ITALY TO-DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19833, 31 December 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

ITALY TO-DAY.

FASCISM AND ITS WORKS. Of books on Italy under Fascism there is no lack. The student can find an abundance of, literature ,to prase or to blame; extravagant eulogies and scathing denunciations of Mussolini and tbe movement he leads have poured from the printing press. Those who would prefer more detachment and less partisanship do not find their tastes catered for quite so generously. Therefore, since Italy under Fascist rule is a section of contemporary life deserving and repaying study, there ts room and A welcome for books like "Italy To-day," by Sir Frank Fox (Herbert Jenkins, Ltd.). It is not at all denunciatory and it is much more analytical than eulogistic. It takes Fascism as a fact that cannot be ignored or evaded, and proceeds to survey it, and the effects it has produced in Italy, with the dispassionate touch of the contemporary historian, not with the heat of a partisan on either side. In one feature Sir Frank Fox's discussion of Fascism differs from many that have preceded it. Ho does not deal with this movement as if it went back no further than tho time when Mussolini began to organise the ex-soldiers of Italy into bands and link up with them various other elements in the country "not satisfied with the conditions then existing. Allowing all that can be conceded to the conditions immediately following the war, and to the advent of Mussolini in determining the actual form of revolt against a feeble and ineffective Parliamentary regime, lie traces the origin of the Fascist upheaval to much more distant causes. Italy united aftev the efforts of Cavour and Garibaldi adopted governmental institutions planned on the British model. Starting well, the system of governmental organisation gradually deteriorated until, in the view of the author, some departure from it, violent or otherwise, became inevitable. Hie war quickened and shaped the movement, but did not create it.

From this standpoint Sir Frank Fox surveys Italy with the eyes of a realist, not of a theorist trying to fit facts to his own preconceived ideas. He produces in consequence a volume that will appeal to those who wish to know something of the tctual state of the country, having bad a surfeit of denunciations and eulogies.