358	THE   RISE   OF   ITALIAN   FASCISM
remembered that the human mind, as well as the mass
mind, is a stream which needs replenishing. If you block
the spring, however muddy it may be, another must be
provided : one idea can only be replaced by a greater,
one passion by a stronger. The masses forget easily ; their
judgments are based not on the c contradictions' of the past,
but on the consolations of the present and the hopes for
the future which are held out to them. But it is the greatest
paradox of political life that any war of principles is also,
and particularly at critical moments, a war of positions.
For no battle is fought without a battle ground, without
positions from which to start the attack, put up defences,
dig oneself in and hold on in face of the enemy assault.
These strategic reasons are obvious, but there are others
which go deeper. It is wrong to suppose that an idea goes
on living after the men and institutions in which it was
embodied have disappeared. In certain conditions it may
be resurrected, but there is no certainty that such conditions
will return. The fascist experiment proves that an idea is
jeopardised when its background is destroyed. c Ideas
cannot be killed ' is a sublime and dangerous commonplace,
which ignores the fact that an idea needs material support
if it is to last. An idea is a generation, or a succession of
generations. If the generation disappears and the succession
is cut, the idea is submerged and the inheritance lost. When
the fascists kill, banish or imprison their enemies, burn their
houses and destroy their institutions, they know what they
are about and do not strike in vain ; especially when they
borrow some of the principles of socialism ; ideas are
menaced as much by falsification as by the destruction of
their protagonists. The use of socialist terminology by the
fascists is a caricature of socialism, its negation ; this
hostly survival is more baneful than death itself.
To make headway and to win, socialism—with the con-
ception of life it champions—must take stock of the incon-
sistencies it meets with in all its forms of action. These are
not mere obstacles standing in its path, but lie at the very
roots of the problems it hopes to solve.