At the end of the World War the British and French press begged Italy to renounce a part, at least, of the spoils promised her by the secret treaties of 1915. It was feared that a hopeless conflict would develop at the Paris Conference between Italian imperialism and the American—or rather Wilsonian—doctrine of self-determination. The reasons for this plea are easy to understand. Great Britain expected, as usual, to gather in her advantages from the victory outside Europe; and France had one objective, to which she was willing to sacrifice everything else, the achievement of her own security by the diminution of the German Empire and the shackling of German industries and commerce. It was felt in London and Paris that if Italy were to stand on her treaty rights the whole problem of peace would be made insoluble by alienating President Wilson and by creating antagonism to the Entente in south central and southeastern Europe. Alone among the members of the Orlando Cabinet, Signor Bissolati, the famous Socialist leader, advocated openly the application of the principle of nationality in the peace settlement. He said that the Treaty of London did not alter the fact that Italy should abandon her claim to northern Dalmatia, the Dodecanese, and the southern Tyrol. By these sacrifices he asserted that Italy would avoid friction with the Jugoslavs, win the friendship of Greece, and abstain from the injustice of annexing, for purely strategic reasons, the purely German population of the Tyrol. When his advice was rejected, Bissolati resigned his portfolio and was followed by Nitti. A propaganda was launched in Italy to work up enthusiasm for the Italian claims, to which was added a demand for Fiume.

Public opinion was aroused to such an extent that when Premier Orlando failed to obtain complete recognition in Paris for the Italian point of view he found himself obliged to resign, and was succeeded by Signor Nitti just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The Italian claims as one of the Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire were kept before the world by the seizure of Fiume in September. The poet, d’Annunzio, defied the commands of the Peace Conference and the Italian Government to evacuate the city. The new premier had formed a coalition Government, representing all parties except the Socialists. At the General Election in November the Socialist party doubled its strength, and a newly formed Clerical party won more than a hundred seats. However, as there was no possibility of an alliance between Socialists and Clericals, Nitti was able to form another coalition cabinet without these two parties. Nitti announced that Italy’s policy would be one of moderation in regard to Germany and that his Government would seek to solve the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with Jugoslavia.

Like Orlando at Paris, however, he failed at the San Remo conference of Entente premiers to gain an advantageous settlement of the succession of the Hapsburg empire; and it soon leaked out that he had consented to a treaty with Turkey which Italian public opinion believed to be too favorable to Greece. Again like Orlando, Nitti was forced out of office by the failure of his foreign policy. He was succeeded by the veteran Giolitti, whose return to power caused tremendous surprise abroad: for Signor Giolitti had opposed to the very end Italy’s intervention in the World War. Giolitti was able to make a direct agreement with Jugoslavia and to secure its ratification by the Italian Parliament before the end of November. The Treaty of Rapallo was hailed by Italian public opinion as the best possible solution of a difficulty that could not have been solved to the complete satisfaction of Italy except by war. The virtual unanimity of the support given to the Treaty of Rapallo was emphasized by the lack of protest in any quarter when Premier Giolitti ordered the Italian troops on Christmas eve to oust d’Annunzio from Fiume.

The surprising reasonableness of public opinion in questions of foreign policy was due to the menace of internal revolution. We have seen elsewhere how in the summer of 1920 the Italians, driven from Albania by a sudden uprising, made no attempt to retrieve their fortunes. The Government’s hands were tied by a railway strike. The railwaymen had refused to transport to Brindisi troops destined for Albania. It was clear that under these circumstances, had Italy gone to war with Jugoslavia, the existing social order might have been overthrown. The lesson of Russia was before the minds of Italian statesmen. The Chamber of Deputies acquiesced when Giolitti, in his statement on June 24, 1920, said in reference to foreign policy:

Our principal object is to insure complete and definite peace for Italy and the whole of Europe—an essential condition for a solid beginning of the work of reconstruction.... In order to achieve this complete peace we must, without delay, establish friendly relations with all other peoples, and, without restriction, begin normal relations even with the Russian Government.

The veteran premier, to win the support of the Socialists against the Communists, whose spread was alarming, promised a bill amending the constitution to make declarations of war and treaties and agreements with foreign powers subject to the sanction of Parliament.

It was none too soon. In the middle of September the industrial workers, especially in the north, seized steel factories in a large number of localities and established Soviets. They insisted that the employees should supervise the buying of raw materials, the selling of the finished product, the adjustment of the scale of wages, and the general conditions of work in the factories. The next month there were peasant risings in Sicily. Revolution seemed imminent. But the Government matched its moderation in foreign policy with a conciliatory attitude toward the workers. Instead of using force, Premier Giolitti announced his intention of introducing a measure, sponsored by the cabinet, imposing a form of syndical control upon the manufacturers. It was also proposed to confiscate war profits, increase death-duties and taxes on unearned incomes, and encourage copartnership in industries. These wise concessions enabled the Giolitti Government to cut the budget deficit by lessening the subsidy on imported cereals. This raised the price of bread, a courageous measure. The General Election of May, 1921, was far more peaceable than had been anticipated. The Socialists lost thirty seats, and the Clericals (Popolari) gained eight. A new party, which had been opposing Socialists and Communists in many places by violence, entered the Chamber with twenty seats; they called themselves Fascisti. The majority of the Cabinet in the new Chamber was so small that Giolitti resigned, and was succeeded by Signor Bonomi. In the autumn of 1921 the Fascisti held a congress at Rome, in which they transformed their organization into a regular political party. During the congress the street fighting that had begun earlier in the year in other cities broke out on a small scale for the first time in Rome. When Parliament reopened on November 24, the Fascisti took issue in a noisy fashion with the Communists.

The Bonomi Cabinet was forced out of office at the beginning of February, 1922, by a combination of circumstances difficult to analyze. The immediate cause was the union of the Democratic coalition with the Socialists, who protested against Bonomi’s rapprochement with the Vatican. But that this was not a real issue soon became evident. The new Cabinet, headed by Signor Facta, failed to win the confidence of the country, which was becoming, under the impulsion of the Fascisti, impatient of government by compromise. Successive cabinets had failed utterly to suggest, much less put into execution, fiscal measures for rehabilitating the finances of Italy. The country was gradually drifting toward anarchy.

In the late summer of 1922, when parliamentary leaders, after the resignation of Signor Facta, appealed to Giolitti to come to Rome to advise the King, a sudden coup d’État put an end to the “rule of the old men.” Fascisti from all over Italy poured into Rome on every train, wearing black shirts and armed, and singing the death-knell of the old political system:

Socialists and Communists were quickly cowed. The governmental troops, most of them members or sympathizers of the Fascisti, could not be counted upon. The King had the choice of calling Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascisti, to form a cabinet, or of losing his throne. The Fascist movement had made such great progress in Italy since 1920 and was so well organized that civil war was out of the question. Almost everybody sympathized with the program of the Fascisti. So Mussolini became premier, and has been the uncontested, though unconstitutional, ruler of Italy for more than a year.

Fascismo is primarily a movement of the youth of Italy, under youthful leaders, most of them born half a century after Giolitti, and none of them in the same generation with the men who were the political leaders of Italy up to the summer of 1922. Despite the pronouncement of the first Rome congress, in the autumn of 1921, Fascismo is not a political party. Its strength as such is negligible. Born at a meeting in Milan in 1919, its purpose, in the words of Mussolini, was defined as a movement “of the spiritual forces of Italy to awaken in Italians the full sense of their own greatness and destiny as a nation.... And it proposes at any cost, even at the cost of Democratic conventions, to crush any tendency that may threaten to drag the Italian people into the morass of Socialism, Bolshevism, and Internationalism.” From the beginning of the movement Mussolini has insisted that the future of the nation must be in the hands of those who are to live that future, and that the time had come to put Italy into her true place among the nations of the world.

From 1920 to 1922 Italy was ripe for revolution. Several parties formed armed bands. The Socialists lost because of Communist excesses and the ungenerous attitude they adopted toward army officers. After all, the war, with its heavy sacrifices, had captured the imagination of the young; and there was much idealism and sincere patriotic feeling among the youth of Italy. They reacted strongly against the Socialist teaching of pacifism and internationalism. The middle class in the cities began to be alarmed at the tendency of the Socialists to assume that only those who worked with their hands were useful members of society and had rights. It was inevitable that the Socialist bullying and terrorism should lead to armed resistance on the part of the more conservative elements. Mussolini, himself of the lower classes, was keen enough to realize that the great mass of the Italian people would welcome a movement directed against the lawlessness of extreme radicalism. He and the principal men he gathered around him to direct Fascismo had all up to the last year of the war been militant Socialists. They had come into prominence through fighting the Government, and the outlaw spirit dominated them. They abhorred politics. And so, although they were sincere syndicalists, they had broken with official Socialism when the movement became a political party, using its energies to win votes.

Mussolini believed that suffrage did not offer the remedy, and he was contemptuous of his friends who hoped to advance their theories by getting themselves elected to Parliament.

The Italians were sick of financial and political chaos, and were so apprehensive of Communism that they were ready to stand behind any movement that would combat the Socialist terrorism, even if it meant fighting fire with fire. The Fascist leader appealed to the instinct of self-preservation in the middle classes; and in the course of eighteen months he rallied round him the youth of the middle classes, many sons of the aristocracy, and the support of big industries. All the while he considered the Government as negligible, and not any more to be taken into account than in the old days of his militant Socialism.

The advent to power of Mussolini was wholly illegal, if we regard the philosophy of form. The Fascisti could hardly have won a parliamentary majority in the General Election. Mussolini knew that; but he knew also that Italy was behind him, and would remain behind him regardless of Parliament, if he succeeded in governing firmly and at the same time putting into effect fiscal and other sorely needed reforms. When the King asked him to form a cabinet, he decided upon a coalition Government, five Fascisti, three Democrats, two Catholics, one Nationalist, and one Liberal, and he gave the portfolios of war and navy to General Diaz and Admiral di Revel. He declared that the new Government was going to act and not talk and summed up his program in two sentences:

Our policy in internal affairs will be one of strict economy, discipline, and the restoration of our finances. The Fascisti movement, which began as bourgeois, now has become syndicalist, but syndicalist in the national sense, taking into account the interests of workmen and those of employers and producers.

It is always true that power sobers a man and that the possession of governmental responsibility makes things take an aspect different from the one they bear to the political candidate, the agitator, the reformer. Had Mussolini not changed when he became the Government, he would have been an amazing exception. We have seen in recent years the evolution of Lloyd George, Millerand, Briand, and Viviani, all of whom started out as pacifists and advocates of violence against the constituted authorities in order to secure the triumph of their ideals. As soon as Mussolini became premier, he was confronted with the problem of what to do with the youth of Italy. Precisely because he had taught them to take the law into their own hands had he reached his exalted position! The first preoccupation of the new premier was to make his followers understand that now that Fascismo had become a Government there must be no more disorders. This was no easy task. It required the adoption of an uncompromising attitude toward many to whom much was owed for the success that had been attained. Local leaders, who refused to look to Rome for guidance in Fascisti activities, were expelled.16 A serious outbreak at Turin, in which the Fascisti took the law in their hands in the old fashion, was followed by rigorous measures.

Mussolini knew that he would be lost if he did not keep control of his own organization and at the same time use it to intimidate recalcitrants in Rome and in the provinces. He disbanded the Royal Guard, created by Premier Nitti in 1920, and replaced it by a new militia, the Black Guards, composed of 80,000 picked Fascisti, whose personal loyalty to the leader had been tested. Those members of the Royal Guard who were Fascisti were put in the Carabinieri. The other groups that had started as the Fascisti had started were forcibly disarmed and disbanded. They included the followers of d’Annunzio, the Blue-Shirt Nationalists, and the Arditi del Popolo, whose clashes with the Fascisti had been going on for two years.

When Parliament reopened on November 16, 1922, Mussolini did not ask for a vote of confidence; he ordered it. He told the Chamber that there would be no discussion as to who had the power; it would be futile. He did not want to dismiss the Chamber, unless they made such action necessary. Having at his call “300,000 fully armed youths, resolved to anything and almost mystically ready to obey my orders, it is in my power to punish all who defame and attempt to throw mud at Fascismo. I can make this hall a camping-place for my bands. I can close Parliament and constitute a purely Fascist Government.” Mussolini went on to say that if the vote of confidence were not awarded there would be a new election made “with Fascist clubs.”

After this threat, a vote of confidence was a farce. The sitting of Parliament was a farce. The deputies had to listen to threats and abuse from their Fascist colleagues. The only thing to do was to preserve at least a form of constitutionalism by granting Mussolini what he intended to take without the leave of the Chamber. A resolution was adopted granting Mussolini full powers to do as he pleased, his decrees to have the force of law until December 1, 1923. To save their faces, the deputies added that Mussolini should be called upon in March, 1924, to give an account to Parliament of the use of the powers conferred by this law. Less than 300 of the 535 members of the Chamber were present. The rest absented themselves, by reason of antagonism, fear, or indifference. The Chamber was not convoked again until February 7, 1923, when the ratification of foreign treaties was necessary. The parliament building was surrounded by Black Guards, and Mussolini refused to be interpellated on domestic questions. Throughout Italy, in local elections, the Fascisti took charge of the polls. No other than Fascisti could be voted for. But the voters were not allowed to remain away from the polls as a protest. In many places, absentees were assumed to be ill, and large doses of castor-oil were administered!

The first year of the Mussolini rÉgime has been marked by a tendency toward the Right. Labor organizations have been forcibly disbanded, coÖperative stores closed, and censorship of radical journals established; and the principle of private ownership of railways and all other state industries, including the post-office, is being adopted. Many schools, too, have been turned over to private management. The Mussolini Government is charged by its enemies with plunging Italy into the worst sort of reaction at a time when the rest of Europe is moving toward Liberalism politically and socially. His attack on Freemasonry was startling and marked the cutting away from the traditions of the last half-century. At the same time, Mussolini frankly announced the intention of granting official recognition to the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, the Fascist principles make Fascismo inimical to genuine Conservatism. While disclaiming state control of industries and crying out against Bolshevism, Mussolini finds himself, by the very nature of his hold upon the country, nearer Lenin in spirit and practice than any other ruler in Europe. Because Fascismo has now actually become the Government, individualism must be submerged to the state. Mussolini cannot be other than an autocrat. He has spoken with enthusiasm of a rapprochement with the Church and has allowed crucifixes to be hung in the rooms of public schools. But when the Catholics at their spring congress in 1923 adopted a program in conformity with their own interests, Mussolini demanded that certain resolutions be withdrawn. His command was not literally obeyed. The Catholics simply tried to explain diplomatically that they had meant no offense. Mussolini would not tolerate divided loyalty. He immediately asked for the resignation of the Catholic members of his cabinet.17

Where Fascismo now stands is explained by Mussolini in a short article, under the caption “Forza e Consenso,” in the March, 1923, number of “Gerarchia,” the Fascist review. Mussolini declares that Liberalism is not the last word in the art of governing; well suited for the nineteenth century, which was dominated by the development of capitalism and national sentiment, it is not necessarily adapted to the needs of the twentieth century. Since the war our experiences have shown us that Liberalism has been defeated. Russia and Italy are proving it to be possible to govern outside, above, and contrary to, Liberal ideology. Communism and Fascism have nothing to do with Liberalism.

The premier of Italy, conscious of his strength, believes that parliamentary government has caused a general nausea in the country. Giving liberty to a few, he says, destroys the liberty of all; and he asks when it has happened in history that a state has rested exclusively upon the consent of the people without the use of force. Consent is as changing as the shifting sands. Take away armed force from a government, leaving it only its immortal principles, and it falls a victim to the first organized group bent upon overthrowing it. It is the right and duty of the party in power to fortify and defend itself against all opposition.

The Italians, in the opinion of Mussolini, are weary of the orgy of liberty, and that is why the younger generation is drawn toward Fascismo by its roll-call of order, hierarchy, and discipline. Men are longing for authority. After the years of war and the failure of nations with representative institutions to establish internal prosperity or international harmony, the day for strength and resolution and unswerving purpose to do for people what ought to be done for them, what they want done, but what they do not know how to do, is at hand. In peroration, Mussolini writes:

Fascismo, which did not fear in the first instance to call itself reactionary when many Liberals of to-day lay prone before the triumphant beast, has no hesitation whatsoever now in declaring itself un-Liberal and anti-Liberal. Let it be known, once and for all, that Fascismo recognizes neither idols nor fetishes. It has passed once, and, if necessary will tranquilly return, across the more or less decomposed body of the Goddess of Liberty.

Signor Giolitti, just before the advent of Mussolini, told the King that a party led by hesitating men, dominated by fear, could no longer hope to wield power in Italy. Signor Mussolini is certainly not dominated by fear. His minority party is supported by a majority of the people. But has not the Fascist program been hailed exuberantly at home and abroad because it is a new broom sweeping clean? The success of the Fascist reforms is not yet certain, and neither in speeches nor in action has the Mussolini Government revealed the clear outlines of a definite and constructive internal and foreign policy. What does Mussolini propose to put in place of Liberal ideology?

While not so much interested in foreign affairs as the Nationalists, and at times, in their clashes with the Blue-Shirts and the Fiume Legionaries, seemingly asserting the all-absorbing interest of Italy in internal reforms, the Fascisti have none the less made foreign policy a cardinal part of their program. They have not been avowed imperialists. They are insisting upon Italy’s equal place and dignity with other nations. The nature of the policies of premiers from Orlando to Facta has been a secondary consideration. What has incensed the Fascisti is the tendency of Great Britain and France to look upon Italy as a little brother, useful at times to help them, but not worth helping. Mussolini’s first entrance into international politics at Lausanne marked the change Fascismo determined to give to Italy’s foreign relations. Mussolini made Curzon and PoincarÉ come to him at Territet. Why should they assume that the Italian would naturally come to them?

Here public opinion in all Italian circles supports Mussolini. To the Italians it seems preposterous that either France or Great Britain should aspire to dominate the Mediterranean. Great Britain is in the Mediterranean only by right of conquest, while France has a wide Atlantic outlet. Both Great Britain and France have colonies all over the world. Italy, on the other hand, is a Mediterranean state, the only Mediterranean state among the great powers. When compared with those of her allies, her colonial possessions amount to nothing. Invoking the historic after the geographical, economic, and strategic arguments, Italy has a better claim to be the predominant power in the Near East than France or Great Britain.

Italians understand to perfection the principle of “whacking up,” and the treaty of 1915 shows that their motive for entering the war was sharing its spoils. But for them the spoils have not been forthcoming. Wherever it was a question of their share, they were confronted with the ideals of the war and were told that the principle of self-determination had to prevail. As an example of this cynicism, they cite Mr. Wilson’s Fiume declaration, written the same week that Shantung was handed over to Japan. And since the Peace Conference it has been explained to them that Egyptians and Moroccans have not the right to self-determination, but that Albanians have. At Paris, when Signor Orlando was pleading for Smyrna, he answered the argument of injustice to Turkey and Greece by asking the English how they justify their presence in Hong-Kong. “That was long ago,” was the answer of Lloyd George. Clemenceau assented. Signor Orlando got back at him quickly. “But do you French not base your right to Alsace-Lorraine on the ground that a title won by force cannot plead prescription?”

The Italians have learned since 1918 that to British and French statesmen there is still only one law, the law of might, and only one title, the title of conquest. Italy, not being strong, has had to bow to her more powerful allies; Italy, not having any conquests worth while, has not been able to make trades, as the French and British have done. So Italy’s Near Eastern ambitions frittered away to nothing, and the Lausanne Conference became, like previous conferences, a duel between French and British. Thoughtful Italians are beginning to wonder whether Italy went in on the right side in the World War. Great Britain holds Malta, and France Corsica and Tunisia. If Italy had been Germany’s ally and the Central Empires had won, Italy would have gained almost as much as she holds now at the head of the Adriatic, and if the German victors had applied the same principles as the French and British victors, with the tables turned, the war would have ended with Corsica, Malta, and Tunisia “restored” to Italy. Within the next generation will not Italy be compelled to fight Great Britain and France to avoid remaining permanently an economic slave in her own ocean?

Before Mussolini came to power the state of mind in Italy was well illustrated by the Turin “Stampa,” the organ of Giolitti. The “Stampa,” apropos of the British concessions to France and Germany in return for a free hand in the Near East, commented:

In both camps it would be the triumph of an imperialist policy which would foster new wars and end in rendering illusory the very agreement between the contracting parties.... It is not necessary to point out, besides, the injury to Italy, to Germany, to Turkey, and even to Greece (really reduced in that case to British vassalage) implied by this hypothetical division into zones of influence of the vast stretches from the Rhine to the Euphrates, from Cologne to Bagdad.

The Young Italian movement has something in common with the Young Turk movement and the other non-European Nationalist movements that are labeled “Young.” To win, and then to maintain a place among the nations, to stand up for one’s rights, a country must be strong. And a country cannot be strong unless the old political machine has been swept away, finances put upon a sound basis, and sweeping reforms in administration introduced. The people as a whole cannot be relied upon to do this. Thus it falls to the lot of a private organization to oppose and overthrow the existing Government by force. Lawlessness is justifiable because it is for the purpose of combating decadence and anarchy. Overriding the suffrage right of the people is justifiable, because the Government established by the revolution knows better than they do what is needed to save the country. Before the revolution the country was held in contempt among the nations. After the revolution the miracles wrought will compel the respect of other nations. Then will the country in which the beneficent revolution occurred, by being strong, assert triumphantly its rights and further its interests the world over.