FASCISM AND LIBERTY.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1927, Page 12

FASCISM AND LIBERTY.

Whatever opinion may be held in regard to the somewhat intimate details of his personal life which the Italian Fascist Dictator Mussolini has supplied to the British Press, there is no doubt that Italy just now is an unsafe or at least unpleasant abode for anyone cherishing opinion not easily reconcileable with the Fascist political creed. According to a London authority, “Fascists last year in Italy murdered 95 workers, wounded 1890, and arrested 211,400, while in addition they inflicted ‘searches,’ or violent domiciliary visitations on 10,000 houses, and stopped the publication of more than 1000 workers’ newspapers.” Since then the law against anti-Fascism has been very greatly strengthened as the outcome of attempts upon the person of the leader. The record under the old law is sufficiently startling, however, to explain the desperate resistance to Fascism by that section of the Italian people which is not inclined to sacrifice for the sake of peace and prosperity the sacred traditions of political and social freedom. Undoubtedly Mussolini’s dictatorship has conferred certain benefits on Italy. It. has brought order out of chaos, stimulated industrial and commercial activity, and possibly has also made for administrative efficiency. But it has also meant the unrestrained assertion of irresponsible power and the complete surrender of democratic self-govern-ment. Only in Soviet Russia can a parallel be found, for there autocratic despotism, under another name, is as much in evidence as it is in Italy. In neither country is there any right of free public meeting, or any channel for the expression of free public opinion. Open and evenhanded justice in Russia is unknown, and even the admirers of much of Mussolini’s administrative work have grave fears that the later extensions of Fascist laws have taken freedom and liberty from Italy. Despotism, whether of the “benevolent” type, such as that exercised by Mussolini, or of the type which the Soviet favours, is bound to defeat itself.