THE FASCISMO FOLLY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 19

THE FASCISMO FOLLY

MUSSOLINI'S "DELIVERANCE" .

COMMENTS BY FAMOUS WRITER

'! BOY SCOUT WRIT IN BLOOD."

The following article, by Israel Zangwill, the famous author, is reprinted from " Foreign Affairs " :—

Since the war to end war started on its endless course we have grown so used to political paradoxes that my Italian friends were more annoyed than astonished when black-shirted youths with persuasive revolvers began ' levying blackmail on them for the defence'of property. Doubtless in the days when the workers were seizing the factories, these comfortable villa proprietors had execrated the flabbiness of Giolitti, and sighed for a deliverer. At first Mussolini must have appeared as a Messiah, and the assassination of sundry braggart Socialists a righteous judgment. But by the time my friends' motor-cars were commandeered for "the march on Eome,"- they had begun to see the beauty of constitutionalism. I happened to be in'ltaly during the fateful days of- the Revolution, and as chance brought me into the immediate entourage of Mussolini as well as the immediate vicinity of the fighting—for the Revolution was by no means bloodless —I was enabled to appreciate the equal idealism and impudence of this juvenile upheaval. 'These raw, halfarmed lads—pipes for any demagogue to play on, many indeed almost still aquiver with the tune of " The Red Flag " —could have been easily mown "down by the. machine guns of the regulary army, had the Government dared to face the resulting odium, easily could Mussolini—had his claim to represent majority opinion been substantial—have wiped out the Government at the approaching elections. But—an old Socialist and Revolutionary—he preferred to take the short cut. And of all the roads that lead to Rome, Mussolini, undoubtedly, found the shortest. Unfortunately, it is the wrong road for civilised progress. AN EXCELLENT BRICKLAYER. Mussolini, so one of his lieutenants informed me, began life as a Bricklayer, and with commendable pride, still boasts that his bricks were well and truly laid; so truly that he was always assigned the decorative and difficult window-work. It is a thousand pities he laid- aside the trowel for the sword. It is only by bricklaying, even in politics, that anything solid and permanent can be accomplished. The axe and rods of the Fascisti symbol are mere negative instruments. Moreover, in adopting them, Mussolini—audaciously or iguorantly— falsified their significance in. ancient Italian history. The lictors who bore the rods and axes were mere menials, and even their civic masters before whom they carried these, insignia of honour were subject to the Roman constitution. In passing through the. city— where, the popular assembly was paramount—the fasces had to be lowered, and the axe removed. . The very Dictators, who for a brief*period had unquestioned right to wield these weapons of judgment, were elected and not self-imposed. THE MASTERLY AJR. The Fascisti I saw passing through a. city behaved always* as its lords and masters. At Florence they had taken possession.of the railway station, and to air their authority presented bayonets at my car, refusing to let it pass into the courtyard with the luggage. In pure caprice this or that door was indicated for my own entry or exit. They seized the trains and used them without payment. Yet our newspapers reported complacently that, when Signor Mussolini arrived in London, a batch of "local Fascisti," in their black shirts, was among the Italians present at the station to welcome him. Imagine if a batch of Bolsheviks, sporting red flags, had tried to greet Kras'sin or other Soviet representative! This condonation of revolution—in the Conservative interest— may not surprise* us in. a Government whose leader toyed with the Carson conspiracy, but it is strange that even advanced Liberals should have a weakness for the new Cromwell or. Bismarck. Parliamentary Government has no real tradition in Italy, "The Nation" points out, and anyhow, democracy has failed everywhere. But the Labour Party, committed as it now is to constitutionalism, can ill-afford to betray this sneaking sympathy with Mussolini's methods. Both Lenin, and William Morris prophesied the rise of a capitalist Fascismo when Labour looked like becoming a constitutional majority; and nothing would suit the old order better than a pretext for force, while the army is still constitutionally in its hands. "THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY." This premature despair of democraoy —to which Bernard Shaw has given expression—is an instructive sidelight on human impatience. Democracy has hardly arrived—in many countries woman is still unenfranchised—and already it is being thrown over. Unquestionably, democracy has not come out well, in the ghastly years since 1914, but the fault is less with the mob—subjected to abnormally tragic provocation—than with its ■ misleaders. After all, democracy works out in practice as merely the right to choose an oligarchy. And if in that chosen aristocracy there prevailed a rigider code of honour, if a politician convicted of playing down to the popular ignorance he exists to enlighten were struck off the rolls of Parliament, the drawbacks of democracy would be less in evidence, and its value in bringing all social grievances to the public consciousness become again apparent. Alljust and all-knowing as some of us may be, we are not immortal and all-wisdom may pass with us. There is more safety in numbers. 1 . VOTES INSTEAD OF SWORDS! Democracy, such as it is, was not achieved without a long struggle, not devoid of sanguinary episodes, a struggle which was really a war to end war, so far as civil war is concerned. The contest by votes marked a great advance in civilisation. Every cross was a substitute for a sword. It waa subconsciously felt that one fighting man was as good as another, and;that the larger army would always win. That is not j always true, but it is roughly true, and the assumption works out fairly for both sides. Civil war —the only legitimate form of warfare except self-do-fence—was thus divested of its crudity and cruelty. Think of the gain in Ireland had de Valora accepted the arbitration of the division list. The- regression from this bloodless form of civil war would be a slipping back into the same barbarism that rules in Ireland. If Fascismo spreads —and there are signs that like every disease it is infecting the globe—the sword must again replace the Cross, and we shall be back in that system of alternate revolution and counterrevolution which we have been accustomed to ridicule in South America. Already, even in the north, the Ku Klux Kin a begins to damnnd n. put-oly Protestant America, though probably this

pernicious movement owes its revival less to Fascismo than to the effect of •' the .movies." The unfortunte resuscitation of the savage past through' that popular film, " The Birth of a Nation," has excited the fancy of the fanaticism of the States by its pictures of aa3hing in melodramatic masks. Fascismo proper is largely a phenomenon' of the same order, appealing to the mingled quixotry and prankishness of youth. Fascista is but boy scout writ in blood. * IMAGINARY GRIEVANCES. The grievances of Mussolini against the Government he superseded seemed to me largely imaginary. Familiar with Italy for a whole generation, never had I seen it so comfortable, never so devoid of beggars. At a period when cripplehood would have been moro' plausible than ever, even the armless and legless beggars seemed to have regained their limbs. This comparative prosperity is probably due to the hundreds of millions of pounds 'absorbed into the country by way of the war loans. Observing onco to a hotel proprietor tfiat Englishmen ought to' be exempted from the " tax of sojourn," because they had lent Italy so much money, and were not asking for it back, and that the least Italy could do was to make this hospitable gesture, I was answered: " But we lent England men!" There is not, in fact, in Italy, any more than in France, the faintest gratitude towards England, nor any understanding of such limited ideah'sm as was brought to bear upon the Peace' Treaties. People. who fought against the Allies ware, 1 was told, cockered and pampered; a Jugo-Slavia was created, for .example, while poor little Italy was kicked and neglected. Despite her sacrifices,, she had not received her due share of the spoils' of war. That was the cry of ..Mussolini, the ex-inter-national Socialist, and;it found unparagoned backing in the 'eloquence of the world's greatest living poet and farceur. Saci-o Egoismo ! Sacred', long glorious, imperial Italy! The axe for our feeble Government has let her down from her place among the Great Powers! ITALY AND THE WORLD. In my " Italian Fantasies," published some twelve years ago, when Italian journalists were already beginning to lament that young Italy was "falling into the senile decay of Socialist rhetoric and pacifical and humanitarian doctrine," I ventured to recommitted to Italy a truer imperialism—"intensive imperiajllism," as I christened jt. "Is it not enough," I asked, "to inhabit the most beautiful land in the world, the richest-dyed in historic tints, the greatest breeder of great men, the garden of the arts, the temple of religion ? Is there no such thing as intenslve_ imperialism ? To produce the highest life per square mile is surely infinitely more imperial than to multiply Saharas. of mediocrity, to follow stock exchange adventures in Abyssinia, or to decimate the dervishes of Benadir." Face to .face'with other Powers that are not to be intimidated by a piratical shirt, or a theatrical axe, Mussolini cannot but discover that the greatness and glory of Italy are not the world's sole concern. And even in domestic politics, although he continues to hold*—like the rehuilders of the wall of Jerusalem— the sword as well as the trowel, it is not impossible that he will preserve his reputation as a first-class bricklayer. But even should his record prove less jingoist than the programme that has brought him to power, the road he took to it would still remain an evil example in days when ■ the world is only too ready to break down the ancient dykes, and let the old sa-vage waters sweep back over the hardly-won pasture land. Sue-, .cess, just because nothing succeeds like it, is the culmination, not the condonation, of a crime, and even if Fascimo should advance Italy, it will have- put back the world. ' Even as I pen this conclusion, I read without surprise that a Fascista, expelled from his branch, has thrown a bomb at his fellow-Fascisti and wounded twentysix of them. For, as the Spanish-Hebrew poet, Ibi-j. Gabirol, wrote 900 years ago: "Oppression passes, trampled by oppression, And violence breeds violent succession."