incredible to Mussolini that a country capable of fighting and winning
such a war as Italy had fought and won should be thrown into disorder
and held at the mercy of a handful of faithless politicians.

When Mussolini founded his Fasci in Milan in March, 1919, the movement
toward dissolution and negation that featured the post-war period in
Italy had virtually ceased. The Fasci made their appeal to Italians
who, in spite of the disappointments of the peace, continued to
believe in the war, and who, in order to validate the victory which
was the proof of the war's value, were bent on recovering for Italy
that control over her own destinies which could come only through a
restoration of discipline and a reorganization of social and political
forces. From the first, the Fascist Party was not one of believers but
of action. What it needed was not a platform of principles, but an
idea which would indicate a goal and a road by which the goal could be
reached.

The four years between 1919 and 1923 inclusive were characterized by
the development of the Fascist revolution through the action of "the
squads." The Fascist "squads" were really the force of a State not yet
born but on the way to being. In its first period, Fascist "squadrism"
transgressed the law of the old régime because it was determined to
suppress that régime as incompatible with the national State to which
Fascism was aspiring. The March on Rome was not the beginning, it was
the end of that phase of the revolution; because, with Mussolini's
advent to power, Fascism entered the sphere of legality. After October
28, 1922, Fascism was no longer at war with the State; it _was_ the
State, looking about for the organization which would realize Fascism
as a concept of State. Fascism already had control of all the
instruments necessary for the upbuilding of a new State. The Italy of