Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/41

 Fascisti are a national body, with regularly established branches in nearly all the cities, towns, and villages of Italy. It is officially reported that their membership totals 170,000, but some labor men claim that it runs as high as 1,000,000. They have elaborate headquarters in many places, and are served by a whole battery of daily, weekly, and monthly journals. The organization, like White Guard movements everywhere, does lip-service to a rabid patriotism: it is supposed to be fighting for the glory of Italy, but in reality it is merely a tool for doing the dirty work of the country's employing interests. These exploiters finance it liberally and openly. The membership, especially the more militant part of it, is made up of ex-military officers, students, sons of business men, habitual criminals, and the hundred and one other degenerate elements who, through greed and stupidity, are always available to serve as White Guards for capitalism. The name of the organization was taken from the bundles of sticks, or "fasci," which served as the emblem of the old Roman Empire, and which typify the power that comes from close organization. The leading spirit of the movement is one Benito Mussolini, a renegade Socialist. He is editor of "Il Popolo d' Italia," national daily organ of the Fascisti. At a recent meeting of the latter’s central executive committee he was affectionately referred to as "the master and flame of our faith." In these days when European capitalists have a particularly dastardly attack to make against the workers, they always get some so-called revolutionist to maneuver it for them: Noskes, Briands, Thomases, Mussolinis, and Kerenskys are ever at hand to do them service.

The Fascisti organization is of comparatively recent growth. It originated from the scattering groups of fanatical "patriots," a la D'Annunzio, that sprang up immediately after the close of the great war. These "patriotic" nuclei won their spurs in April, 1919, when they raided, sacked, and burned the offices of the "Avanti!" the revolutionary paper in Milan. The movement lingered, however,