lp4guld

more impressed by the disturbing fact that no nation or race exhibitsany immunity to it.The man who was to turn Italy's eyes in this direction was one ofthose who had been most ardent in the championship of the oldMazzinian ideals of national freedom. There is perhaps nothing afree people has to fear more than the labels public men pin on themselvesand with which they wriggle into power. Beneath the skin ofmany a well-advertised liberal lurk the blue corpuscles of a hardenedtory. The tragic evil of these misbranded liberals is that theyare able to put into effect reactionary measures that conservativeslonged for but dared not attempt. When the conservative statesmanseeks to adopt some atavistic policy, liberal groups can becounted on to resist the attempt. But when a liberal premier, marchingunder the banner of liberalism, attempts this there is no oppositionor only a feeble one. He paralyzes the natural resistance tosuch measures by putting a liberal label on them and by silencingor dividing his followers who constitute the natural opposition tohis misbranded product. No end of print has been devoted to thestory of how the reactionaries imposed fascism on the Italian people.The march of fascism would not have been possible had it notbeen for the leadership it got from men who were known as liberalsor radicals. Fascism was a leftist job.Francesco Crispi, the father of Italian imperialism, was not onlya devoted follower of Mazzini, the republican patriot; he was oneof Mazzini's favorite lieutenants. He wanted to see the new Italy arepublic. He began life as a conspirator in Sicily, as an admirer ofthe old Jacobins who had cut off the head of Louis XVI. He wasnot only a republican but a pacifist who called war the greatest ofcrimes. It must not be assumed, however, that Crispi was a fraud.He was a man of dignity and ability and of strong character. Buthe was not a true liberal. This is one of the baffling paradoxes ofpolitical leadership—this foggy perception even of honest and intelligentmen of their own fundamental philosophies. Like many ofthe stanchest defenders of the status quo in America who beganlife in the socialist societies of their colleges only to graduate as theapologists of the most deeply rooted evils of reaction, FrancescoCrispi was, at bottom, always a conservative. Young minds are fre-*5