which reflects on the goodness of God,
I do not believe it. All Scripture
must be measured by the life and
teachings of Christ....

When I was pastor at David City and we were studying the conquest of Canaan, a girl asked me if it were right for the Hebrew soldiers to kill the women and children. I said, "No." Then another girl said, "Why did God tell them to do it, then?" I said, "God never told them to do it. The writer was mistaken." I have been asked many, many times why God hardened Pharaoh's heart ten times and then brought ten plagues upon innocent people which caused untold suffering. For twenty-five years I tried to fix it up, but always failed to satisfy the people or myself, until finally I had the courage to say, "God never did it. My God is good.".

I cannot believe that God killed 185,000 of the Assyrian army one night, that he told Joshua to hock the horses, that he told the Jews they could sell spoiled meat to the Gentiles but not to the Jews, that he commanded that if a boy did not obey his parents he was to be killed, that if a man gathered sticks on the Sabbath to make a fire he was to be stoned to death, and that if any one worshiped any other God he was to be killed. None of these things is like my Heavenly Father....

How did we get our Bible? First a religious folk produced a religious literature; second a religious folk selected the Bible from that literature. Now we have a religious folk that interprets the Bible. I must stand with Christ and his teachings and with my own personal experiences with God, and all Scripture must be measured by this standard. All the problems and questions in life which are constantly meeting us must be settled on the basis that God is good, and all other questions adjusted to that standard. I can only believe in a good God. I can love, admire, devote myself, worship, follow, obey only a good God.

J. D. M. BUCKNER,
Pastor M. E. Church, Aurora, Neb.

As a consequence of this article or letter he was called to account in a personal communication by the Rev. Homer C. Stuntz, his ecclesiastical superior as Resident Bishop in the Omaha Area. This communication also warned Mr. Buckner that his published letter was certain to increase the difficulty of his appointment to a parish in the coming Methodist Conference. Just before the Conference met Mr. Buckner reiterated his views in a farewell sermon to his church. At the conclusion of that sermon he spoke as follows:

Forty-two years ago when I stood face to face with God in settling the question of preaching, I promised God if he would let in the light I would walk in it; if he would reveal the truth, I would obey it. The thing I have always wanted to know was the will of God and I have been ready to do it at any cost. I have lived up to that pledge to this day. None of you

has ever asked me a question about
my faith that I did not answer.

In an informal meeting with the Bishop and his cabinet Mr. Buckner was told that if his letter and sermon had not been published, it would have been possible for him to receive an appointment, and that it would be easy for Mr. Buckner simply to retire voluntarily, as he could at his age. In reply Mr. Buckner made it clear that he believed the proper way was to permit the old school men and the new school men alike to have their say; and that he had no thought of withdrawing. Nevertheless, without a trial, and in spite of the protests of his own church, with no reason given, upon the recommendation of the Bishop and his cabinet the Conference voted to retire Mr. Buckner from the ministry.

In spite of the humiliation of experiencing removal from the active ministry, in spite of the greater burden of the hardship which the action of the conference had brought to his wife, Mr. Buckner expresses no personal resentment. In his pamphlet he sets the issue forth, not as a personal one, but as a question concerning the future not only of the Methodist Church but of the Church in all denominations. He presents his pamphlet as a defense of younger ministers against the intimidation of the action of the Bishop and the Conference, and defends the Methodist Church at large "against unwarranted assumptions from this particular incident."

In some cases in the past this issue between arbitrary authority and liberty in the Church has been characterized by the pugnacious and controversial spirit of the advocates of liberty; in this case the advocate of liberty has shown a spirit of charity and good will and an understanding of the point of view of his opponents which we hope all those who believe in the cause for which he has been sacrificed will imitate.

The issue which has been raised in Mr. Buckner's case is threefold. It is an issue of justice.

Even a criminal is allowed his day in court; Mr. Buckner was not allowed any public hearing, any chance to plead his case openly before the body that was to judge him.

It is an issue of liberty.

When a man enters such an order as that of the Jesuits, he surrenders his liberty of thought because the organization is avowedly autocratic. When, therefore, any church takes such action as that taken in Mr. Buckner's case the old issue is again raised as between those who conceive of the Church as a body ruled by divine right of the ecclesiastical authorities and those who con.

ceive of the Church as a body composed of the free sons of God.

It is an issue of the spirit of religion. And of all the phases of this issue this is the most fundamental. On the one hand stand those who conceive of religion as an arbitrary system devised by the Almighty, imposed upon men for their observance at the peril of their eternal welfare. On the other side are the men who conceive of religion as the response of men to the approach of God to them and their growth in the understanding of him and his dealings with them.

This threefold issue is one that has arisen again and again in the Church. It is the issue between those in all ages and in all churches who fear freedom and those who welcome it, between those who believe that faith needs some protective covering, and those who believe that faith, if it is really living, grows stronger by being left open to the nourishment of truth.

MUDDLING THROUGH

T

HE British have a habit, in which they take a kind of unconfessed pride, of somehow muddling through. Certainly the change of Government which has just taken place in Great Britain, and which is likely to be a historical event of the first importance, was and still is more or less muddling.

On another page a correspondent in London gives a vivid and entertaining picture of the somewhat haphazard way in which the thing was done-haphazard of course only in externals. The regular technique of change of government was followed. The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, resigned; and the new Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, was formally invited by the King to organize a Ministerial Cabinet. As we said in last week's Outlook, the new Cabinet distinctly represents the old-fashioned ruling class of Great Britain. As one runs down the list, the titles of marquis, viscount, duke, earl, knight, strike the attention. There is no avowed representative of labor in the Cabinet, and few commoners, although the Prime Minister himself is a commoner and is one of four of the thirty-seven Prime Ministers who have governed Engiand for two hundred years to rise to his commanding position without the background of a college or university education. Seventeen of the thirty-seven were graduates of Oxford, thirteen of Cambridge, one of the University of Edinburgh, and two completed their education at Eton College, while Disraeli and Lloyd George had sufficient training in the classics and in French to pass their bar exami

nation. In a striking sense, modern England has turned to men of letters to guide her destinies. She is now going to try the practical man of business. The change is worth watching.

In a great speech at Glasgow, Lloyd George in his happiest vein, while professing a personal friendship for Bonar Law, poked more or less fun at the list of the new Ministers. "Look at them!" he said; "there is not one of them in achievement, in experience, in talent, that their best friends would compare with those whom they have supplanted. Why was it done?"

Of course such a Cabinet, although dignified and highly respectable, is only a makeshift. After the general election, which takes place in November, and through which both Lloyd George and Bonar Law will appeal to the country, there will be a new realignment.

It is interesting to observe that the ranking member of the new Cabinet next to the Prime Minister, although holding by no means the most important office in the Ministry, is the Marquis of Salisbury, the eldest son of Lord Salisbury, the great Conservative Victorian Prime Minister. His title is an ancient one, and his seat is that famous Hatfield House, in Hertfordshire, which was the scene of so many dinners and conferences when his distinguished father was Prime Minister, who represented in his person and policies the highest type of Government by the peerage in Great Britain-a type which has probably passed away forever. This passing is a gain, perhaps, for the plain people, but a decided loss to the literature of political anecdote and reminiscence.

Of Lord Salisbury, the father, a delightful story is told in the recollections of one of his private secretaries. A dinner was being given by Lord Salisbury at Hatfield House, one of the great establishments of England, and one of the guests was a neighbor of Lord Salisbury's, a country squire whose pedigree was more impeccable than his education in the fine points of literary allusion. Next to this ruddy-faced squire sat a young whippersnapper of a diplomatic secretary, who in an argument in which he had teased and irritated the squire, finally called the old gentleman a "Philistine." "A Philistine!" exclaimed the old squire somewhat heatedly, "what's that?" Lord Salisbury, who had overheard the discussion with some concern, and felt that his old friend was being impolitely chaffed, and yet could not quite bring himself, as host, to rebuke the young secretary openly, saw his chance. He leaned forward and quietly remarked: "Don't you know what a Philistine is? A Philistine is a gentleman who is annoyed by the

jaw-bone of an ass." The young secretary naturally subsided. We hope that the new Lord President of the Council, the present Lord Salisbury, possesses his father's sense of humor. He may need it before he gets through with the complications of his new office.

The name of the Marquis of Salisbury's younger brother, Lord Robert Cecil, is familiar to Americans as the leading English advocate of the League of Nations. Lord Robert was in Lloyd George's Cabinet, but is not in the Bonar Law Ministry. The Marquis is the bearer of a title three hundred years old and is the owner of an estate of twenty thousand acres.

In his Glasgow speech Lloyd George referred to the resentment of British labor against a Government of Conservative peers as a possible "hurricane." This phraseology is perhaps an exaggeration due to the stress of a popular campaign, for Lloyd George is a pastmaster in appealing to the emotions of a popular audience. Nevertheless we think it somewhat surprising that so astute a politician as Bonar Law should have formed such a Cabinet with any idea that it could be permanent.

W

IN WETTEST
NEW YORK

ETTEST of all wet towns is New York City, the wet press tells us-wetter by far than in preVolstead days-and its wet, wet drink is whisky. The whisky trade, a mere infant industry before the Amendment, has attained colossal proportions, we learn, and it behooves the American business man to look into this, as it furnishes many a helpful suggestion. He will discover

1. The folly of advertising. Until prohibition came, not only the newspapers, magazines, and billboards of America, but its night-time sky, loudly advertised strong drink; yet how little was sold! Now that the advertising has ceased, do we not wade in strong drink-even swim?

2. The folly of window-dressing. Those pyramids of innumerable wellfilled bottles were supposed to attract purchasers. To-day our dealers in strong drink provide the true enticement: Out of sight, out of mind.

3. The folly of indiscriminate sales. When any one could buy, trade languished, quite naturally. Now that only a chosen few can buy, trade thrives.

4. The folly of price-cutting. How difficult it was in those dull pre-Volstead days to dispose of two cocktails for a quarter! Charge a dollar and a half

each, and behold! the problem is solved. 5. The folly of pampering one's customers. By making their places of business conveniently accessible (a hundred to the mile), and embellishing them with works of art, and providing extravagant free lunches, the purveyors of strong drink drove customers away. Under the present system, which makes the tippler travel long distances and furnishes disgusting places of business, as a rule, with melancholy and dire loneliness giving them an air of depression thrice depressed, it is a struggle to serve drinks fast enough.

Albeit slowly, the American business man will doubtless come to recognize that the trick of building up trade is in reality very simple-i.c., kill it! Just now, however, we hear him echo that cry of the wet, wet press: "Oh, save us from this awful whisky! On high moral grounds we demand beer and light wines, as of old, for in them lies our only hope of sobriety."

But reflect. To-day, when beer and light wines have vanished, and when every one is forced to consume unlimited quantities of whisky, there are fewer evidences of intoxication than formerly. That familiar sight of a poor wretch staggering along the street, or babbling on a doorstep, or being "pulled in;" that familiar sound of raucous singing in the small hours; that familiar odor of alcohol on the breath-where are they? With rare exceptions, gone foreverabolished by the universal and benign consumption of unlimited whisky!

Were it not for our devout confidence in the asseverations of the wet, wet press, we might almost mistake this whisky-ridden metropolis for the astonishingly dry town it actually is. Inasmuch as polls are at present so popular, we visited a neighboring establishment the other day and polled the representative New Yorkers who make up its staff. Of each representative New Yorker we inquired, "At how many places can you

you yourself, not you generically--obtain drinks?" The answers ranged from "None" to "Eight"-a single "Eight." "Eight" at most in the wettest of wet towns, where until the Amendment any representative New Yorker had his choice of thousands!

But let us not allow mere figures to deceive us or trust too blindly the testimony of our own senses, when a press guided by the well-known journalistic passion for truth declares: "Day by day, in every way, we are getting wetter and wetter." By accepting this assertion at face value we prepare ourselves for a task that awaits us all-the task, namely, of perusing in the right spirit Sir Conan Doyle's new volume, "The Coming of the Fairies."

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 recognized 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.

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.

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 morosé unit. In other words, the Coalition' dead. 126990 98d The scene shifted to Downing Street cheerless under the lash of a wind that betokened March rather than October. and under a sodden gray sky. Rolls12" Royce and Daimler limousines were parked at the cul-de-sac at the end of the short street; one knew that behind the drab walls of No. 10 Downing Street!! Cabinet Ministers must be resigning in f be resigning and history being made; yet the only

[G

ΟΙ

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 thatch St Eu!! hair, popped through the swinging doors leading to the interior of the building It belonged to Mr T, Shakespeare 1918 1919 G. another the Preffiers secretatio Te Youn Aiter to my room, TIP HO with th you in a minute, l'almonpe cheery, and withdrewswol galley st The Tom Was The 48 "Some twenty fllw guy there square, 'ana' Were Ht feast fifty ment in the atmosphere became stilling" the rang incessantly, making

Worked by a

"

spectators were the inevitable knot of evous because there was

journalists.

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

I

among

one to answer and still nothing hap pened bybis 29mm) 1991it nos Atrength thefe was petrecipe those fournalists nearest the door Mul Shakespeare entered,b bealmly puming long brier pipe and smiling. Heart fully balanced himself on His Heelson" the ledge surmounting the Hearth of open fires used to smilgningadtoy

Sowell, gentlemen Saidab "the Prime Minister was designed and has advised the King to send for Mr. Bonar Law od bed d . . . .DESSUTO

Nobody spoke. Somehow there sze nothing to say at the moinen"&INõukus obviously there were ! down question?/ to be asked for further information quo

And observed Shakespeare, cheël NOH)

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 iinerant 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 giorinezza-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, here' 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 1.ation, 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 ǹgure 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 soldiers' 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.