who had derived power and wealth from the war made the contadini, laborers and artisans, skeptical of the "ideal motives" of those who had promoted war, and it increased class hatred. The ranks of Socialism swelled. The belief became widely held that it was necessary to upset the social applecart and to fill it with fruit cultivated and picked by the proletariat. Soon even the doctrines of Socialism began to be regarded as too mild and obsolete. The most extreme ideas gathered a tremendous impetus, and Communism created from a rib of the Socialist Party waxed lustily and talked loudly.

By the end of 1919 revolution had actually broken out in Italy. Strikes in all the most vital public services, the nervous system of a nation, were nearly permanent. In Turin and other large cities army officers were frequently assaulted, often killed, in the streets. Barracks and forts were attacked and army magazines blown up. Trains were stopped in transit and general railway strikes were declared without notice merely because a few carabinieri were on them. Life in the harbors was paralyzed. In many provinces a state within a state was formed. Portraits of the King were removed from the municipal schools and the national colors were replaced by red flags on town halls. Land owners were compelled to employ Red union men according to a certain ratio of the land owned, even in the dead season. If they took their own produce to market in their own cars or carts, they were condemned by Red tribunals to pay fines, often running as high as thirty thousand lire. The Red law gave the monopoly of such transportations to local Red coöperative organizations. Refusal to pay fines resulted in abandonment of rural work at critical times of the year, destruction of crops and provisions, arson of hay deposits and houses, abandonment of cattle leading to death, and even murder. Fear reigned supreme. The victims, surrounded by a barrier of hostility and hatred, soon found that no one would sell them food or other necessities. Even physicians were prevented from ministering to their sick or injured. Submission was the only way out. The demand of all classes of workers for higher wages was insistent and mandatory. Indiscipline and disorder were rife. Land owners could not discharge their help without the approval of the Red organizations

nor employ extra help. The peasants' forcible seizure of lands from their legitimate owners, the anxieties connected with all sorts of activities, the uncertainty of the morrow, drove many proprietors and factory owners to sell their property or business as the only escape from their dilemmas. And conditions in the industrial field were no better.

The authorities seemed either powerless or unwilling to restore order. Nitti, then Prime Minister, was openly accused of favoring the advent of revolution and of planning a change of régime. The Nationalist party was loud in denunciations of his policy. Rarely had such a cloud of hatred collected around the head of any man. The mildest name he was called was enemy of the country". His sympathy and leniency with those who had opposed the war won for him the charge of being a tool in the hands of Italy's enemies. Frequent hostile demonstrations were organized against him and the Roman police had to be mobilized to protect his house. For half a century Italy had not been swept by such a wave of wild passions. The whole social order was on the verge of collapse, and the Government was supine, apathetic, impotent. The fundamental law of the State guaranteeing private property was no longer enforced.

There were many other vistas of discontent. For instance, many held it a mistake of the Government to conduct so early an inquiry into the conduct of the war, which threw discredit on many generals who, when all was said and done, had done their duty to their country to the best of their ability. The time was not propitious for such proceeding. A general pardon which had been granted at about the same time had set free thousands who had deserted from the front, many of whom had been condemned to death, as was the case with Misiano, whom the Communists later sent as representative to Parliament.

Another mistake had been that of changing the electoral law at such a critical time: a jump into darkness, the change was styled by the farsighted. The new law based on the proportional principle favored by the Socialist proved a useful instrument in the hands of the Extremist and enabled them to capture an unprecedented number of seats-nearly 156-in Parliament, and to gain great advantage in the political game.

The majority of the lower classes, most of whom were Socialists, were encouraged by the impotence of the Neutralist Government, Orlando, Nitti, Giolitti, and the despair of the middle classes. Overwhelmed by revelations of the incapacity of the country's diplomats relative to war settlements, and encouraged by the Government's spinelessness, they began revolution on their own account, a revolution without ideals. From the beginning the middle classes looked on indifferently, almost with a secret hope that something better than that which was being vouchsafed them might come from it. But soon they were convinced that such hope was ill founded. What could they legitimately expect from the ignorant classes tutored by weak Government and lessoned by bad example in which thirty years of Socialistic propaganda had caused them to lose every faith and every ideal? It was soon apparent that the revolution would be based on class hatred and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Within less than two years Socialism in Italy had grown into a tyranny which was operative against its members, the great majority of whom, however, continued to remain in the ranks of the party because of fear. The borghesi had a premonition of their impending ruin. Amid rampant lawlessness, with all the organs of Government paralyzed, the situation appeared hopeless. At this juncture they began to stir, and the spirit of reaction against repeated outrages developed. They would no longer be gored without resistance. "We are willing to accept you as co-workers, but not as masters," expressed their attempt at conciliation.

The Fascisti came to the rescue, to restore the engine of order and law. Not only those who had property to defend were numbered in its ranks. Mussolini, editor of the Popolo d'Italia, had organized his groups into a disciplined army, with its General Staff, its officers, and ranks, its code of discipline and its decorations. From the beginning it appealed to and later enlisted the sympathies of the sane, serious well-wishers of the country of all classes from the highest to the lowest. The majority of this civilian army, however, were youths for whom the word patria had not become mockery, youths who clung to the illusions and

ideals which ennoble life and were ready to give their lives for Liberty and Justice. And many of them, by falling victims to Communist ferocity, made the sacrifice. Wherever there was an act of lawlessness, an insult to the flag or to the army, an offense to mitigate, a wrong to right, in country or in town, a band of Fascisti would be rushed to administer adequate punishment, varying from the arson of the local Socialist headquarters to burning of red flags, from bodily castigation to compelling offenders to shout "Long live Italy!" or to drink a glass of castor oil in public. Blood was shed only when the murder of Fascisti was to be avenged or resistance was offered, or in case of selfdefense.

Fascismo gradually undermined the reign of terror which the Extremists had succeeded in establishing. It soon became evident that the Socialists and Extremists were not as courageous and terrifying as they had appeared to be when they were sure of immunity. When they felt that Fascismo was gaining favor in public opinion and was sufficiently strong to guarantee them protection, they began to leave the Socialist Party, at first little by little and finally in great numbers. A number of towns and cities passed en masse to Fascismo, and the Italian flag, which had been ostracized in them, was again saluted deliriously. Moreover the King of Italy was able to visit these cities with safety and with welcome.

By a sort of natural selection, the red flag remained in the hands of the most fanatic enemies of social order. Some parts of Italy where specially favorable conditions prevailed became their citadels, ill-famed theatres of their worst revolutionary outbursts. The invasion of factories; the organization of the revolutionary and blood-thirsty Red Guards; bomb outrages like that at the "Diana" of Milan, where innumerable innocent spectators, women and children, lost their lives; the barricades of Florence; the organized slaughter of Palazzo Accursio in Bologna, where several city councillors were murdered by their Communist Colleagues; the outrageous murder of Scimula and Soncini, condemned to a barbarous death by a Red tribunal in which some women acted as judges; the wholesale slaughter of the sailors at Empoli; the frequent attempts against express trains; the revo

lutionary movement at Ancona, where the rebels had seized the forts and could be subdued only after systematic siege and the free use of artillery by the regular army, were the desperate convulsions of a party conscious that the ground was rocking under its feet and in panic lest its edifice should topple.

Nitti's government was swept away by a wave of indignation caused by his wavering policy. Giolitti followed with Enrico Corradini as Under-Secretary for the Interior. Giolitti had been suspected by the Socialists of having secretly encouraged Fascismo. Nothing can be said at this time with certainty, but those who have been witnesses of the ineptitude of Italian Government agents in times past doubt it. It is likely that he was in no way responsible for the organization and subsequent rapid growth of the movement. But he permitted it to develop without interference by either the civil or the military authorities into a great private army. Fascismo was a natural phenomenon of reaction, nourished by idealism and motivated by patriotism. The violent offensive of the Nationalists against Nitti is a proof of the internal vitality of that party which afterwards revealed itself in the birth of Fascismo. Giolitti must have sensed it as a force antagonistic to Socialism. With his fine intuition he must have seen the chance of restoring equilibrium by the play of opposing forces, and he probably hailed the Fascist movement as an unhoped-for aid from heaven, and decided to use it as a tool for saving a tottering régime-Fra due litiganti il terzo gode.

Giolitti's premiership lasted nearly a year. Toward the end, when he found it impossible to govern with the House which had been elected by Nitti, he dissolved it and called new elections. The result was not what he had hoped, as Nitti's proportional law was not as easy a tool in the hands of the Government to influence elections as the old electoral law. Such, at least, proved to be the case in these first two experiments, perhaps because, being a new tool, the Government, i.e., the bureaucratic organs which are at the Government's service, had not learned to handle it efficiently for its own purpose. At any rate the Socialists returned to Parliament in considerable force, having lost but few seats. The actual result of the election was that 156 seats were held by the Socialists, 106 by the Catholics and 34 by the Fascisti.