that the purgation of
our plutocratic politics should have been achieved by Radicals and
Republicans. It was they who did not prefer it." It was not that
Fascism was not open to attack but "that Liberalism has unfortunately
lost the right to attack it."

Those of us who were in Italy at that time will remember the truth of
his description of the vitality and happiness that seemed to glow
among the people. _Giovinezza, bellezza_, heard everywhere, had then
no hollow sound at the heart of it. Italy was radiant with hope.

In Mussolini himself Gilbert saluted a belief in "the civic necessity
of Virtue," in the "ideal that public life should be public," in
human dignity, in respect for women as mothers, in piety and the
honour due to the dead. Yet, summing up the man and the movement, he
saw it as primarily the sort of riot that is provoked by the evils of
an evil government, only "in the Italy of the twentieth century the
rioters have become the rulers." For although Mussolini had in many
ways made his rule popular, although in his concessions to modern
ideas and inventions he was "rather breathlessly progressive," yet in
the true sense of the word Mussolini was a Reactionary. A Reactionary
is one who merely reacts against something, or permits "that
something to make [him] do something against it. . . . A Reactionary
is one in whom weariness itself has become a form of energy. Even
when he is right there is always a danger that what was really good
in the previous society may be destroyed by what is good in the new
one."

Mussolini's reaction was against the Liberalism in which as an idea
Chesterton still believed, it was a reaction from democracy to
authority. And his weakness, the fundamental weakness of Fascism was
that "it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly
giving the authority for the appetite. . . . When I try to put the
case for it in philosophical terms, there is some doubt about the
ultimates of the philosophy." It seemed to Chesterton that there were
only two possible fixed and orderly constitutions, hereditary
Monarchy or Majority Rule. The demand of the Fascists to hold power
as an intelligent and active minority was in fact to invite other
intelligent and active minorities to dispute that rule; and then only
by tyranny could anarchy be prevented.

"Fascism," he said in summary, "has brought back order into the
State; but this will not be lasting unless it has brought back order
i