Appendix B

HpHE second point, on which I feel I X may have the appearance of labouring and yet missing the point, especially my own point, is the matter of Mussolini and Fascism. Yet it is a point on which I should especially like the English reader to understand my meaning, and above all my motive. I can assure him that I am very far from being what is usually understood as a British Fascist; for many very strong reasons, including the fact that I doubt, as Mussolini himself would doubt, whether Fascism is likely to be British. My motive in this matter is very simple to the point of violence; it is to point out, as emphatically as I can, that the whole political and financial world in which we live has been goading Fascism into revolt for the last fifty years. In this sense my remarks might rather be called a warning against Fascism, as a wise man in the early eighteenth century might have uttered a warning against the French Revolution. I do not care in comparison whether the Parliamentarians realise the Fascist’s very real virtues, so long as they begin to realise their own vices. What I

APPENDIX B complain of is that the theory of self-government has been accompanied with an appalling negation of self-criticism. The day may come when it will be said that every nation has the Dictator it deserves, and that Italy, relatively at least, has deserved very well. But some crisis and crash of this kind was bound to come somewhere, ever since the day when cynical politicians in Paris defeated the chivalry of Deroul&de. As I have been obliged to criticise some aspects of modern France, for which I have so huge an admiration, it may be well to record here that the first Fascist revolt was made in France; and that it was far more balanced, beautiful, and noble than the revolt which was afterwards forced in Italy. The purgation of republican or representative rule, while it was still much more promising, was very nearly achieved in Paris. But, as things have fallen out, it has been added to the Resurrections of Rome.