preceding series of isolated crimes against workmen, and the bf',:;inning and transition from sporadic crimes committed on individual initiative and responsibility, to State crime on a large scale, against the working class. The latter had committed an unpardonable crime--the seizing of the factories--in the period immediately after the wa,r, in consequence of the failure of promises hastily made by the Italian bourgeoisie--land for the peasantry and industrial profitsharing for the workmen--to urge the protesting people on to war; and what appeared, in the circumstances, a still more unpardonable crime, was to have given them back, after long and mature deliberation in Milan, and with regular procedure, by the delegates of the worlters' industrial organisations of ItalY. Benito Mussolini, saviour of Italy, strong man, Napoleon the Great come to life again, and other similar pleasantries, which are circulated as legends by the interested literary hirelings of the Government, and which therefore easily traverse other lands and seas, are insults to the common chronicle· of facts, and a snare cunningly set for the good faith of common opinion. He saved nothing. for his effective intervention in the events in question toolt place after the Italian working class spontaneously effected the restitution of the factories. He was not strong but headstrong in his systematic incitement of social outcasts so markedly on the increase ·art,,r the end of the war, and in his unchecked onset towards lawlessness. As to the great Napoleon, he is a mOst grotesque and cynical .caricature of him: Napoleon, rightly or wronglY,,. spread the great principles of the French Revolution, and tiad made himself the champion of the Charter of the Rights of Man, at the point of the bayonet countering the resistance of foreign armies in full equipment; our little Napoleonic ape, impersonating an insensate because disproportional class reaction, wearing the mask of nationalism, and therefore lacking in principles which Biblioteca C no 8 a co 3 ' Fascism has not and cannot have,~ -- is at tiie head of a band of scoundrels, which is working against the people of its own blood, against a r,eople which is unarmed, having been previously disarmed by a rigorcug law passe-d by the preceding Prime Minister, the Honorable Gia. vanni Giolitti. It was the intention of the King of Italy to pass the sponge over the events of the post-war period, by a decree of amnesty; a wise provision, the execution of which, if it had not succeeded in eliminating the class war, would undoubtedly have silenced the hatreds emanating from its most scandalous manifestations; bu( a family quarrel in the reigning house intervened to aggravate the situation, already compHcated enougll of itself, of the social forces at war with each other. The Duke of Aosta, noted for his reactionary ideas, claimed that the working class should be punished, and his obstinacy was equal to his narrowness of outlook. For this base purpose there came forward the man ready to betray all parties and all faiths; first an Anarchist, then a Communist Extremist; an AntiMonarchist to the point of legitimising regicide in the red week; an anti-war partisan, and then standing for intervention when the gold from France had hardly been received; a tendential Republican for a time, then a Monarchist, an Imperialist, etcetera: Benito Mussolini, the Glorious Duce! He appeared as strong man and hero, when the Duke of Aosta, with the a!lliable intention of supplanting his cousin on the throne, had given orders to the Royal Carabinieri, whose commander he was, to stand by without Interference at the acts of destruction effected by the Fascist b'ancls, whiclt were then irregulnr, and to protect them, in case of counter-attack in legitimate defense, in bands, which were then irregular, their punitive expeditions ( ! ) against the disarmed populace. "Stem the tide" was the euphemism which will remain famous in the history of Italy. "We have orders to
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