WHILE he was in Milan, Signor Mussolini lived at his home in the city, but he would come to the municipal buildings where the personnel of his Cabinet was housed, to hurry up business and receive news. That was where I saw him. When a civilian no doubt a policeman in plain clothes - opened the door for me I found myself in a large and well-lighted room, with a large table in the middle, surrounded by several chairs. Sitting behind this table a man was dictating a dispatch to Baron Russo, chief of the Cabinet. It was Signor Mussolini.

Without glancing up he finished the sentence he had begun, and then, turning toward me with a rather abrupt gesture which was more imperative than polished, he pointed to a chair opposite him and said, ‘Please sit down there'; and went on dictating his dispatch. It was the order for the meeting of the Ministers at Rome on Tuesday, the seventeenth, to discuss the attitude of the Partito Popolare after the speech of Don Sturzo at Turin.

I had plenty of time to watch Signor Mussolini. I had before me one of those Roman heads that seem made to be stamped on medals: a powerful head, the face smooth-shaven, an energetic profile made still more vigorous by a powerful lower jaw and a chin

that betokens strong will-power-the head of a tribune, the head of a condottiere, with the expression of stubborn boldness of a Colleoni. What especially impressed me were the black eyes, large, bright, magnetic, as if charged by some internal dynamo, sending out glances that have an animating effect on anyone who talks with him or hears him. There was something impressive about his forehead: broad, high, and bald above, it did not go up to a peak but made a kind of glacis, sloping a little, an incline down which ideas formed beneath the arch of the skull could slip toward the mouth in the form of orders one of those foreheads indicating that their owners do not conceal their ideas.

Signor Mussolini is young, and he looks young. He has not yet passed forty. Dressed in black, soberly but without negligence, with a black cravat and a collar with rounded wings, he wore two enameled insignia on the lapel of his coat.

This man, whose part in public life stirred in my imagination the whole decorative past of Italian courts and cities, with his simplicity vividly suggests modern democracy. He recalls the time of bloody rivalries, of various factional struggles in the Middle Ages. From the soil of Italy an aggressive race has always sprung, hard and piti

less in repressions and reprisals. It has divided itself into two camps, and above their furious struggles rise the men and leaders who, in order to dominate in cities or provinces, have troubled little about legitimacy. They made themselves by the strength of their souls or the strength of their arms: concilio et manu. Nature seems to have formed them for command.

Those condottieri had extraordinary power and ascendancy over their troops. Did not one of them continue to hold the command even after his death, while people waited for a successor? The word of command came out of a flag-draped tent in which the embalmed body of the famous chief was kept. Recall the history of the Sforza family, and especially that of Francesco Sforza, who succeeded in gaining the Duchy of Milan. Yes, the Italian soil has always excelled in producing hostile brothers. It is a restricted field admirably adapted to civil wars.

A young writer, inspired by the Fascisti, has sought to show that civil wars are the most disinterested and the noblest of all wars, for they are not directed toward conquest or annexation. In them the fighter struggles for ideas or for an ideal that he is determined to attain, cost what it may. We Frenchmen, too, know wars like that. We have them in our blood; but it is not true to say that they are fought in a disinterested way. Moral triumph, the act of imposing your own idea and your own will, is worth more than the greatest conquests and the most precious spoil.

'Well, monsieur, what interesting news have you for me?' It was Signor Mussolini who his work finished was addressing me.

'Ma foi, Excellence, I have come not to talk to you but to listen while you talk to me; but since you put the ques

tion to me, I will venture to ask whether the great array of military force that is now maintaining order does not indicate that you are making a display of your strength, in order not to be compelled to use it to put down a rising? Do you feel yourself master of the situation?'

"Too much so. I often find myself obliged to calm the enthusiasm of my supporters and to restrain them; but I go straight ahead in the road I have laid out. The people are following me. They are with me. You have seen the streets' and Signor Mussolini made a gesture with his two arms stretched out toward the windows which opened over the Via Manzoni. 'Look! Just this morning there was an interesting article in Avanti, called "The Crowd," which shows which way the wind is blowing. blowing. That is an admission that has a value of its own.'

What did this article say? I read it afterward. The Socialist newspaper declared at the outset that it would do no good to conceal or try to avoid the truth: "Thousands and thousands of men have acclaimed the King and his Prime Minister. Is this "human torrent" really Royalist or Fascist? Certainly not. But it is no longer hostile either to Royalty or to Fascism. For a while we had them on our side. Now they have abandoned us. We did not understand them, though we counted too much upon them. We gave them credit for a character that they did not have. We mistook for political maturity — we who were imwhat was nothing but egoism, exasperation, unsatisfied desires, and rancor bursting forth. We have fallen from power and they have left us. Now they have pinned their new hopes to the persons of our enemies. These others whom we did not understand and who were hatching their own eggs in our nest did under

mature

stand the people, and they have profited by it.'

This allusion to Mussolini, who was himself once a Socialist, is clear enough. Then the paper went on: 'Will these people attain their purpose? We do not believe it.' After reading Avanti I understood why Signor Mussolini attributes a certain amount of importance to this article, which he called to my attention through one of his assistants.

As for the street and the crowd, I told the Prime Minister that his directions and his measures for public order were a reaction to the Draconian code of the ancients, and I described a misadventure of my own. It was impossible for me to get through a cordon of police to go to La Scala, in spite of my paper. Signor Mussolini began to laugh.

"You had better tell that to he said; and just then Baron Russo, the leader of his Cabinet, came in. Signor Mussolini turned to him. 'Here 's another gentleman who could not get through,' he said; and then, speaking to me, he went on: 'You were not the only one. Some Italian deputies also could not get through the barrage.'

Then we turned to subjects of more general interest and significance. The affair at Milan is merely an incident. Signor Mussolini discussed his work and Fascism. I shall not reproduce his words exactly, and so I shall not put them into his mouth at all, for fear of misrepresenting his own way of expressing himself; but I shall give their sense exactly and faithfully, merely emphasizing and picking out words that are especially exact or picturesque.

Signor Mussolini says that the goal pursued and already partly attained is pacification and unification. The national parties have come to an end and have fused in Fascism. No longer are there shirts of various colors - there

are only Black Shirts. This work of unification appears, for example, in the judicial reform that was recently voted. Judicial Italy was split up by local and regional barriers. There was one court of cassation at Turin, another at Naples. Crispi tried to undertake judicial reform. The new party has been more successful. It believed that the place for the only court of cassation is at Rome, the 'foreordained capital' of Italy. It means to pursue its work of unification by bringing the command-posts of the machine of state to the same seat of govern

ment.

One does not understand Fascism properly until one has it oriented as regards the place and moment of its entrance into history. For a long time Italy had been no more than a conglomeration, a huddled heap of petty States. At that time there was no Italian people: that is to say, there was no people with a feeling of common nationality. That idea was born and grew during the Wars of Independence. The Italian people had still other steps to climb before becoming a nation, and before they could transform themselves from a mere nation into a State. It was the Great War that enabled them to take these steps. This brought about the unification of Italy. It brought this feeling both in politics and in law.

'Fascism is the result of this course of historic evolution; but it is nothing but a beginning. We have not yet had time to "systematize" our doctrine. We must go on with the fight.'

In the middle of its work the new party could not examine and adjust among themselves the doctrines and programmes of the other parties that had hitherto disputed for power. In order to bring about a mingling of them all and a compromise, it sought to avoid bargaining and political hig

gling. It did not wish to adopt the 'ideological swagger' of the old parties. It moved straight forward to realities. It thought then and it thinks more than ever to-day that Liberalism is the destruction of peoples. Its hesitations and compromises lead to half-measures, which bring about stagnation and death. The prime interest is to live. Italy wills to live. Italy must live. That is why she has thrown herself into the arms of the Fascisti. It was with regard to this that one of Signor Mussolini's lieutenants said: -

'Look what has happened in England. Liberalism badly understood has condemned her to paralysis - to marking time in one place. In Mr. Bonar Law we recognize not merely failure of the voice, but failure of ideas and failure of the will. Politically speaking, England is in a very bad way. And then,' added this Fascist enthusiast, 'don't let them keep harping on "liberty" and "violated liberty." Liberty is a luxury. It is all very well for a rich people who are at peace and have finished their course of development, who have got rid of the difficulties of material life and political care; but to-day, amid the struggles and confusion that have followed the war, when organization and daily bread are matters of life and death, what is liberty good for? Liberty to do what? Men would rather obey than command, anyhow. They would rather rely on the vigilance of their leader.'

I do not know whether Signor Mussolini thinks exactly as his lieutenant. What he does say is that, though his followers have not had time to work

out a doctrine, Fascism nevertheless has a doctrine. It has one, for example, where the State is concerned. It is not in favor of state monopoly, it is not in favor of state control.

As for the relations between France and Italy, Signor Mussolini declares that to-day they are getting better. Things have traveled a good way during the last two years, since the occurrences at Venice and Milan. There has been some good work, economically speaking. The recent agreements promise to bear fruit. Italy must continue along this road. Will it lead to a political understanding with France? Economic and political considerations may now serve as bases for the work of rapprochement. Naturally there is a degree of interference between the two orders. There are points where they clash and interfere with one another. These points of opposition must be adjusted and set right. Thus one comes to see what degree of political solidarity our two countries can attain.

But, above all, we must never forget that peoples are not linked together by racial ties, by resemblances, nor even by blood relationship. All this is material for couplets about sister nations and academic speechifying at the Sorbonne or at the Capitol. Racial resemblances mainly influence men of the same culture the chosen few. No, what brings peoples together and unites them is a solid network of common interests, common and tangible profits. These are the realities that bring themselves home to thousands of men the workers, who are the strength and the population of a country.

SINCE national unity was accomplished, the Rumanian Government has not succeeded in formally establishing itself. The World War surprised the kingdom at the moment when a constitutional assembly was being called together to modify certain provisions that were recognized by the several parties as out-of-date. It was when the external crisis was at its worst, in 1917, that the Parliament passed the great agricultural-reform law in the improvised capital at Jassy, a measure that previous Governments had put off indefinitely. Patched up at a moment when it was of primary importance to maintain the morale of an army composed largely of peasants, the law was ill-balanced and after the victory was applied in a somewhat arbitrary manner by ministries that were inconsistent even among themselves.

Various parties in the new provinces of Transylvania and Bessarabia did not mix well with the old Rumanian parties which had been seriously upset by the war. Two years ago, when the King gave orders to M. Take Jonescu to form a transition cabinet, which was to hold general elections and call a constitutional convention under normal conditions, the Chamber and the parties did not understand their duty. Instead of assisting the King and his Prime Minister in the accomplishment of a task which was at best extremely delicate and of vital importance to their country, the various parties gave

way to their political animosities and left M. Take Jonescu with nothing but a minority to support him, although he was the only man capable of directing the enterprise aright.

The results of these evil deeds are still heavily felt throughout Rumanian politics. Finding it impossible to form a coalition cabinet, King Ferdinand called to power M. Jean Bratiano, the chief of the Liberal Party, who, though he had a very small number of followers in Parliament, had controlled the strongest political machine in the kingdom before the war. M. Bratiano thought that he must carry the elections with a high hand, higher even than in the old days. He held it absolutely essential to secure a homogeneous majority capable of making sure that the Government went on running.

Unfortunately he failed to gain the support of the Transylvanians, who were on the side of M. Jonescu; and with them in opposition it is impossible to govern Rumania, for fear of placing the whole organization of the nation in danger. The Transylvanians retorted by refusing to participate in the crowning of the sovereigns at Alba Julia that summer a ceremony intended to mark the union of all Rumanian hearts.

The new Chamber, qualified as a Constitutional Assembly, had a clear Liberal majority, but from the very beginning its functions were questioned. After having stayed away for