STARK YOUNG,

formerly Professor of English at Amherst College, is now one of the editors of The New Republic. He is also one of the editors of The Theatre Arts Magazine, and is esteemed an authority on dramatic subjects.

MILDRED BLUMENTHAL,

one of the younger writers, makes her first appearance in THe REVIEW.

MARGARET WIDDEMER

is the author of three books of verse: The Factories, The Old Road to Paradise, which shared with Carl Sandburg the 1918 Columbia poetry award, and Cross Currents.

JOHN ERSKINE,

Professor of English at Columbia University, is author of many volumes, notable among which are Interpretation of Literature, Life and Literature, and Books and Habits. He was part editor of The Cambridge History of American Literature. His present article is the third of a series of five on timely and vital literary topics, which will appear in consecutive numbers of THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

RABBI JOEL BLAU

is at the Temple Peni-El, New York City. He is a frequent contributor to the more thoughtful periodicals on the Jewish problem.

MILIVOY S. STANOYEVICH

is Lecturer at Columbia University. His better known volumes include: Tolstoy's Theory of Social Reform and Russian Foreign Policy in the East, and he has recently published a book on Early Yugoslav Literature.

STANLEY T. WILLIAMS

is now Assistant Professor of English in Yale College, where he was graduated in 1911, and where, in 1915, he received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

JANUARY, 1923

ITALY'S BLOODLESS REVOLUTION

BY JOSEPH COLLINS1

No one can have lived much in Europe during the war and after without having heard criticism of Italy. It was often bitter, violent and prejudiced; oftener selfish, biased and unjust. That Italy exposed herself to criticism, particularly in the conduct of her internal affairs, cannot be denied. While, however, such conduct may have been a legitimate subject for comment on the part of foreigners, to Italians alone belonged the right of criticizing. They did it, and to some purpose, since from their criticisms and their consequent conduct has flowed a stream which, to the observer without the country, seems to be health giving should they drink of it, and sanity giving should they bathe in it. The Fascisti have made the first substantial contribution to world ordering since the war, and should it prove permanent it will rank second in importance only to Italy's most noble gesture of 1848 the Risorgimento. History may one day bracket Mussolini's name with Garibaldi's, just as it has bracketed Lincoln's with Washington's.

The purpose, significance and phenomena of what is called Fascismo are well understood by many in this country. But there is also much ignorance of it. Otherwise a newspaper of Boston, a city which smugly and stolidly admits she is the radiating cultural center of the country, would not announce the decisions of the recent Fascisti Congress in Naples beneath the headI acknowledge the service rendered in the preparation of this article by Mr. Francesco Baldasseroni, who was associated with me in my work in Italy during the war.

Copyright, 1922, by North American Review Corporation. All rights reserved.
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VOL. CCXVII.-NO. 806

line Italy's Anarchic Descent. Moreover there is a widespread belief that Fascismo is a toxic ferment, a guerrilla movement, an experiment in the craftsmanship of government without plan or precedent. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Fascismo is the expression of a spiritual condition brought about by the war, a reaction of the middle classes chiefly, against the demoralization of the Italian people by Radical Socialism and threatened Bolshevism that flourished in the aftermath of Although new in name, it is not new in nature, purpose or inception. Other countries have suffered from the same malady as that which so recently afflicted Italy-revolution—and have sought cure in remedies without the Government, as did Italy in Fascisnic. It is unique only in that it has departed so speedily and so successfully from its original mission, or at least has developed a larger one; has outgrown its self-appointed task of coercive peacemaker or spanker-in-chief to the great rampant and unspanked pet child of the Government; has exchanged its modest garments of private life for the regalia of officialdom; and has broadened its scope until it has persuaded or forced the Government into official recognition of it as the favorite son who has now assumed control in his father's house. Today, with its leader as Premier, an active membership of more than a million drawn from all classes, with a legion of sympathizers and its ranks constantly growing, it is in danger of being considered in its present and most obvious aspect only, i.e., merely as the newest Italian political party, while the inspiration and plan that brought it into being and supplied the dynamic power for the accomplishments of the modern knight errant upstart are liable to be forgotten or ignored.

To do justice to the Fascisti one must briefly recall the conditions which brought about a reign of lawlessness in Italy in 1920 and 1921, and especially the activities of the Radical Socialists against whom the Fascisti were chiefly measuring their strength. Until 1914 the Socialists of Italy had been troublesome, aggressive, but not dangerous. During the war they displayed an anti-patriotic activity which not only embittered the conduct of the war but sowed the seeds of false hopes and class antagonism which bore so riotous a harvest after its close.

Who are the Fascisti, what does the word mean, and what are the aims and purposes of Fascismo? are questions one frequently hears. The Fascisti, now a political party, was at first a disciplinary order or body. It was procreated before the war, gestated during the war, and born on Armistice day. It was called at first "Fasci di Combattimento". Its nucleus was composed mainly of young men, former combatants who had banded together for the purpose of protecting the material and moral interests of discharged soldiers and officers, of championing the war and of chanting the victory. It was formed "to keep alive among the people the spirit of unity which they had acquired through common sacrifice". It considers itself the guardian of the nation, superior to class; and it aims to conciliate and to coördinate the classes. From its inception the ranks of the Fascisti included "Arditi", Legionaries of Fiume, university students, Government officials, a sprinkling of the lower middle class and laboring men, and a few of the upper classes.

The movement developed most rapidly in Northern Italy, particularly in Bologna, Modena, Milan, Genoa, Turin, Florence and Ferrara. In a general way it has been considered to be an outgrowth of the Nationalist Party, but in the beginning it was frankly pacifist, calling for disarmament and "declaring war on Italian militarism". Its sympathies have been frankly with the working classes and with Syndicalism in some phases, with Republicanism in others. Its membership increased rapidly, and in 1918-1919, when Italy became threatened with Bolshevism the Fascisti took it upon themselves to tear down the red flag wherever it was unfurled and to raise again the tricolor.

Fascismo takes its name from the Latin fasces, the name given to the bundle of elm or birch rods wrapped around an axe and bound by a red strap, which the lictors of ancient Rome carried when they appeared before kings, emperors or consuls. It was the emblem of the ruler's authority over life and limb.

The phenomenon of Fascismo appears upon first contemplation to be a consequence of the war. In reality it is a phase of the spiritual crisis with which the Italian people have been grappling since the war. No historian who reviews European events during 1914-1919 will be able to deny that Italy was aroused,

pushed to the trenches, and kept there by a minority-the middle classes, the borghesi, the classes of culture and of ideals, capable of enthusiasm for noble causes and abstract ideas. In this portion of the Italian people patriotism was truly. alive and the spirit of intervention broke out, which carried the country to new alliance and finally brought honor and glory to Italy's annals.

The majority of the laboring classes, rural and industrial, were antagonistic to war, because they were incapable of comprehending its higher values and because they were embittered by the hardships and restrictions to which war subjected them. Unrelieved as it was by an inner light, war appeared to them horrible darkness. During the struggle this darkness was illuminated by an artificial light which every now and then went out and disaster followed. Personal interest was the light that was constantly focussed before combatants at the front and at the rear. Month after month peasants were told, "Thou shalt own the land which thou shalt have saved and which thou shalt work".

The same alluring promise opportunely adapted to include factory ownership was used to dazzle industrial workers. These were the only ideals which could be understood by people who had grown up cherishing the Socialist dream of "away with all masters". The propagandists' mistake was to believe the laboring class would suffer, after the war, the delusion in silence, and that the high priests of Italian Socialism would not endeavor to regain their diminished prestige by taking up such propaganda themselves. Another winning card in the hands of the Socialist leaders was the delusion of which the laboring classes were the victims: that they and not the borghesi and the upper classes had won the war. The fact is that the laboring classes emerged from the war with an exalted idea of their own worth and importance, convinced that they had been the saviors of the borghesi, more imbued than ever with Socialistic class hatred, resolved that the promises which had been made to them should be redeemed, and determined to take matters into their own hands.

The disappointments which followed Italy's diplomatic efforts after the war filled the lower classes with even greater contempt for the intellectual classes, who in the field of diplomacy had sustained humiliating defeats. The demoralizing spectacle of those