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his revolver, and a little more than two weeks later he shot theAustrian Archduke in Sarajevo. In a month World War I had begun.It was not a peaceful and prosperous Italy upon which the GreatWar descended. It was an Italy with all the ingredients of fascismin her system. It now becomes necessary for us, out of what wehave seen, to isolate these essential elements of fascism. The worditself with its future evangelist, Mussolini, appeared at this time.Italy did not enter the war for eleven months. Meantime a battlewas waged among the friends of the Allies and the Central Powersand the neutralists for possession of Italian policy. Mussolini, editorof the socialist Avmti y quit that post and established his ownjournal, Popalo d'ltalia. He became the most vocal and violentadvocate of intervention on the Allied side. Mussolini was in fact asyndicalist, and, like many syndicalists, saw in the war an opportunityfor revolution. He organized in January 1915 what he calledthe Fasci di azione Kevolutionaria. It was made up, in his own words,of "men of heresy, ready for anything from the trenches to thebarricades." In all of them he said "there is the hate of the statusquo, the scorn of the Philistines, the love of adventure, and thezest for peril. Today it is war. It will be revolution tomorrow."IX · The Rise of FascismHOW Italy wriggled herself into World War I and what happenedon her battlefields is not germane to this discussion. It is merelynecessary to chronicle that she did go in and emerged victorious.But, the war over, she soon found herself infinitely worse ofif thanbefore she entered it. She had lost 600,000 dead, a million wounded.For this she expected much and got little or nothing. Slowly herpeople awoke to the sobering realization that all the old problemsthat vexed the nation before the war were still there, only manytimes multiplied in extent and intensity—poverty, unemployment,debt, the bitter clash of the economic armies, the frustration andhelplessness of her leaders.40