Young Men Take Charge in Italy.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 December 1922, Page 4

Young Men Take Charge in Italy.

(By F. Britten Austin)

All the world bias heard of the Fascist!—yet few people outside Italy have any precise knowledge of the mighty organisation which, created only a little more than live years ago. has reconquered Italy for the Italians, in a lieu llisorgimeuto which in a sense is a pendant, and completion of the movement oT the ’sixties.

Then- are inure than a milliun • tie-, clr.red and organised Fascist! in Italy to-day—and lew of them are over 30. And, moreover, the movement has passed out of its initial “class” phase. Seven hundred thousand of these Iv'scisti are wdrknu u who have seceded Irom ike virulently auii-pnlrictit Goin-niuiiixt-coiitrolled trade unions—for, ns tiie revolutionaries have keen unpleasantly reminded, even workmen prefer to l.e allowed to love, and he proud of> thfir native <<mntrv.

Two tears ago Lenin announced that the Italian social revolution wns an accomplished fait. Jt looked like it. -Mine than 2,000 municipalities Hew the red Soviet Ibtg. r |'o show the Italian national colours almost anywhere in North Italy meant death. Toe factories neve in Iho oceupation of Hit? Communists. The railwayiiien revolted :ind lefused to move troops. The Government ac<|uiesced, afraid in any ense to live the Army. Government, in fact, seemed ut an end. ft would take a hook to relate all the niitipatrioiic and savage outrages perpetrated by the triumphant Communists in their almost insane hatred of all that stood for Italy as a nation.

To-day that state of things has vanished like a bad dream. The young men of Italy resolved to have done with it. They organised themselves. They met violence hy violence—they butte irorisod the Terrorists. Communism was extirpated by fire and extinguished in blood. The imbecile general strike of August 1 offered them the occasion for a last overwhelming offensive. They stand unquestioned victors. Communism in Italy is dead. WHAT FASCIS.MO WANTS.

Hut what do they want now? It would need an essay on Italian politics to make it fully comprehensible. Briefly, there have hitherto been no great political parties in Italy. The country has been governed by politicians who secure a Parliamentary majority by the temporary and interested combination of several personal groups.

And Italy has been profoundly dissatisfied with the results. It lias passed from contempt for its politicians to active dislike. At the. elections in 1919 Fascismo was scarcely born. Now it is mastei of the country, and yet it is unrepresented in Parliament. The Fascisti said : “Give us the new elections which will return us to power—or, like C.'esar and bis leginoaries, we will cross the Rubicon and march on Borne.”

The glory of ancient Home is indeed their dream, and their army is modelled on the ancient legions. Tt is a fighting force of something like 300,000, apart from the 700,000 workmen enrolled in the Fascisti trade unions. This force is divided into two categories—Prineipes and Trinrii, like the soldiers of old Rome. The Prineipes, largely young ex-combatants in the war, form the first line. The Triarii are the general reserve.

The unit is the squad, 30 to 50 strong, several squads constituting a cohort and several cohorts a legion. They are uniformed in a black shirt and tassel lied nap, and fully armed except perhaps for artillery. There are Fascisti corps of cavalry, aviation, and mechanical transport. A triumvirate of military chiefs, directly under the orders of Mussolini, controls this enthusiastic army, whose rigid discipline is bevond question. ITS CURATOR.

And .Mussolini—the creator of this formidable force, the most idolised man in Italy to-day—who and what is bo? FTe is young man of 37—one of the most remarkable young men in Europe. To him alone is due the creation,

organisation, and growth of this amateur army, in which the youth of Italy flocked, as it once flocked to Garibaldi, to enrol itself. He founded it in 1919 with three squadri—a fow score men who took their lives in their hands. In addition to'controlling the wideflung ramifications of Faseismo, he personlly edits his newspaper the Popolo d’ltalia. But journalism is only a means to an end. He writes in his newspaper, as Napoleon penned his bulletins to his army, fo communicate his ardent spirit to those who will obey his orders. He is primarily the man of action. “Violence?” He is' sitting at his heaped-up desk, turns with an amused smile of eyes and mouth, a gesture of just tolerant impatience with those who make that objection,to his methods. “My dear friend, remember that 1 know all the Socialist leaders personally. 1 knew them to bo a lot of bullying cowards. I'hey wore ruining Italy —'•hiit I knew that if 1 attacked they would run. It was the only way to deal with them. I was right. That episode is finished.” “And the next?” “The next is that Faseismo”—he refers rarely to himself, always to the entity he called into being—“must take over the government of the country. Faseismo represents the national consciousness of Italy. We are determined that Italy shall he a great nation, respected beyond our frontiers, and proud of itself within, ft shall not longer he governed by petty political factions for their sectional interests. Either they will give us that government or ——” He made a significant gesture. That was --, mouth ago. There are those who see in Mussolini the first President of an Italian Republic. Ho himself proclaims a conditional allegiance to the monarchy. Napoleon before the ISth Brumairc did lip-service to the Directory. Hitt Napoleon is not an exact parallel. The Fascist! see it in Closer as, by “cohorts” and “legions,” the Prineipes and Triurii mobilise at their leader’s orders.