I

ITALY'S INTERVENTION IN THE WAR AND HER
INTERNAL CRISIS
WHEN Serbia received the Austrian ultimatum
Italy was in a state of political and social crisis.
Some months earlier in March the Chamber had
debated the balance sheet of the Libyan campaign, as
finally drawn up. The socialists thus had their chance of
taking some sort of revenge, and of condemning the war,
which had embittered the party and class struggle and
endangered the moderate policy followed since 1900 by
Giovanni Giolitti. To escape his budgetary difficulties and
a threatened railway strike Giolitti resigned on March 10,
1914, nominally on the score of a hostile resolution put
through by the radicals, thus avoiding a debate, although
he had a strong majority in the Chamber, He assumed that
he was certain, as always, to return to power after a short
interregnum, once the storm was over. But this time his
calculations were to be defeated.
The trend to the left was becoming more and more
marked at Socialist Party meetings; between the meetings
at Reggio Emilia in 1912 and at Ancona in 1914 the free-
masons and a group of reformists were expelled from the
party. On the eve of the war Mussolini had been a member
of the party executive for two years and editor of its paper,
Avanti) for one and a half. He was distrusted by veteran
socialists, adored by the young. The swing to the left
favoured his purpose, which was to forge the party into an
instrument for his own use, ridding himself of the old
guard, who were too full of scruples and were paralysed
by routine. The cred week' at Ancona1 in June 1914
1 Following a fight in which the state forces had fired on demonstrators,
serious noting broke out in Ancona in June 1914 ; from this town, where for
several days the anarchists had the upper hand, the revolt spread to the
provinces of Ravenna and Forli, and lasted for a week.