Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/22

 We are going to come to the question period in just a minute, but Professor Roselli says that he would like to have just a minute, and I take it by this he means a minute now.

It is not my desire, Mr. Chairman, to make the discussion of what has been retorted by the other side too pointed or personal. Therefore, I rise only to what I might call perfacto personale, using the terms of the Italian Chamber of Deputies that was or is.

The fact is that I did not say nor intimate that the Italian people were so inordinately happy under the present régime. I did not use the word and I do not like to be misquoted. Strong medicines are accepted with more equanimity than glee. The entire adaptation of Fascism to Italy, the very discipline of Fascism is such an unusual experiment in the relations between the people and the state, that it would take much longer than the one minute at my disposal to bring before you the entire new idea of the individual living for the state instead of the state living for the individual, which is the fulcrum of the Fascist theory.

Now the Chair would be glad to welcome questions.

The statement was made in the papers this morning that in future there would be no educators in Italy who did not subscribe to Fascism. That was the sense of the article. I would like to ask Professor Roselli whether he thinks that that would be a good thing for any government. Of course we, having a democratic form of government could not subscribe to it, but I would like to ask Professor Roselli if he thinks that would be well even for Italy.

According to this dispatch there is a further provision that if they belong to political parties which are dangerous to the State they may be displaced.

Madam, I can only say that I cannot be called responsible for the extreme policies of Fascism when I am not even accepting without reservations its milder applications. This, if reported right, is only one of the many chapters of Fascist discipline which can be explained only by what existed previously. The universities of the country, to mention only one type of educational institutions, were in Italy all state universities. I would like to ask you how many state universities such as we understand them in America would ever allow on their faculty year after year professors who, receiving the state's money every 27th day of the month, spoke constantly against the organization of the state? How long would they be retained in this country?

I want to ask Professor Roselli if he thinks that the Italian people are so much less capable of restraint that they would not have been able to work out from the disorganization that existed after the war into a state of comparative calm and well being in the way that