48 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
but quite irresponsible . . . to them war lias become a
necessity of life, fighting a moral practice. To put an
end to this enterprise is to put an end to their delightful
rebel existence, a little comic perhaps, but still a rebel
existence, a life of songs, processions, meetings, military
celebrations at once gay and warlike.
f This atmosphere of generous and hot-headed youthful-
ness has certainly affected d'Annunzio, and turned his
head. Hailed by all as a conqueror, to himself he seems
a victim. Fiume is victorious, not he. His dream was
greater : too great. Coming to Fiume to save the city
he has involved himself little by little in dictatorship,
not through personal ambition, but for the good he hoped
to do. His vision stretches ever further afield—beyond
the bounds of the Adriatic, lie dreams of noble crusades
wherever the spirit of rebellion dwells.'
Such was the situation until the fall of the Nitti cabinet in
May 1920.
Let us in the meantime consider the views of the various
parties. The nationalists fanned the flames, for the Fiume
affair might at any moment provoke a war with Jugo-
slavia, and they hoped by this means to strengthen Italy's
territorial claims in the Adriatic. The freemasons did the
same, from patriotic and revolutionary (in the 1848 manner)
motives., and because they reflected the mental confusion
of the average lower middle-class Italian. The Palazzo
Giustiniani Lodge urged the government to provision Fiume
by means of the Red Cross, an organization in which masonic
influence was very great, and whose president, Ciraolo, a
deputy, was himself a mason. The freemasons of Piazza del
Gesii sent to d'Annunzio at Fiume an award of thirty-three
grades of their own order,1
Mussolini carried on a campaign for Fiume, not only
because it involved a perfcrvid nationalism which favoured
1 After 1908 there were in Italy two kinds of freemasons, corresponding to
the Grand Oxient and the Grande Loge de France. Both were subsequently
dissolved by the fascist government. Domizio Torrigiani* Grand Master of
the Palazzo Giustinian^branch, was deported. Raoul Falerrni, * Commander *
of the * ancient Scottish and traditional rite * and an accomplished «nd
unscrupulous adventurer, whose name became familiar in France at the time
of the Gaillaux affair, became an associate of Mussolini.