Six Months of Mussolini.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17815, 14 July 1923, Page 12

Six Months of Mussolini.

Some.say that Mussolini dreams dreams —with a Corsican always in tho background; some that his visions are more glorious still, and include all tho splendour that was Eome. It is probably a fact that ho at least imagines himself to be some kind of a "man "of Destiny." A little more than six months ago he was given (or gave himself) carte blanche to Tun Italy for a year—when the country was paralysed by warring factions, and had drifted to the very brink of the precipice over which Eussia fell in 1917. If there was patriotism anywhere it was silent and impotent, and what passed for national pride was no more than a petulant cry over the disappointments of victory. To-day Italy has unity again—a unity that many hate and a few openly curße, but a singleness of policy that has at last brought order. As one journalist put it in a letter to Paris; *-JEver since liussolini Jbas been in ''power, we are sure wo can find a "street-car to take us to work in tho "morning and bring us back home at "night; that we can get bread at tho "baker's; that if we wish to set out "on a railway journoy, or are in tho "midst of a railway journey, we shall "not be hold up by wild strikers." So far therefore Mussolini is handsomely holding his own. Hardly a day passes without a crunching tread oft some tender toe, but although that may produce reaction in the long run, tho result to date has been obedience. And now Mussolini begins to show the wisdom of the serpent as well as the ruthlessness of the eagle. His new electoral plan is obscure as to details, but the purpose of it is to secure constitutional sanction for his contemptuously unconstitutional practices. Before tho war Italy was divided into 508 constituencies. Immediately after tho armistice these were reduced to 55—a "reform" of which most parties soon tired. Mussolini's new measure reduces those 55 to one. There will be no longer single-inomber seats, but a mammoth constituency in which, at a preliminary election, the people will ballot for their parties. When the number of deputies has been fixed, parties will be assigned a proportional number of seats in tho Chamber at Eome, and then, by a second election, each province—if we interpret the cables corroctly—will fill the seats apportioned. And it is, of course, obvious that it Mussolini can effect such a change hs will eliminato all local quostions and political personalities likely to blind the electors to the big question of Fascist rule as against Communist or Socialist. Localities which aro identified with none of the organised parties will apparently lose their representation altogether, but that will not worry Mussolini, who not only distrusts representative government, but openly mocks at it. Yet, if the Dictator can push this electoral change through, it i 3 not easy to say how far ho may not go. In general, a dictatorship ci! one is incompatible with the political weapons, as well as the political principles, of modernism. But if Mussolini, even for a year or two, can get the law and the constitutionalists ou his side, and can, in addition, spread the contagion of his own rising imper ialism, liberty may slumber longer than some think.