Page:Giuseppe Bianchini - The Work of the Fascist Government and the Economic Reconstruction of Italy - tr. Luigi Villari.pdf/11

 favourable impression. No industry is in a state of crisis, all are in full or almost in full activity, many are filled up with orders for many months ahead, internal trade is very active, export trade is expanding in a remarkable degree.

I must now bring this long digression to an end, and say something of the spiritual disturbance with which men's minds were afflicted in Italy before November 1922.

The violent and scandalous street demonstrations were by no means the most serious aspect of the situation; the chief danger lay in the unsound and unwholesome ideas which had so deeply penetrated into the whole administrative organism of the country. Lawlessness could always have been dealt with by means of the law, but the trouble was that the organs whence the orders should have emanated and on whom the execution of the law devolved no longer responded; legislation itself was indeed being deformed to such an extent as to jeopardize the whole economic structure of the country.

The most astounding anti-social proposals were ac-