AN ITALIAN PROTEST.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is trying to us of the Constitutional Party to hear Mussolini hailed, by so authoritative a paper -as the Spectator, as the saviour of his country—whereas. he is more like to be its ruin. We do not believe in order that rooted in disorder
stands, nor that a country should be governed outside its own laws. I cannot make an, exposition of the present state of this unhappy land in the limits of a letter. For the wise, however, the course of one straw is sufficient to indicate the current of a great river, so I launch my -tiny straw in this trivial story.
I have a little girl of eleven with, long plaits and blue eyes, though that is neither here nor there. She was coming home up the quiet road that leads to our house from the gates of Florence, when she met a boy she did not know, in the Sunday get-up of the " avanguardia " or boy Fascisti, who demanded, "Are you Fascista ? " "No," she answered, for why, said she, should she tell lies ? " Communist ! " said the boy, slapped her not lightly, and ran away. She came home swelling and tearful with indignation, and said a true thing : "The road is only for the Fascisti."
This sums up the matter: Italy is orderly only for the Fascisti and their sympathizers, the others are outlawed, it being the Fascist fixed idea that they must perforce all be Communists. The opinion a the smug majority that invari- ably panders to the powers that be is expressed in the advice given by unsympathetic friends to the small victim of the slap. "Why didn't you say you were a Fascist, and not blame the boy who- was doing his patriotic duty, as under- stood by Mussolini ? "
The road, the public place par excellence where all men should be equal, is to the Fascisti, and Italy has fallen from her place among free countries.—I am, Sir, &c., ITALIAN.
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