222 THE BRITISH APPROACH TO POLITICS

Government, hampered by a multiplicity of parties, could not
act with speed and decision; when, as a remedy, special powers
were invoked, the Executive dwarfed the rest of the Constitution
and made the democratic rights of the people meaningless.
Everywhere, the War had j&miliarised the use of violence. Out
of the confusion the Fascists emerged victorious; they perceived,
before others, that victory would go to those most prepared to
use force; their propaganda won support by heaping everyone's
discontents together and Warning them on "the system"—a
vague term, generally denoting the Parliamentary method of
Government, and, in Germany, associated with the Jews. The
Fascists also received financial help from the wealthy, who
judged them to be a bulwark against Socialism.

Thus the world learnt, not that democracy was unworkable-^-
for it weathered the storm in Western Europe and Czecho-
slovakia—but that it could not be secured ^simply by laying
down a democratic Constitution in law. The principle that the
Government alone may use force, and then only to preserve the
law, must be respected; the system of parties must permit the
rise, when great problems threaten, of a Government able to act
decisively; control by the people must mean choice and criticism
of the Government, not preventing it from doing its work. It is
when these conditions are not fulfilled that the cry for order
becomes irresistible and the claims of liberty are forgotten. The
chief count on which Fascists indict democracy is that freedom
means obstruction, delay and chaos. That this is not true of
democracy as a whole is proved by its persistence both in Britain
and elsewhere; but the charge is true enough where the forms
of democracy are introduced without consideration of the
conditions of its survival.

POLICY OF FASCISM.

Fascism had shown that it could seize power; the next task
was to form its policy and try to solve the problems which had
baffled democratic Governments. The first idea in Fascism is