movement began to take shape, but in Italy it never went further than
the "field of phrases," whereas in Russian Socialistic circles it
became the prelude of Bolscevism. "Reformism," "revolutionarism,"
"centrism," this is a terminology of which even the echoes are now
spent--but in the great river of Fascism are currents which flowed
from Sorel, from Peguy, from Lagardelle and the "Mouvement
Socialiste," from Italian syndicalists which were legion between 1904
and 1914, and sounded a new note in Italian Socialist circles
(weakened then by the betrayal of Giolitti) through Olivetti's _Pagine
Libere_, Orano's _La Lupa_ and Enrico Leone's _Divenire Sociale_.

After the War, in 1919, Socialism was already dead as a doctrine: it
existed only as a grudge. In Italy especially, it had one only
possibility of action: reprisals against those who had wanted the War
and must now pay its penalty. The _Popolo d'Italia_ carried as
sub-title "daily of ex-service men and producers," and the word
producers was already then the expression of a turn of mind. Fascism
was not the nursling of a doctrine previously worked out at a desk; it
was born of the need for action and it was action. It was not a party,
in fact during the first two years, it was an anti-party and a
movement.

The name I gave the organisation fixed its character. Yet whoever
should read the now crumpled sheets with the minutes of the meeting at
which the Italian "Fasci di Combattimento" were constituted, would
fail to discover a doctrine, but would find a series of ideas, of
anticipations, of hints which, liberated from the inevitable
strangleholds of contingencies, were destined after some years to
develop into doctrinal conceptions. Through them Fascism became a
political doctrine to itself, different, by comparison, to all others