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guarding individual liberty and for not guaranteeing the efficiency of public service. The failure of the Government to heed these protests explains the origin and the spread of the Fascista movement in various regions of Italy, for the movement assumes different characteristics in different regions.

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In the north of Italy, unquestionably, fascismo has represented the uprising of a tormented public against the excesses and abuses of violent radicalism. As the movement has spread, however, it has been merely a cloak for venting traditional spites and clan hatreds, one group or another seizing the opportunity to do in the name of patriotism things that they would not dare attempt in times when life flows normally.

In the province of Apulia, for example, where the landlords were as tyrannical as the "Reds" of the North, fascismo covered a bloody reaction of property against peasant organizations which have decidedly improved conditions of living in recent years. But the counter-reaction of the farmers was terrible. They began a systematic campaign of arson and assassination against the landlords, poisoning cattle, cutting down trees and vineyards, killing even women and children in reprisal. Apulian fascismo, behind which a most unworthy cause was skulking, was extirpated in short order.

Likewise in Sicily the landlords saw in fascismo an opportunity for reasserting themselves at a moment when public opinion was engrossed by other things. Peasant leaders were assassinated, and this provoked a revival of

brigandage on such a scale that the Fascisti were put to rout.

The movement remains typical and pure, however, in those provinces where enlightened public sentiment is sympathetically neutral toward it, deploring Fascista excesses as violations of law, but thoroughly approving the results attained.

Armed with rifles, hand-grenades, machine-guns from the abandoned munition dumps along the war front, bands of young men, in numbers of from fifty to two hundred, would descend in army camions upon the Socialist strongholds. The normal Fascista raid is a fairly peaceful affair. Its object is to tear down red flags, deface pictures of Lenine, restore the insignia of the Italian nation where Bolshevist enthusiasm has gone to extreme affront of patriotic sentiment. This is particularly true in towns where Socialist local officials have used the authority conferred on them by the ballot to institute the exterior semblances of revolution.

Socialist headquarters are usually dismantled or burned. In some cases Socialist deputies or local leaders have been publicly hazed, beaten, or actually killed. The offices and printing plants of Socialist papers have been destroyed; the raids against the "Avanti" in Milan and the "Difesa" in Florence were conspicuous instances of this kind. The raids are usually advertised and prosecuted as reprisals. Let a Socialist jeer a patriot in public, and a disciplinary foray is immediately made by a Fascista force. The famous "Day of San Frediano" in Florence (February 25) was occasioned by a bomb attack from anarchists upon a procession of students in honor of the Italian flag.

This episode assumed the proportions of a medieval tumult. Some hot-blooded Fascisti, in reprisal for the anarchist bomb, assassinated a Socialist labor leader, Spartaco Lavagnini; whereupon a general strike was called, and the "reds" set up barricades in the quarter of San Frediano, across the Arno. A young Fascista was caught by the Socialists, stabbed, and thrown into the river. The whole city then rose in arms, and escorted the Royal Guards, without much resistance, in truth, into occupation of the rebellious district.

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With the recent general elections the Fascista movement entered on a third political phase. By the first of May nearly every town in northern or central Italy had its Fascista organization, and the middle classes generally seemed to have intrusted leadership to its young patriots. In this sudden and delirious expansion of the movement there was probably a deal of political noise, as the use politicians made of it clearly indicates. In towns where the followers of Mr. Giolitti were predominant, the Fascisti banner was waved against his well-known opposition to the war. Not infrequently the attention of the Fascisti was diverted from the Socialists-anti-Socialism being the only real principle of unity existing among them-to this or that faction of the bourgeoisie.

Dissension inevitably resulted, a super-fascismo developing on the one hand among the followers of D'Annunzio, who scornfully held aloof from the movement once it had become a popular fad, and a rift appearing between the republican Fascisti and those loyal to the monarchy. There was also a

tendency toward a break between the conservative Nationalists and the more progressive elements in the Fascista ranks.

But decidedly the most interesting, not to say amusing, aspect of fascismo in this phase was the stampede of the supposedly Socialist agrarian leagues

those whose abuses were among the moving causes and justifications of the fascista movement to its banners.

This astonishing phenomenon is not incomprehensible, however. It is fundamentally the old question of the distinction between industrial and agricultural labor. The present leagues of northern Italy saw in the Socialist party an instrument for obtaining desired reforms. With the prestige of the Socialists daily declining, the Italian peasants, in characteristic impulsiveness, turned elsewhere for support. Since, moreover, the Fascista movement is in notable part an agitation of ex-soldiers, many of whom are peasants, it was easy for a name representing no fixed political principles to be turned to any purpose. The doctrine of peasant proprietorship, the bulwark of European middle-class democracy, and as such inconsistent with socialism and communism, was a convenient rallying-point. We have, as a result, especially in the province of Ferrara, a new and powerful unit of Fascisti, committed to a confiscatory policy as regards land.

Agrarian fascismo is, however, only in its first stages. Just what effect it will have on the later development of the whole movement is still a matter of speculation.

8 9

The attitude of the Government toward the extra-legal activities and

violence of the Fascisti has been determined by the complex situation in Parliament. Mr. Giolitti has had three important policies to enforce: the Treaty of Rapallo; the increase in the price of bread as the first of a series of important reforms in finance and taxation; and finally the application of "workers' control," or coöperative management, in industry.

The premier could muster in the old Parliament a bare majority when assured of the support of the extreme conservatives, representing the manufacturing interests. This support he has bought in the past by conceding a free hand to the Fascisti, finding himself relieved, into the bargain, of gaining Socialist animosity by attacking the evils to which the Fascisti have energetically attended. This explains the occasional coöperation between Fascisti and police and the official indifference to the use by raiders of army supplies and equipment.

When, however, in the present Parliament, Giolitti comes to enforcing his industrial program, to which the manufacturers are bitterly and unitedly opposed, he will have to depend on Socialist support. This the Socialists will give only in exchange for protection from continued outrages.

The end of fascismo as a spectacular phenomenon in Italian life is thus already in sight. Indeed, the elections were hardly over before the premier, reassured by political victory, began gently to apply restraint on public disorder. With the entrance of the

Socialists into the new ministry, as promised, quiet will doubtless again be restored.

§ 10

The result of the turmoil of the last months has been to establish balance, almost a basis of understanding, between factions in Italy. The surprising weakness of Socialist morale in the face of a determined onslaught from their opponents has virtually terminated the arrogance and insolence with which they had been for three years trampling the rights of the public underfoot. The effect of this has been to restore confidence in the nation abroad and to quiet the absurd reports of an impending social revolution in Italy that were damaging to the whole work of the country's reconstruction.

The immediate goal of the fascista movement has not, on the other hand, been achieved. Socialism has not been exterminated or even reduced in economic strength. The Socialists lost very little ground in the last elections, once the considerable protest vote from non-Socialists obtained in 1919 has been deducted.

As we said at the beginning, a great battle in public opinion has been fought outside the Government, and the battle has decided that communism in Italy is too weak in numbers and morale to cause any serious concern; while Socialism, to have any standing in the country at all, must continue as a party of progressive criticism, which its saner elements have always constituted.

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I

T was something new, in the little old brick school-house, to read like that. When it came her turn, the strange girl, who had come for the first time that morning, rose promptly and without embarrassment, and, unadmonished by teacher, with book in the left hand and head thrown back, began without hesitation, "Page one hundred fifty-three, lesson forty-nine; "The Chase.""

Even then nobody expected it. It was usual enough to read out boldly that far. When the actual demand for declamatory raising of the voice came, at the beginning of the piece, it was a wholly different affair. However brave and full of momentum the start, at the first real need of courage the voice sank, the head drooped, a dull glow of diffidence overspread the face, and the unlucky reader went mechanically through the stanza aware of the

usual and inevitable failure, sinking heavily into his seat at the end.

But the new girl kept right on as if she cared for nobody or nothing: "The stag at eve had drunk his fill, Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,

And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade." She read with mouth open, freely and without effort.

The boy looked up. Only a faint flush on her freckled cheek showed that she was at all aware of herself. When she came to

"As chief, who hears his warder call, "To arms! the foemen storm the wall,'" there was never such a "To arms!" The little boys jumped in their seats, and sat with mouth and eyes wide open. The little girls jumped, too, and then simpered at one another.

The big boys in the class, occupying the front row of seats, looked hard into their books, and their faces reddened with embarrassment. The big girls looked up from the lesson at teacher's face.

The new girl was fourteen. The boy, who sat just across the aisle, so near that he was aware of the aroma of her fresh-ironed apron, was not quite fifteen. It was the first morning after the holidays, and twenty below zero. The windows were velvety with a frost so thick that the streaming level arrows of the sun were stripped of their pale-gold sharpness as they entered, and brought to the room only a tempered glow.

Fifth reader was dismissed. When recess came, and they all gathered around the red-hot stove, holding out hands and elevating copper-toed boots to the narrow fender that ran about the tall cylinder of the stove, the new girl came swinging down the aisle to join them with a movement as free as that of her reading itself. For the first few seconds there was a certain lack of ease among them. Despite teacher's exhortations, they had never supposed reading in that way really possible, and they retained an impression as of something painful. It was only the girl's open and natural way of breaking in upon their bashful put them at greater ease. By the time By the time ten of the fifteen minutes of recess had passed they had almost forgotten that she was there for the first time.

silences that

All but the boy, who was a little more bashful than the others. He felt the softness of her clothes, and the scent of the fresh-ironed apron came once more into the field of his consciousness. He did not look at her. She had already formed an

image in his mind, and it was that of a light-complexioned girl with whitish hair and freckles. He was not curious of details. He was not interested in her as a girl; it was only the bold, free reading that made him notice her at all. When teacher had called school and he was in his seat, he thought no more of her beyond recurring from time to time to the miracle of the reading.

The boy paid no attention to girls and took no interest in them; boys who were interested in them and did pay attention to them were to him simply incomprehensible. He went his way and let them go theirs, content enough except when occasionally he found himself sacrificed by certain of his mates to new-found attractions. Then his indifference became disdain or even anger. To share your sled with a girl instead of sliding down hill with the rest of the boys, to stand by the stove or sit on the edge of the woodbox or lean and look out of the window with a girl, instead of ranging over banks of snow or careering on the sliding-place, was the supreme foolishness and the supreme offense.

Sometimes it was not only disdain; it could be disappointment and real grief. Weeks had gone by, and he had not yet recovered from the effect of having Tip, as they stood outside the door one night after lodge, suddenly leave his side and walk away with Lucy. He was filled at first with amazement, then with resentment, and finally with the sharpest, deepest pain.

Tip was to stay all night with him. From the time the boy was six years old they had been inseparable. When Tip finally came in, and they were deep under the quilts in the soft feather

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