MUSSOLINI AND EARLY FASCISM 39
were so unfavourable that the tactics adopted by the fasci
for the elections varied widely in accordance with local
conditions and opposition. In Rorne a candidate was put
forward on the National Alliance list, which was composed
of nationalists and conservatives, while the republicans,
reformists, and the National Association of Ex-servicemen
formed a left-wing bloc. The fascists abstained at Verona
and Padua, were included in the national bloc at Ferrara
and Rovigo, and joined the ex-servicemen at Treviso.
Nearly everywhere else the ex-servicemen made their own
separate lists and excluded the fascists from them.
In Milan, after lengthy negotiations, the left-wing parties
(Republican Party, Socialist Union, Association of Ex-
servicemen) had broken with thefascio. The fascia refused
to make a common list with them ostensibly because of a
disagreement over the electoral programme, in which it
rejected the principle of the c legal recognition of working-
class organizations', because that would bring about their
c strangulation '. What was making Mussolini so fastidious
about a programme, when he had declared a hundred times
that programmes were of no importance, and a few weeks ago
had proposed an alliance with the conservatives in order to
defeat the socialists ? The fact was that the left-wing parties
had said that they would willingly form a joint list with the
fascists on condition that Mussolini did not stand. Mussolini
was hated and despised by all the workers, while the ex-
servicemen considered him a traitor and a renegade, whose
name would weaken their whole list. The groups which \
had formed the co-ordinating committee did not want to!
begin the fight with such a handicap, hence the veto on1
Mussolini. Consequently he broke off the negotiations and j
put forward his own list, which gained some five thousand j
votes out of about 270,000 Milanese voters.
This was a bitter blow for Mussolini, since it involved his
personal failure. He had hoped to break through the wall
of enmity that confronted him, and now he found himself
dangerously isolated. For the first few weeks his reactions
were those of a hunted animal. A short while ago he had
sent two parcels containing bombs, one to the prefect, the
other to the archbishop of Milan. Now, on November 17,