A

T two o'clock this afternoon, October 19, the news ticker in my office broke off in the middle of a sober stock market report and began printing pure gibberish. Now, our wellknown old friend, the Perversity of Inanimate Things, usually leads tickers astray when there is something of more than especial importance to be communicated.

The London Bureau of the New York "Tribune" does not pride itself on its mechanical skill, but it does know that by poking various levers and twiddling thumbscrews recalcitrant tickers can sometimes be brought to reason. In this case the operation was completed just in time for the following fragment to appear:

"... said that whether by his own fault or by the force of circumstances Mr. Lloyd George had lost the confidence of the country."

That, following a previous announcement that Mr. Bonar Law was speaking before the hurriedly summoned Conservative meeting at the Carlton Club, could mean only one thing: Lloyd - George would have to go. He may come back again; at this moment of writing the British political situation is in a worse muddle than it has been for years.

I am concerned now more with the method of his passing from the Premiership than with his political future.

First of all, let me say that the political developments of to-day, the most important date in English history since the armistice, have passed virtually unnoticed by the public at large. The newspapers to-night are jammed with the happenings of a brief six hours, but there are not two hundred people in London who have witnessed any appreciable part of these events. A strange and analysis-defying race, this, which will turn out ten thousand people to watch its Prime Minister entering an international conference, and not a handful to witness his downfall!

Perhaps it is because crisis has succeeded crisis in such kaleidoscopic succession this afternoon and evening that the street crowds have not been able to keep up. However that may be, attention to the drama would have well repaid them, for drama there was in plenty, both on the stage and off.

The action started this morning at the Carlton Club, a grimy granite structure in Pall Mall. Shortly after ten o'clock motor cars began to roll up with Conservatives to attend the meeting called by Mr. Austen Chamberlain to decide the future of the party. There were such well-known figures as Chamberlain, Birkenhead, and Balfour (the latter arriving on foot, and displaying delighted

surprise when the small crowd recog nized and cheered him); and then came what seemed an infinity of old gentlemen in silk hats and morning coats; ancients with venerable beards and halting steps; semi-invalids who had virtually to be carried up the steps of the club.

One had hardly imagined that there were so many survivors of the traditional Tory type; one wished that the late Henry Adams might have been there to see and to comment.

A violently agitated man hurried down the club steps. He was J. M. Erskine, a "Diehard" or extreme Conservative, who had not been invited to the meeting because he did not support the Coalition, who had announced his intention of attending notwithstanding, and who had been ejected. Rather white of face, he proceeded to give free expression of his feelings to the newspaper men who hurried forward. Finally he disappeared.

Two hours passed, and most of the waiting crowd melted away. Another hour, and all but a few conscientious journalists had gone to lunch. Then suddenly the glass doors of the club opened and Sir Philip Sassoon dashed out and into his car. The others who had attended the meeting followed. To newspaper agency reporters who entered the aristocratic precincts of the club an under-official who still seemed surprised announced that the meeting had voted 186 to 87 that the Conservative Party should go to the coming election as a unit. In other words, the Coalition' was dead.

expression, if one's eyes can be trusted at ten feet.

The car swung into Whitehall to the accompaniment of a faint cheer from the faithful fifty. Obviously, he was going to Buckingham Palace to resign.

A swiftly commandeered taxi bore one through the Mall in time to see the Prime Minister's car pass through the palace gates without even a salute from the sentries on guard. It entered the courtyard, was lost to sight, and shortly reappeared, to be parked in an inconspicuous corner. So far as could be seen, there was not a single person near the Palace who would not have been there in the ordinary course of his traveling.

Long before the Rolls-Royce returned to Downing Street, the afternoon papers were announcing that the visit to the King must mean a resignation. Still no crowds, no cheering.

Darkness came to Downing Street, and journalists from half a world hung about the portals of the Premier's house. We shivered in the keen wind and wished, in the words of one impatient chap, that they would hurry their blinking funeral and get it over.

And then one passed with the crowd into the reception hall, adorned with its mounted heads of deer and antelope, and with a couple of golf bags carelessly propped in a corner. The bald-headed doorkeeper, who has never in living memory been cheerful, seemed more morose than ever.

5-01

eet

By four o'clock perhaps fifty curious sightseers had gathered near the White hall end of the street. I have seen", Downing Street packed from curb to curb when some minor foreign notable has chanced to be visiting the Prime Minister.

At 4:10 a gleaming limousine detached itself from the knot of parked motor cars and drew up in front of No. 10. Into it from the house there stepped Sir Edward Grigg, one of the Premier's secretaries. He was followed by Mr. Lloyd George himself, who stopped halfway across the narrow pavement to pose for photographers. He was smiling pleasantly, and it was not at all a forced

29

penedo bebici esaɔ #1993iit no med At lengur there was dreklaipe those fournalists' nearest the door" Mul Shakespeare entered, calmly putting W long brier bibe and smiling. He cares fully balanced himself on his Heels h the ledge surmounting the Hearth of open fire used to smitganga dor

Well,gentlemen said gib "the Prime Minister was esige has advised the King to send for Mr. Bonar Law on bed ....Degolfod

Nobody spoke.Somehow there személy nothing to say at the moïent,&10õubis obviousty there were W dozen quèstian?/ to be asked for further information o Observed Shakespeare, chitësi pispitut gout 12 com

ily, after two thoughtful puffs at his pipe, "am out of a job."

Then every one laughed, and the hail of questions began. Every few moments some one, satisfied for the time being, would hurry out to telephone to his office. Then the farewells, and a scurry down the short length of Downing

Street for taxis from the rank in Whitehall. (Incidentally, there were none.)

One who lingered stopped behind the wooden barricades at the end of the street (erected when Sinn Fein outrages were feared) to charge and light his pipe. The single policeman on duty there strolled over.

"Is it true he's resigned, sir?" he asked, recognizing the journalist.

"Yes; that's right."

"So the P. M.'s gone," he observed, meditatively. "Well, he did 'is bit. Rather blustery to-night, sir."

When the journalist looked back, Downing Street was deserted.

I

THE FASCISTI

WAS having lunch at Valiani's

that Roman institution which proves the superiority of the Eternal City over every other metropolis by being the only station restaurant in the world where food does not taste like station restaurant food-when I saw a Fascista who was standing by the door make a sign to another Fascista on the other side of the avenue. I lifted my head from a dish of carciofini, or young artichokes (the most dastardly and delectable vegetable infanticide in history) to watch the powwow which ensued. It was excited but short. Then the first Fascista extracted a whistle from his capacious belt, put it to his lips, and blew. Here a young man who was sipping a glass of lemonade at an itinerant fountain gulped down what there was left and came running; there a lower middle-class family which was tugging its baggage toward the station hurriedly concentrated all the parcels into the hands of the women and children while the two men hastened to the call; farther back another black-shirted devil kissed his girl good-by and darted toward us. Another Fascista (I know not to this day whether waiter, cook, or customer) brushed past my table, ran out of the door, and was soon lost in the scuffling group of fifteen or twenty who ran yelling toward two young Romans with red neckties and carnations who had been ostentatiously displaying the "Avanti"-the Socialist paper against which the Fascismo has declared war to the finish. With one wild dash, shouting "A noi!" the Fascisti made for them; ten, fifteen canes landed on the Socialists' heads, their clothes were torn, their noses badly smashed, the copies of the "Avanti" burned like torches by waving hands; one minute later the victors were ready to sing the first stanza of their superb hymn, "Oh, youth, oh, youth, springtime of beauty," and then disbanded. It was time for the police and the ambulance to arrive.

“Giovinezza, giovinezza—Primavera di bellezza...." When had the world last witnessed such scenes in which cruelty and romance were so closely entwined? When, in other words, had Italy been so young? Those lines had a familiar flavor. Oh, yes! "Quant'è bella giori nezza-Che si fugge tuttavia!" (How

beautiful is youth which is forever in flight!) sang Lorenzo de' Medici in an age which certainly lacked neither romance nor cruelty. And just as the world, this practical and "law-abiding" world, casts longing eyes toward the Florence of the Medici, so it cannot help being thrilled by the daring and lenient toward the crimes of this organization of young or youthful men who are rejuvenating Italy by all methods, including the drawing of blood.

A black shirt of a negligée type, wide open at the neck, adorned with all the war decorations, embroidered with defiant mottoes and, often, skull and crossbones; a broad belt, so capacious as to hold and conceal any such objects, harmless or otherwise, as are carried in the vest or coat pockets of the ordinary man; knee trousers, military in style, in fact, usually left over from army days, as were the gray-green puttees below them; no headgear, even in the hottest sun or the stormiest night (the head being protected only by a wild mass of hair eight or ten inches long, thrown back occasionally by comb and brush, and incessantly by the hand and a defiant shaking of the head); a heavy stick, his principal and often his only weapon a stick which two years ago was straight and carried by a cord hanging from the man's wrist, and is to-day curved at the top, knotty, clublike, and decidedly businesslike. Such is the Fascista whom one meets to-day everywhere in Italy. Strange to say, the least conspicuous of the many symbols worn by him are the lictors' fasces with the ax, the earliest and basic insignia from which he took his name, and on which he relied for the prestige that Italians are ever ready to associate with hallowed memories.

Started as an organization of World War veterans, the swift course of events in Italy and the restlessness of the country itself, where political changes are notoriously chameleon-like, has transformed it into the chief molder of Italy's destinies, a whip for ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal alike, an organization for the defense of legality which uses illegal methods and prevents the law from applying to itself. Turning their eyes away from the primeval administration of Fascisti justice. yet hailing

its effects in their country's return to normalcy, the Italians are pursuing a course apparently incongruous, but in reality clear to observers of conditions in that mystifying and often chaotic country. "I had always believed that there are no necessary evils," said one such person to me, "but as an Italian I must now admit that the Fascismo is one."

The Fascisti have come to stay. Many people, and among them a quantity of well-informed Italians, had at first considered the movement a freak, or a passing political fad, arising from a sense of rebellion against the "Reds" who had been given a chance to run the country a couple of years ago, and who, while plainly showing that they could not do it, seemed bent on letting no one else do it. But at the end of two troubled years we see their leader, Benito Mussolini, at the head of an organization numbering not less than half a million volunteers, "minute men" all of them, spreading like wildfire from the northern cities away into the southern countryside, hitherto inaccessible to outside influences; making and unmaking Cabinets, forcing this and that international policy, righting wrongs by Robin Hood methods, dictating conditions of their co-operation with the King, and quietly discussing the most feasible way of marching upon Rome in case they are disturbed in their process of "supplying Italy with a Government."

For that is exactly what they are doing. Professor Reinach, the famous art critic, in discussing the form of the Gothic church, says that it needs the flying buttress because its main body is so weak owing to great height and numerous windows, that "it is like an animal, part of whose skeleton should be outside his body." So in the weird and muchhated animal called the Italian Government the teeth were missing; the Fascisti provided them—and neatly do they bite.

I discussed at the time, here1 and else where, the reasons which made the Italian "proletariat" so active and bitter a couple of years ago; and everybody remembers how the Italian Government, still sore from the blows received in

1 See "The Italian 'Lock-in,'" in the issue of November 10, 1920,

Paris by war-time partners, had to turn around and deal with one of the most delicate politico-economic problems, workmen's controllo and Socialistic occupation of the factories. The ultimate victory of what we shall call, for the sake of brevity, the "element of order" (the stereotyped phrase is "law and order," but the law had to be sacrificed to bring about order) was only achieved by the most amazing avoidance of force, the most portentous ignoring of facts and waiving of provocations known in the history of modern government. Contrary to the view of alarmists, the house of Savoy remained in the saddle; but it seemed sometimes as if the real power of King Victor Emmanuel III over Italy were to be as important as his power over Jerusalem, of which city he is also nominally the King. Had the "Reds" ruled in his stead, with a hand as wise and more firm, people differing in political views, but equally concerned with the good of the Italian 1ation, would have been willing to see them hold the reins of government. I think I would, for instance; and I know that that very democratic soldier Victor Emmanuel of Savoy certainly would. But they achieved nothing: partly because of the lack of governing experience in the masses, which makes yelling demagogues of most would-be reformers; partly because Italy is not so situated, geographically and industrially, that she can try economic revolutions all alone. The truth is that Italy remained without a de facto government from the end of 1920 to the end of 1921.

Then Benito Mussolini, the type of a politician so seldom found in America, a quiet, scholarly man transformed by circumstances into an organizer and a dauntless fighter, appeared on the scene. Was Italy tired of people who talked and did not act? He would act-and lose precious little time in explaining to people just how or why. Had the "Reds" lost themselves in lengthy arguments as to how and how much to organize? He would merely have one organizationthe military organization of the army in war time. Had the Italy of 1920 fought over the question of how much each man should be rewarded for working as little as possible or loafing on the job? Mussolini borrowed from Garibaldi the famous sentence, "I promise you hunger, struggles, and death," and assured his followers that they must go to meet the greatest dangers without any hope of pecuniary reward-in fact, leaving their jobs for a raid on a moment's notice as often as necessary, and having only the moral support of the Fascismo to persuade their employers of the inadvisability of discharging them for obeying Mussolini rather than themselves.

How many are the Fascisti? A conservative estimate places them at 500,000; but they are increasing all the time, having lately obtained a large contingent of recruits from Naples and its hinterland, a fact which makes the

Fascismo, born and developed in the north, a more nation-wide organization. Indeed, one of the problems of the Fascisti nowadays has become that of purging their ranks of undesirable elements of two kinds: the riffraff which wished to cover its longing for crime and blood with a political veil, and the members of formerly "Red" labor organizations which, having been converted overnight from their Socialistic creed, would like to be accepted in toto by Fascismo, while that youthful and impetuous partito di avanguardia can only use the pick of such ranks: the young, healthy, high-minded, resolute leaders. The Fascista must be a spiritual aristocrat.

Such are the people who paralyzed in a few hours the Italian general strike of last August-a strike which was intended to prevent 20,000,000 workers from keeping Italy going, and was to have affected stores, trains, factories, mails, telegraphs, hotels, street cars, telephones, schools, banks, newspapers, steamers, light and water supply, restaurants, street cleaning, electricity, abattoirs, lunatic asylums, carriages, milk deliveries, cemeteries, ambulances, hospitals; the most appalling cessation of civilized life.

I was at Gardone, on Lake Garda, ready for an interview with Gabriele d'Annunzio, when the strike was declared; declared, incidentally, in a way unworthy of real men-by having the General Federation of Labor appoint a secret Strike Committee, which gave the anonymous order to strike! I rushed toward Florence by the few means still available to be near my old parents when all services would stop and helpless people would be dependent on their healthy relatives. But a few hours later the Fascisti were in control. Black shirts were either running trains or riding by twos with every engineer to "protect him from being intimidated." They ran the trolleys; in short, they took complete charge of every public service. Stores would be forced open; either the owner wanted to be there to do business, or the store would stay open, anyway! At the Bologna station I saw little signs with these words: "Strikers! The Government forgives; we don't. Within a week not one of you will be left in Bologna. We mean it, and you know it." Of course this is arrogance of the purest type; and yet the people who have been chafing for years and years under an incompetent, smooth, bureaucratic, soulless legality made up of revenue stamps and lawyers' cavils, feel that these youths who challenge the universe are playing the rôle of Prometheus unbound; and they are as carried away as the audience at a melodrama when the young hero murders the technically guiltless villain. "They take human lives," I can hear you say. Well, yes. The great Italia has now forty million of these human lives, and through poverty of soil, inaneness of statesmen, late

start in the race for colonization, and greed of neighbors she was dangerously near losing her own life when the Fascisti came. They do take the lives of a few Italians (mostly renegade) in order to give real life to Italy herself. Perhaps this sounds shocking to AngloSaxons; but it is funny how more leniently you look at things ultimately right, yet themselves cruel, when you were born and brought up on the Continent of Europe. One has only to look at Americans traveling through Italy to notice the difference; they are invariably scared by the savage appearance of Fascisti; and, although rather vague concerning the aims of the movement, they seem to agree that it must be Socialistic or Anarchistic. One hates to draw the conclusion that Americans are so incorrigibly conservative that anything unconventional appears "Red." And so little has been known even in "best-informed" circles about the movemen that a leading New York daily wrote some time ago that one of the constantly recurring Trieste riots had been led by "a young Italian nationalist, Mr. Fascisti." Even to this day, after Fascismo has loomed large in two out of three news items from Italy, it is not infrequent to have people remark on the similarity of it with the Ku Klux Klan, from which it differs in every particular, especially in its attitude toward publicity, the Fascismo being an incorrigible advertiser of its members and its doings, while the wily Klan covers its traces in true cisatlantic style.

As I finish writing this article, I am told that the Facta Ministry (long on the fence, but planning to become antiFascista) has finally been brought down, and that Mussolini is to go to Rome to form a Ministry. Mussolini ought to avoid being lured into forming one, or at least into staying in one long after he has formed it. If that leading figure of modern Italian politics is wise, he ought to put a pro-Fascista politician in the saddle and watch him closely, but do nothing more. Fascismo would then go down into history as the only whip which has made the Italian maverick behave. It must avoid becoming a mere political party, no matter how strong, no matter how well represented in Parliament. Its enemies are drawing it nearer and nearer Montecitorio, knowing full well that, while it could easily achieve a triumph at first by becoming the leading political party, it would be its swan song-for the simple reason that its strength lies in its anti-demagogic methods and frankly undemocratic, unrepresentative organization. An army does not profit by having sol· diers' councils and officers elected from their ranks! Italy (and is Italy alone in this?) has been fed for one hundred and fifty years on beautiful words; and it is my humble opinion that she is increasingly willing to exchange all of her empty victories for a handful of real leaders.

N the torrential flood of American politics two main currents are con

generally described as professional, mechanical, and ruled by the accomplished and consummate selfishness of invisible forces. The other, while more genuine in spirit, is often amateurish in effort; it is more spontaneous; it is kindled by emotions of revolt; it sees mankind, not as masses to be exploited and profited by, but as individuals to be set freer to express themselves socially and economically. It strives to restate the better asp...tions of men generally,

and to mitigate some of the pressure that civilization imposes upon them.

It is not the province of the historian to moralize. It is his business to trace the changing currents of human thought and to produce accurate pictures of men in action. And so, in touching on the Progressives, I shall endeavor to give some indication of the mental processes that shaped their cause and to depict some of the dramatic scenes that carried their cause into action. Many of these scenes I was able to observe closely. In a sense, I may have figured more definitely than I realized at the time in

kindling their cause into smoke and flame.

On November 17, 1910, the New York Chamber of Commerce held its 142d annual banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The speakers were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts; Governor Horace White, of New York; Mayor William J. Gaynor, of New York City; and myself. The president of the Chamber, the late A. Bárton Hepburn, presided. My subject was "American Prestige," and I could not refrain from referring to the great extent to which American influence and prestige had been advanced by Roosevelt. There was instant and prolonged applause at the mention of Roosevelt's name, clearly showing that his political influence was not dead, contrary to the ideas of many. who thought so because the election of a few days before had shown sweeping Democratic gains and the defeat of Roosevelt's candidate for Governor, Henry L. Stimson. When the banquet was over, Senator Lodge said to me that if the political opponents of Roosevelt could have seen the enthusiasm with which his name was applauded they would realize that even in New York he was as much alive as ever.

AT WAR AGAINST "INVISIBLE POWERS" When I met Roosevelt in Cairo on his way back from Africa it was clear to me from his conversation that he did not propose accepting any nomination, although there was a demand that he re-enter public life as either Governor of New York or United States Senator.

Roosevelt was so loyal a Republican that his opponents constantly chided him for going along with the bosses and at the same time advocating reforms. He used to reply that he did and would continue to co-operate with the bosses so long as they went his way. His aim from the time he entered public life was to make the party always more responsive to its highest ideals; and from the beginning he worked against the "invisible powers" or boss rule. By word and deed all through his life he showed an independence and moral courage that careless observers might often have mistaken for headlong impetuosity. No one could know him without recognizing that he was broad-minded, liberal, and inherently progressive.

When he arrived home from abroad in June, 1910, he found the Republican party disrupted. The dissatisfaction and impatience of the liberals was distinctly evident. By 1912 Taft had allowed himself to become so thoroughly identified with the reactionaries that the large independent element had not only become unenthusiastic, but decidedly

In his

hostile to the Administration. Winona speech President Taft had ranked himself on the side of those leaders in the party who opposed real tariff reform. In his famous Norton letter he had even gone so far as to imply, if not expressly to admit, that Federal patronage had been used against the progressives in Congress.

The progressive element was therefore casting about for a candidate who represented the liberal wing of the party for nomination at the National Republican Convention at Chicago in June. Roosevelt's office at The Outlook was daily crowded with liberal leaders who had come to urge him to "throw his hat in the ring," to use one of his own picturesque expressions. This demand grew and spread until finally came an appeal from the Governors of Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

WHY ROOSEVELT WAS DEFEATED IN 1912

Roosevelt one day at the offices of The Outlook handed me the galley proof of a speech he was to make before the Constitutional Convention at Columbus, Ohio. He called it "The Charter of Democracy." I went into Dr. Abbott's office and carefully read the speech. In it Roosevelt advocated, among other reforms such as the short ballot and the initiative and referendum, the recall of judicial decisions. When I came to that subject, I confess I was shocked, and so expressed myself to one of the editors of The Outlook; as I remember it, it was Dr. Abbott himself. Compelled to keep another appointment, I left the office, saying that I should return later. Upon my return I met Roosevelt just as he was going out.

"I hear you don't like my speech," he said to me.

"I like your speech; I think it is fine; all but that portion of it which refers to the recall of judicial decisions," I answered. I started to give my reasons, but, seeing that he was pressed for time, I said: "I should like to discuss that

matter with you, provided your mind is open on the subject." To my great surprise, he said that he had thought the subject over very carefully, and frankly told me that he had come to a definite decision on it.

That was so unlike the Roosevelt I knew in the many discussions I had had with him, when invariably I found his mind responsive, that I was quite disappointed and somewhat taken aback. But I did not want him to feel that I had joined the ranks of the many who had parted political company with him because he had made it known that he would accept another nomination for President, and so, on reaching my office, I wrote him a letter, briefly explaining why I objected to his statements regarding the recall of judicial decisions. I assured him that on that account I did not part from him politically, for, after all, I agreed with him more than with any other candidate who might possibly be named.

The birth and development of the Progressive party is of course an element of National history that has often been detailed. Roosevelt's candidacy and defeat have been variously analyzed, but I believe now, as I believed in 1912, that but for this unfortunate statement regarding judicial decisions Roosevelt would have been re-elected President in 1912.

UNTIL BROKEN AND CAST ASIDE"

Shortly after the Columbus speech Roosevelt delivered, on March 20, 1912, at Carnegie Hall, New York, what was in many respects the most forceful and eloquent address I ever heard him make. He graphically described his dedication to his ideals of democracy:

Our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our purpose. The methods for achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected according as actual experience shows that they work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty purpose, and

we must strive for it in all earnestness and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing. In order to succeed, we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls.

The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt, he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.

If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us. To turn this Government into government by plutocracy or government by a mob would be to repeat on a larger scale the lamentable failures of the world that is dead. We stand against all tyranny, by the few or by the many. We stand for the rule of the many in the interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in the spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose, above all, in a spirit of kindly justice towards every man and every woman.

A month after the meeting of the National Convention of the Progressive party, popularly called the "Bull Moose Convention," which nominated Theodore Roosevelt for President and Hiram W. Johnson for Vice-President, the New York State Convention of the Progressive party met at Syracuse, in the Arena.

All during the first day and night, amid lively discussion as to the selection of candidates for Governor, committees urged me for permission to present my name as a candidate; but I steadfastly declined, since the Governorship, being so largely a political office, did not appeal to me. I was neither by training nor by temperament a politician, although I had taken active part in campaigns for many years, both local and