The New Phase of Fascism
IT is common to talk about Signor Mussolini's experi- mental attempts to " constitutionalize " Fascism, and perhaps in the continuous development of this new polity the stage has at last been reached which for want of a better word may be called constitutionalization. In reality the word has only an approximate meaning. It is little more than a metaphor, for the last thing which the Duce desires is to get back to democracy. He still denounces democracy as an impossible creed which he believes will gradually give place in all countries to the political structure called Fascism.
Of course, Signor Mussolini is quite alive to the wisdom of building some sort of bridge, not indeed a bridge back to the -old regime, but a bridge across which his successors may safely pass from the present personal rule to the Fascist administration of the future. Such bridge- building would more justly be called organizing than constitutionalizing. We remember hearing a story during the War of a notable organizer who, shortly after taking over a new department, was seen by a visitor at a table which was piled high with business papers of all kinds. The visitor asked how his friend could hope to find his way through such a mass of material and was told, " At present I am attending to everything, because I must understand everything, but if in three months you come into this room and find more than one paper on my table you can call me a failure." Signor Mussolini is a great organizer. Having produced his organization he confers upon it the name and dignity of a political philosophy. If he is right, it may endure and be reproduced elsewhere, and be finally given by all the rank of a political philo- sophy ; but if he is wrong, as we think he will be proved to be, we can still retain our admiration for him as a mighty organizer.
In his speech last Saturday to the Grand Assembly of the Fascist Party he explained his latest reconstruction of the Corporative State. Of the nine portfolios which he held he has abandoned seven. In future he will combine with the Prime Ministership only one Ministry— that of Home Affairs. As this is in accordance with the custom of pre-Fascist days, it seems superficially to be a constitutionalizing move. The Dictatorship, however, remains in all its intensity. The Duce explained once xnore that it was essential as the pivot of a centralized State. The abandonment of seven portfolios therefore means no more than that the organization of Italy has proceeded far enough for this devolution of authority to be possible. He is clearing his table.
Signor Mussolini will supervise everybody and every- thing, but he has found seven dependants who can be trusted to manage departments without continually receiving orders. Incidentally, this change will be a Convenience to the League of Nations. So long as Signor Mussolini was nine different Ministers it was quite impossible for Italy to be represented by a Minister in the Assembly at Geneva. So far from the present devolution, however, meaning a slackening of the Fascist idea, Signor Mussolini says—we rely on the translation of his speech in the Times—that the " directives " of government will be for a Fascism more than ever "accen- tuated." The problem of Fascism, he went on to explain, is to define its proper place in the State. The State is supreme. Fascism is only its handmaid. All this sounds very well and almost quite (as an Englishman might say) constitutional. But then we remember that Fascism created the present State and that Fascism alone keeps it alive. If Fascism is indistinguishable from the State, what is the sense of Signor Mussolini's words ? If he is only playing a variation on l'aat c'ost moi, where are we ?
Signor Mussolini is convinced that Fascism has made Italy a nation of practical men who have relieved their country from the reproach of being what he calls a " gesticulating, superficial, carnivalesque Italy." Every impartial observer must acknowledge the order, the purpose and the energy. which have appeared in Italian life during the past eight years ; but, unlike Signor Mussolini, they may think that the change has been possible only because the democratic politicians of the old regime had never really assimilated the principles they professed. That was, perhaps, not to be wondered at. After all, liberal institutions in Italy did not have a very long innings before they were suppressed. The ease with which they went under, howev.er, was, to speak frankly, a cause of reproach to the Italian democrats. If the Liberal politicians had held their convictions more strongly, or had been abler men of affairs, they would surely have been able to put up a better fight. It is clear that Signor Mussolini despises his enemy. " Democratic freedom," he said last Saturday, " is only a verbal illusion." Fascism, lie added, was the one new thing in the past thirty years which had been produced in the political and social fields.
Signor Mussolini gives to his invention a motto which, if he is right about the permanence of his idea, will take its place with " Libertd, Egalite, Fraternite." He said the other day that the motto of Fascism was " Authority, Order, Justice." One aspect of the practical working out of the motto may be seen in his reorganization of the Ministries. The Ministry of Public Instruction, for example, is to become the Ministry of National Education. The Duce makes the familiar distinction between instruc- tion and education. The State must have complete authority in training and in forming the character of the youth of the nation.
Here we may quote a particularly interesting passage on the relations of Church and State from the Times report :— " Speaking of the situation as a result of the Lateran Treaty, Signor Mussolini stated that the agreement had been criticized by the Blacks ' and by the Greens. Both the Temporabsts,' who had dreamed of impossible restorations of institutions over- turned by the inevitable march of history,' as well as the Greens,' who had wished to perpetuate the conflict, 'not foithe benefit of the State, but for the mortification of the Church,' had been defeated. Signor Mussolini advised his hearers not to attach too much im d- ance to those polemics of adjustment ' which had aceom • the necessary process of defining the position between the C .urch and the State. In the Fascist camp, the event had been understood, but in Catholic, and especially lay-Catholic, quarters there had been revealed disillusions which had to be corrected by ' timely sanctions.' " The Vatican has more reason than ever for feeling that the Lateran Treaty is_ not quite all that it hoped,
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