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premiers save in war. But in time the fascist began to invent aphilosophical defense of his policy. What the old prewar ministrieshad done apologetically the fascists now did with a pretension ofsound economic support. "We were able to give a new turn to financialpolicy," says an Italian pamphlet, "which aimed at improvingthe public services and at the same time securing a more effectiveaction on the part of the state in promoting and facilitating nationalprogress." 8 It was the same old device plus a blast of pretentiouseconomic drivel to improve its odor. Thus we may now say thatfascism is a system of social organization which recognizes and proposesto protect the capitalist system and uses the device of publicspending and debt as a means of creating national income to increaseemployment.3. The third point to be noticed has to do with industry. Fordecades, as we have pointed out, men of all sorts believed that theeconomic system ought to be controlled. Mussolini accepted completelythe principle that the capitalist economic system ought to bemanaged—planned and directed—under the supervision of the state.By this he did not mean that kind of state interference we employedin America before 1933—that is, regulatory commissions to preventbusiness from doing certain unlawful things such as combining torestrain trade. What he had in mind was what so many in Italy hadin mind, that some force should be brought into being to directand manage the movement and operation of economic law—controllingsuch great glandular energies as production, distribution, labor,credit, etc.In doing this Mussolini was again complying with a general thoughvague desire of the people. And in doing it he had in mind two generallyfavored objectives. First, there was a growing weariness of theeternal struggle between employers and employees. Second, peoplewanted in some general way the functions of production and distributionmanaged in the interest of better times.Nothing that Mussolini did fell in with his own ideas more thanthis. He was a syndicalist. And, as we have pointed out, it was thecentral principles of syndicalism that were making their way un-*Tbe Italian Budget before and after the War—pamphlet issued by Proweditorato GeneraleDelia Stato, Rome, 192;.