Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/7

 of Naples, the Fascists, sacked the house of Senator Benedetto Croce, the philosopher of world renown, of seven members of Parliament, and of six other citizens. In Bergamo, the Christian Democratic member of Parliament, Signor Cavazzeni, was dragged out of his house, beaten, and spat at along the streets and taken outside the city to a place where a gallows had been erected. The Fascists put a noose around his neck, lifted him on the stool, and kept him there for some time as if they were about to hang him. Before letting him go, they nearly beat him to death. Remember, that Naples and Bergamo are only two of the thousand cities and towns of Italy, and keep in mind that similar outrages took place almost everywhere.

Do you think that this is order? If so, I declare myself unable to refute this point. But as I am not a Fascist, I shall not crack your skull, or still worse, I shall not force you to swallow castor oil by the pint merely because I have, no answer to give you.

When the Fascist propagandists cannot deny the crimes committed by their comrades under the flag of their party, they admit that unfortunately there is something rotten even in the Fascist state. They deplore the most notorious crimes, but they instantly add, "What do you expect? Such acts of repression are unavoidable in a country like Italy which does not share the repugnance for bloodshed felt in some other countries. To keep in order a people so prone to violence and so anarchical, a certain kind of retaliation is indispensible, and a dictator is necessary, a dictator with an iron hand capable of imposing discipline on the people by means of terror."

We witness today a strange paradox. In order to exalt on a pedestal of false glory a single man, the Fascists fling disgrace and throw mud on the whole nation of their birth, spreading the belief that the Italian people need the Fascist bludgeon to grow wise, and that the nation is so incapable of self-government that it can be governed only by that bludgeon, and is so morally degraded that it enjoys being bowed under that bludgeon.

They claim that Mussolini is lifting the Italian nation to greatness and to glory, but they do not ask themselves: "May a nation be led by terrorism to greatness and to glory?" If tomorrow the dictator calls these people to the colors for a war, will he be able send them to death by means of castor oil? In a war against nations trained by the spontaneous training of liberty, could victory ever go to a country like Italy today, split up by the party in power into a minority of masters to whom everything, even assassination, is permitted, and a majority of slaves deprived of all rights and protected by no moral law? The experience of the World War showed that Czarist Russia, "Kaiseristic" Germany, and the Austria of Franz Josef—all autocratically ruled countries—collapsed, while the free and democratic countries, amongst which Italy then stood, emerged victorious from the terrible ordeal.