Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/23

 the Germans have done who were faced with a similar disorganization, and who through constitutional means have been able to work that out. That is one question.

The second question is—you state that you have no time to discuss this new ideal of the individual living for the state rather than the state being built up for the well being of the individual, that it was a new ideal. I had supposed that that was much the same ideal as had existed in Germany before the war and has existed in Japan for many years. If it has not been discredited, at least it is believed by most people that the American and the English systems represent a better development.

May I answer the second question first. I hold no brief for Fascist theory as such as a panacea for all the political ills of humanity. If Japan and Germany thought that a certain theory was preferable, that is their own business. I am discussing Italy after the war. And in discussing Italy after the war, I find that it is not as easy as some people think to emerge from the state not of Socialism, but of anarchy and chaos in which the Italians had placed themselves, or were placed by circumstances largely beyond their control; it took heroic measures; and therefore I do not believe that they could have emerged under any system very different from the system which has been used, and, to a certain extent, even misused by Italy during the last six years. The term "six years" includes practically the beginning of the large activities of Fascism even before it obtained full power.

There was a period when a large number of Italian Deputies seceded from Parliament as constituted under the Fascist régime. It is what we usually refer to as the Aventine opposition. Yet those gentlemen, knowing what a serious situation they were facing, how tragic their failure would be, how everything depended on their holding together, were unable to forget their own local disputes, and being practically held before the eyes of the whole world as the defenders of freedom, proved unwilling to avail themselves even in a moment of terrific crisis of the opportunity which offered itself.

If I had any doubt before as to the Italian people's inability at a particularly difficult moment to emerge from danger in any other way than through Fascism’s drastic experiment, the doubt would have been dispelled by the history of the Aventine opposition.

Professor Roselli illustrates admirably how to answer questions briefly, which the Chairman thinks is a splendid quality in speakers.

If Fascism is such a good form of government for Italy, and Professor Roselli is not discussing any other country, why is it that they are forming Fascist groups in other countries?