed to the Syndicate system, which Mussolini has retained from his old Socialist days,
SYNDICALISM 299
and which sounds suspiciously like the Soviets of the Bol- sheviks. Workers and employers may still combine in any way they please—theoretically, at any rate—but there must be one recognised Syndicate in every group. There are fifteen Syndicates in all—an employers’ and a workers’ Syndicate for each of the following groups: industry, agri- culture, commerce, sea-transport, land-transport, artists, artisans and liberal professions. These fifteen Syndicates are infinitely sub-divided—for instance, there are sub- syndicates of metallurgy, mechanics, wholesale trade, retail trade, export trade, libraries, printing, etc.,—but all the divisions depend on the fifteen national federations composed of representatives elected by the workers and the producers. And the fifteen syndicates co-operate by means of liaison officers appointed by the Government.
Strikes and lock-outs have become impossible, not only because they are prohibited on pain of fines and imprison- ment, but because all labour disputes have to be brought before Chambers of Labour and disinterested judges. Moreover, those in authority have a very good idea as to what an employer can afford to pay, and a hint from them goes further than the menace of any trades union else- where.
Gradually, too, the Syndicalist organisation had per- meated, infiltrated every class and corner of the country. Naturally, it would be far too cumbrous a process to appeal to headquarters for every trivial dispute of the hour. When a man is dissatisfied with his rent, or thinks the village fisher- men are charging too much, or fails to obtain prompt atten- tion from the plumber, he takes his grievance to the local Fascists and relies upon equity. The local Syndicates are called Fascist Federations, and at the head of each is a delegate from headquarters or from a superior organisation, instructed to arbitrate on all questions impartially.
On the whole it is a mild and benevolent tyranny, and orders are given to avoid friction as much as possible. But human nature is sometimes found to assert itself. The free- masonry of Fascism may confer undue favours, and few are bold enough to stand far outside the organisation.
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The rigour of Fascism has been admitted by Mussolini in his strictures on personal liberty. His honesty is undoubted, but his judgment is sometimes at fault, and few men are fit to exercise unlimited power. Now and again, a sovereign with long inherited traditions of objective impartiality, an anointed ruler trained to government from his cradle and inspired by forty generations of purple majesty, may be trusted to interpret the needs of the people committed to his charge. And there is this in favour of absolutism, that laws and institutions soon grow old and inappropriate amid the ever-changing conditions of the life of man. Democracy is ever ready to change and pull down, but is too often inspired by the selfishness of vigorous minorities, or becomes the plaything of tortuous, even criminal intrigues. The incor- ruptible dictator avoids such risks. His impartiality would be admirable if he possessed the supernatural gift of infalli- bility.
Mussolini has undoubtedly performed a great work. He has rescued Italy from the brink of the grave and trans- figured her with a spirit of idealism such as the world has rarely seen. But he lacks the divinity which hedges a king. His early struggles for existence have left his mind a mael- strom, seething with personal grievances; his occasional changes of front have loosened his perceptive gear to the verge of instability ; his psychological insight often leads him to give the people what they want, rather than what they need; his contempt for mankind has sometimes per- suaded him to accept unworthy lieutenants in despair of discovering perfection; his overwhelming self-confidence has wielded his iron sceptre to beat down all initiative and power of development under his feet.
Wiser tyrants have granted a certain toleration to the press, regarding criticism as an abcess more dangerous when driven beneath the skin than when encouraged to come to a head. Mussolini began by burning down the offices of hostile newspapers and priming their editors with castor oil. When he had secured office he imposed such a censorship as was scarcely known anywhere in war-time. Gradually he pro- ceeded from the suppression of articles and paragraphs and
A PURITAN DICTATORSHIP 301
whole issues to the absorption of journals, the substitution of editors, the dragooning of all opinions by his blackshirts.
The walls of many taverns are adorned with warnings not only of NO BLASPHEMY, but of No poLitics. Thus no effort is spared to check the exchange of thoughts which might be unpalatable to the Fascist Government. If it were possible to supervise men’s thoughts, no doubt there would be edicts to control the dreams of every siesta. D’Annunzio used to say, “‘ My will be done !’’ when address- ing his faithful legionaries at Fiume, and Mussolini sees to it that his shall be done in every byway of private life.
Even under the tyranny of Cromwell, Puritanism was not sorampant. The Italians are naturally inclined to vice in a gay, irresponsible way. Now they interrupt their mildest flirtations to look over their shoulders and make sure that no Fascist emissary is watching them with a stick or a purge.
Mussolini is doubtless not alone in condemning the immo- desty of modern women, who flaunt their legs and their bosoms in public, but he is the only man in Europe with the power to enforce fashions and sumptuary laws. The pre- text of home production excludes French dressmakers and foreign materials as well as French pornographic literature or plays. In process of time every signora and signorina and contadina will be condemned to go about like a medizval chatelaine in robes flowing from neck to heels, and the incon- venience will be accepted through fear of the intolerant satellites of Fascism. And His Excellency does not like to see women aping boys, so they must refrain from shingling and bobbing—even royal princesses must be taught to cherish nature’s greatest ornament. He has prohibited gambling, and thereby ruined many prominent resorts. If he hears of the Charleston dance, he will doubtless for- bid that negro-Simian orgy.
And home industries must be further encouraged by taking holidays at home instead of changing good Italian money at foreign watering-places with all their dangerous temp- tations, so passports are refused to those who cannot show a lucrative engagement abroad.
Mussolini does not go so far as to restore the Papal States
302 “SECRET SOCIETIES
to the Papacy or release the Prisoner of the Vatican, but he considers religion salutary to the masses. So he has made religious instruction compulsory in the elementary schools. At the same time he does not think that religion should go too far. He has observed with disapproval that miracle-mon- gers are arousing group-superstition in various parts of the peninsula. There was an old man near Naples who per- formed marvellous cures by prescribing earth-pills. There was a girl in the Capitanata who developed the stigmata of Christ and attracted flocks of pilgrims from far and wide. Mussolini frowned and enunciated a new prohibition. No IDLENESS and NO FREEMASONS were no followed by NO MIRACLES, recalling the old French revolutionary edict :
Défense a Dieu De faire miracle Dans ce lieu.
All the restrictions would have been accepted without murmur, even if murmuring were not prohibited. The pros- perity of the nation is felt to be at stake, and a state of siege is endured as complacently as it was during the war. This is largely explained by the wave of idealism which has flooded a naturally romantic people. Even in normal times, Italians lay immense store by their poets. Dante’s slightest refer- ence toa village is carved in letters of gold upon its walls. But for d’Annunzio, Italy would probably have remained | neutral, and d’Annunzio was heeded chiefly because he was a poet. Mussolini is not a poet, but he is a visionary, and that is almost as effective.
He was born in 1883, but he feels himself endowed with perpetual youth. Every Fascist considers himself a boy, behaves like a boy, though his breath be short and his memory long. Always and everywhere he carols forth the everlasting refrain :
Giovinezza, giovinezza, Primavera di Bellezza
(Youth, youth, Springtime of beauty), because, as Mussolini has said, ‘‘ Youth understands better
WILL FASCISM GROW UP? 303
than old age, however wise, the two greatest things in the wo1ld—love and sacrifice.”’
Many have no doubt resigned themselves to the hardship of emergency measures with the conviction that they cannot endure for ever. Losses by war and losses by Bolshevik crimes have to be retrieved, but progress has been so rapid that the penitential period must be drawing to its close. They flatter themselves. It will endure as long as Mussolini rules, as long as idealism remains cradled in the sugar-sweet strains of Giovinezza. When wealth and progress and stability have been assured, there will still remain dreams of Empire as alluring as any ever cherished by the citizens of Cesar. Mussolini possesses enough of the missionary spirit to believe in the duty of spreading the blessings of his rule to less favoured nations. Italy needs colonies, a place in the sun, the control of the Mediterranean, safety from French and Jugo-Slav and Greek aggressions, and all her needs call for a continuance of patriotism and sacrifice. In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on the 16th of July, 1923, Mussolini said, ‘“‘ You ask me, when will this moral pressure of Fascism end? When will Fascism grow uD ? Well, I do not wish it to grow up too soon.’
This means that, if Fascism grew up, it might grow out of hand. It might wander away and cease to be Mussolini. The one central fact about Fascism at present is that Fas- ‘cism is Mussolini. It is not merely a personal movement but a personal incarnation. Without Mussolini, there would be no Fascism. The movement, the ideals, the hopes of national regeneration would fade away like fallen leaves. His enemies know this, and that is why they conspire inces- santly to assassinate him. He is the founder of a dynasty without an heir, the father of a mule fore-doomed to sterility.
An augury of the future may, however, be gleaned from his epigram that Fascism is Communism upside down. Mussolini began life as a revolutionary Socialist and he has since admitted that he joined the Socialists without a critical examination of their doctrines. ‘‘ The proletariat,” he said, “does not need to understand Socialism like a theorem. We want to believe it. We must believe it. It is the faith
304 ‘ SECRET SOCIETIES
which removes mountains, for it gives the illusion that the mountains are moving. Is not illusion perhaps the only reality in life? ’’ And other Socialists began in the same spirit of self-satisfied ignorance, with the same groping towards the Fourth Dimension.
Bolshevism and Fascism, moreover, proceeded a long way on parallel paths towards dictatorship. Both despised democracy and seized the first opportunity to destroy the parliamentary system. Both are imperialists. Both 1ely on a standing army of unquestioning supporters. Much is made of the different attitudes towards capitalism, but after four years Lenin found that his system could not endure without restoring capitalism in a modified form. Both rely on Soviets. Both find their most dangerous opponents in the intelligentsia, in the people who acquire a little know- ledge and wear black coats. Really, if we judge by what is exposed above the surface, there is little to choose between the programmes of Bolshevism and Fascism. The only contrast is between the wholesale destruction in Russia and the patient reconstruction in Italy ; between pulling down and building up, iconoclasm and evolution.
Both Bolshevism and Fascism remain secret societies, working insidiously for very different ends, the one for the exaltatién and fleshpots ot criminal lunatics, the other for ideals so lofty that poor humanity can believe in them only because they are incredible. “‘ You say we cannot accom- plish the impossible,’ Mussolini wrote in 1923, “ but all history is the impossible, the absurd, the unforeseen, forged into reality by the brain and the muscles of man.”
The war cast the world into a melting-pot, and the world still seethes. But the day must come when it will settle down. Then we may find that the nineteenth century superstitions of Parliament and democracy are not dead but damned. The old countries may be absorbed in the bloody mists of Bolshevism or in the empyrean of Fascist ideals of love and labour and self-sacrifice. Bolshevism may devour Fascism and reduce it with foul gastric juices, or Fascism may assimilate and purify Bolshevism for the peni- tential regeneration of mankind. Or the world may recall
INSHALLAH! 305
and emulate happier centuries when men feared God and honoured Kings ; when monastic benevolence and the brother- hood of guilds kept poverty and jealousy from their doors ; when the crusading spirit was abroad, and the slinking shadows of secret societies were held in horror by all men of goodwill.
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AUTHORITIES
B. Mussolini: Discorst Politict. 1g2t.