Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
MUSSOLINI
AS REVEALED IN HIS POLITICAL SPEECHES
(November 1914–August 1923)
The most limpid waters in the world appear turbid when compared to the purity of the waters of the Lethe.
INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON ITALIAN FASCISMO
In an interesting article published last year in our Press,Ettore Ciccotti shows that Italian Fascismo does not representan absolutely new political event, but is part of thegeneral historic development of nations. In the first yearsof its appearance it was compared to the “krypteia” ofSparta, to the “eterie” of Athens, and to similar phenomena,which are repeated as a manifestation of self-defence ofstrong and active groups or classes, uniting and formingcentres of resistance; exercising thus, by their extendedaction, general functions of State in a period in which itsprotection is weak or inefficient, and shows signs of disintegrationor degeneration. Other examples of this phenomenoncan be found in the history of the Church and inthe Italian Communes, in England, Germany, in the Clubsof the French Revolution, and in the rest of Europe. Whenin a nation which shows such signs this form of vitality doesnot exist, we witness the general collapse of that nation,as in Russia at this moment, where only the radical uprootingof Bolshevism might lead to the general resurrectionof the country.
The after-war period in Italy, as