and, later, on Germany. Thus Mussolini achieved his first victory for the industrialists. Had that victory been a final and complete one, Fascism would not have developed after the war; it would not have been necessary.
When the war was over, it was time to count the gains of conquest. Victory had been purchased at a heavy price. The agrarians had been driven out of power, while the industrial bourgeoisie who had replaced them were now in turn faced with ruin. Heavy industry had been enormously expanded for war purposes. Vast capital expenditure had been incurred and the economic machine, if it was to continue to run on capitalist lines, had to earn profits on a basis of enormously inflated capital. While, on the one hand, the capitalists were relatively inexperienced and inefficient, the proletariat, on the other, were unwilling to co-operate in re-establishing a social system with which they had no sympathy. They had been driven into war; urged to work and to fight for social ideals which now seemed impossible of realisation. The cost of living was rapidly rising, and economic discontent added to the disillusionment with the results of the war. The nationalist aims had not been achieved: the Adriatic was not an Italian lake: the major members of the Allies were securing all the plums and Italy was left out. Then there were the familiar grounds of dissatisfaction among soldiers in regard to demobilisation, and later, pensions.
Such were the causes underlying the wave of revolutionary feeling in 1919. On the crest of this wave there rose the two antagonistic currents—the revolutionary Socialist movement and Fascism. The course of these movements will form the subject of the two succeeding chapters.
II.—THE ITALIAN LABOUR MOVEMENT
TНЕ Italian Labour Movement has long been remarkably "left" in its ideas and policy. There has always been a strong syndicalist strain in the theories both of the Italian Socialist Party (Partita SocialiSta Italiano) and of the General Confederation of Labour (Confederazione Generale del Lavoro) and this has gone far to counteract the influence of the reformist elements. Actually the reformists have controlled the C.G.L. since 1911, but Italian reformism would seem a very advanced sort of socialism to some members of the British Labour Party.
The close connection between the industrial and the political sides of the working-class movement in Italy is noteworthy. The control of the C.G.L. is entirely in the hands of Socialists, and the
