10 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
hope. The war had so turned and sifted the soil of existence,
created such landslides and outcrops that it was felt that at
the end of this geological epoch the sun would rise on a new
world. Had not Lloyd George himself announced : c The
post-war world is to be a new world. . . . After the war
the workers must be inexorable in their demands.' Even the
pronouncements of the government invested the war with
the mystic meaning of a revolution which had just begun.
c This war', proclaimed Orlando, the President of the
Council, on November 20, 1918, * is also the greatest politico-
social revolution recorded by history, surpassing even the
French revolution/ Salandra, on the same day, spoke even
more forcibly. ' Yes, the war is a revolution ; a great, a very
great revolution. It is the hour of youth. Let no one think
that a peaceful return to the past will be possible after this
storm.'
During the war the most revolutionary catchwords had
been allowed, without scruple, to circulate. To one who
was concerned as to the consequences of such propaganda,
a fanatical advocate of intervention gave the following
reply : 4 It does not matter if, in order to beat the Aus-
trians, the proletarian troops need to call the bourgeoisie
dirty traitors, so long as they fight.' This same propagandist
came to realize that ' this bourrage de cranes was not entirely
inoffensive'.
Mussolini himself had kept throughout the war on the
front page of his newspaper Blanqui's maxim^ fi he who has
steel has bread', and Napoleon's, * revolution is an idea
tKat lias "found bayonets', After the armistice he set his
sails to catch the rising wind :
c The war has brought the proletarian masses to the
fore. It has broken their chains and fired their courage*
The people's war ends with the triumph of the people.
. . . If the revolution of'89, which was both a revolution
and a war, opened up the world to the bourgeoisie after
its long and secular novitiate, the present revolution,
which is also a war, seems to open up the future to the
masses after their hard novitiate of blood and death in
the trenches.'