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more impressed by the disturbing fact that no nation or race exhibits
any immunity to it.
The man who was to turn Italy's eyes in this direction was one of
those who had been most ardent in the championship of the old
Mazzinian ideals of national freedom. There is perhaps nothing a
free people has to fear more than the labels public men pin on themselves
and with which they wriggle into power. Beneath the skin of
many a well-advertised liberal lurk the blue corpuscles of a hardened
tory. The tragic evil of these misbranded liberals is that they
are able to put into effect reactionary measures that conservatives
longed for but dared not attempt. When the conservative statesman
seeks to adopt some atavistic policy, liberal groups can be
counted on to resist the attempt. But when a liberal premier, marching
under the banner of liberalism, attempts this there is no opposition
or only a feeble one. He paralyzes the natural resistance to
such measures by putting a liberal label on them and by silencing
or dividing his followers who constitute the natural opposition to
his misbranded product. No end of print has been devoted to the
story of how the reactionaries imposed fascism on the Italian people.
The march of fascism would not have been possible had it not
been for the leadership it got from men who were known as liberals
or radicals. Fascism was a leftist job.
Francesco Crispi, the father of Italian imperialism, was not only
a devoted follower of Mazzini, the republican patriot; he was one
of Mazzini's favorite lieutenants. He wanted to see the new Italy a
republic. He began life as a conspirator in Sicily, as an admirer of
the old Jacobins who had cut off the head of Louis XVI. He was
not only a republican but a pacifist who called war the greatest of
crimes. It must not be assumed, however, that Crispi was a fraud.
He was a man of dignity and ability and of strong character. But
he was not a true liberal. This is one of the baffling paradoxes of
political leadership—this foggy perception even of honest and intelligent
men of their own fundamental philosophies. Like many of
the stanchest defenders of the status quo in America who began
life in the socialist societies of their colleges only to graduate as the
apologists of the most deeply rooted evils of reaction, Francesco
Crispi was, at bottom, always a conservative. Young minds are fre-
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