Page:Giuseppe Bianchini - The Work of the Fascist Government and the Economic Reconstruction of Italy - tr. Luigi Villari.pdf/6

 nical incompetence or peculation. Only thus can the bureaucray be reduced and the State saved from bankruptcy. Only in these conditions can sound intellectual and economic development and the real freedom and equality of citizens be assured. Let the State provide security for life and property and swift justice; let it make contracts safe and not be the first to give the example of dishonesty. Let it protect the interests and dignity of its citizens abroad and not make of our national flag a rag for others may clean their boots with.

This then was the situation. The Constitutional parties were split up into groups and fractions, with more or less leftward of rightward tendencies, more or less democratic or social-democratic, their leaders bitterly squabbling among themselves for personal reasons, but anxious above all to organize plans of campaign to get into power, oblivious of the real and urgent needs of the country. The nation was spiritually divorced from Parliament, alarmed at the apparently inevitable risk of plunging into the abyss, deeply outraged by the fact that the results of its magnificent effort in winning the