Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/45

 month the greater part of our best comrades were compelled by the Director of the Fascio to sign declarations refusing the 'Avanti!', and whoever might have refused would have been condemned to death. We signed against our will, because we were constrained by the violence of the Fascisti. But you of the management may contrive to send it to me, as my mind and faith has always been for Socialism, and will be for it tomorrow even as yesterday. Although the Fascisti may club me, may do with me as they will, still I will cry with my last breath: 'Long Live Socialism,' 'Long Live the International of Workers.'

"(C. U.)"

Far from attempting to stop this civil war, or reign of terror, provoked by the Fascisti, the Government openly aided it. Time and again its soldiers and police joined hands in the Fascisti depredations, and then arrested and punished the outraged workers. The workers were kept unarmed, under severe penalties, while the Fascisti were allowed to go about armed to the teeth. This attitude of the Government explains why a minority of Fascisti were able to so completely tyrranize over a majority of workers. Nor were the big fraction of Socialist members in the Chamber of Deputies able to change the situation. They complained in vain about the crimes of the Fascisti and their governmental allies. The whole situation gave evidence of the general breakdown of political government in Italy.

In the face of the Fascisti white terror, the attitude of the organized workers was largely one of passive resistance. Stating that Fascism was an after-war phenomenon that must soon pass away, their leaders counselled them to hold firm and not to allow themselves to be provoked into acts that would call forth still greater violence. For the most part the workers heeded this advice, although here and there some of the more aggressive ones occasionally gave the Fascisti a dose of their own medicine. But such resistance usually resulted in still further "punitive expeditions."