THE   CAPORETTO   OF   SOCIALISM	189
brilliantly. Report for the day : 57 minutes spent in Asti,
10 buildings wrecked. Chambers of Labour, clubs, co-opera-
tives, private houses ; twenty broken heads. Garters5
whips were here used for the first time as weapons of war.5
In July Passerone became even more active. On July 18
he marched with his battalion to Novaro, where he took
part in the attack on the Chamber of Labour and on
socialist and communist clubs. From there he pushed on to
Arona and Meina on lake Maggiore, returning afterwards to
Trecate, where the fascists installed one of their number as
mayor, and destroyed the Chamber of Labour e by hitching
lorries to the pillars supporting the arcades, and blowing up
the rest9. From Trecate, with 150 fascists from Casale,
he drove by lorry to Magenta on the road to Milan. To
keep their hands in they pillaged and wrecked, on the
evening of July 23, the co-operative, the recreation club, the
offices of the railwaymen's club and the People's House.
As a result of their doings in Novara, Trecate, Magenta, a
warrant was issued for the arrest of the e consul' Giovanni
Passerone and his friend Natale Cerutti. c They were forced
to leave Casale to avoid arrest. But they continued to
take part in various expeditions to Turin, Ivrea, Biella, and
Santhia, keeping in touch all the time with the Montferrato
blackshirts. Cerutti went to Sampierdarena (Genoa) to
organize fascist action there, and at the time of the August
general strike he summoned the Casale squads to Liguria and
directed their operations/
Life was very different for the socialist organizers exiled
from their own districts. They generally began by hiding
in the provincial capital, since it was easier to hide in a town,
and persecution was more difficult. But later on the town,
too, wasc occupied' by the fascists, and they had to go further.
Gradually the number of possible hiding-places diminished.
Life was still possible in Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa.
Life ? Most of these exiles had no means of existence. The
first-comers sometimes found work to start with in the
workers' co-operative societies; some were helped by
their families, or by friends from their own district, who
subscribed amongst themselves to send them a little money.
Little collections were made everywhere, and the workers,