The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1934. THE CHALLENGE OF FASCISM.

Evening Star, Issue 21639, 7 February 1934, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1934. THE CHALLENGE OF FASCISM.

A dozen years ago it was the danger of an extension of Communism which made lively fears for Europe. Now it is a reaction towards Fascism, the other extreme, which is causing concern in a number of countries. Communism never did extend except in the most backward communities. It blusters and threatens, but is most successful generally in producing a revulsion against itself. Mussolini, on the contrary, seems to have made something of a success of Fascism in Italy, and it is not proved yet that Hitler may not do the same in Germany, though in many ways he has made a bad start. Of Fascism in France we had heard very little till the last few months. Better than most Powers France kept her head and, eked out by her thrift, a reasonable measure of her prosperity in the troubles that immediately followed the war. Recently the difficulties in finding a Government that could balance her Budget and the shock of the Stavisky revelations, in which a number of her deputies have been involved, seem to have upset the faith of many in existing institutions, and Fascism has not failed to raise its head. Oddly, the name was associated first of all with a section of Socialists who broke away from their party. “ Fascism of the Left ” their divergent movement was called, and though they disclaimed the name a good deal in their programme gave point to it. Now, as a sequel to the excitement caused by the Stavisky scandals, France has been experiencing an effervescence which one journal has declared to be not less than that which preceded the fall of the Bastille. In January wild scenes took place when demonstrators vainly battled with 10,000 police and the Republican Guards, who had to protect the Chamber of Deputies. A new Government has been formed since then, but excitement has revived once more. Paris has been virtually under martial law. It is not the police, we are told, but the military who command the position. The trouble has been complicated by the Government’s dismissal of the Paris Prefect of Police, suspected of being a plotter against the Administration and of forming street demonstrations for his own ends. Four thousand ex-soldiers, Royalists, and students have been in conflict with the Guards. “ Raucistes,” we are told, is the name given to 10,000 French Fascists whose leader, M. Bucart, announces their objective as, first, overthrow of parliamentary government, by armed force if necessary; second, a corporate Fascist State; and, third, friendship with Fascist Germany and Italy. Fascist States, it is suggested, do things while Parliaments mark time and discuss. If recourse must be had to force, the Communists are prepared to do their part also in making a bear-garden of Paris.

Side by side with these French troubles comes a report that Spain is passing the most critical hour since the overthrow of the monarchy. Fascism versus Socialism is declared to be the issue. Fascism, until now, has been even less in evidence in Spain than in the neighbouring country. Sir George Young, in a history of its revolution which was published last year, never mentions the word. As the report we have quoted comes from the correspondent of the Labour ‘ Daily Herald ’ it is possible that he uses it loosely to express his dislike of the more extreme section of the Conservatives, whose party was given an un-

expectedly large increase of power by the recent elections. It is to be remembered also that Spain had for years a dictatorship, formed on the Italian model. There are Communists in Spain, but there are more anarchists and syndicalists. The .Spaniard is a strong individualist, who docs not take orders from Moscow or from anywhere else easily. The triumph of Fascism in any country, if it clung to the methods which both Mussolini and the Hitlerites followed for a beginning, would lead most directly to a counterrevolution by Socialists. That, as Sir George Young remarks, would be an expensive way of improving institutions. But the spirit of violence is very much in the air. Even Sir Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirts, who began eighteen months ago with forty swashbucklers, claims a membership now of half a million. It is great sport, no doubt, to excitable youth.