Ill
MUSSOLINI AND FASCISM OF THE 'FIRST
HOUR31
WITH the armistice Mussolini felt that the day of
reckoning had arrived for the whole world, himself
included. The dictatorship of the Fronte Internoy
which had protected him during the war, was over,, and
nothing stood between him and the growing indignation of
the masses. After the demobilization he was forced to play a
lone hand, on which his life depended. He had no theoretical
or sentimental considerations to hamper him, and was
known to have neither scruples nor convictions. He read
in order to acquire, not ideas, but the political strategy of
which he was in need. The process of thought inspired him
with a kind of suspicious embarrassment which made
him seize upon anything that justified illogicality and
incoherence. He appropriated, often at third hand but
with an unerring instinct, Nietzsche's c will to power \
Stirner's * unique \ Bergsonian intuition, SorePs fi myths *,
pragmatism and, his latest discovery, Einstein's theory of
relativity. His only use for ideas was to enable him to
dispense with ideas. He was accused of a betrayal of
principle ? The whole object of his researches was to collect
everything which detracted, or appeared to detract from the
reality or binding nature of principles, arid if principles
were meaningless so was their betrayal. Only action
counted, and on the plane of action betrayal did not exist,
only victory or defeat. Mussolini knew very well that he
could not even carry on the daily struggle without some
general ideas, and he picked them up wherever he could to
suit each emergency. He became a cheap-jack philosopher.,
raking up ancient platitudes which he would bring out with
14 Fascismo della priina ora.*
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