NITTI, GIOLITTI, DON STURZO 59
his fall. In the atmosphere of 1919-20 his slogan : c Produce
more and consume less', offered no prospects to Italy and
her people. In a world becoming increasingly impoverished,
with new needs created in war-time and liberated by peace,
such a formula had no psychological meaning and would
soon have no economic meaning either.
Moreover, Nitti could not get the necessary political
support for his administration. In common with Giolitti
he would have liked to persuade the socialists to form a
government with him. The bitter struggle between these
two statesmen was partly over the question as to which was
to succeed first in taming the monster. The socialists,
many of whom remained faithful to their old liaison with
Giolitti, disliked Nitti for his internal policy. He had
reorganized the police force, almost non-existent at the
beginning of 1919, and created the * Royal Guard', which
was to play a very active part in the suppression of popular
demonstrations, however peaceful. (Between October 1919
and May 1920 several hundred working men and peasants
were killed and wounded in all parts of Italy. Socialists
and fascists alike abused the police.) But the socialists
shunned the responsibility of power, and the only way of
doing without them was to put their 1917 programme into
practice with the aid of other supporters.
Nitti was not the man for such a task. This is clear from
an examination of his agrarian policy. In 1917, when he
was Minister of Finance, he had founded the National
Ex-servicemen's Plan, and he now allotted it a large grant
for the purchase of land, to be handed over to members
who were farmers. This idea, though generous in its
original conception, was now totally inadequate to satisfy
the land hunger that possessed every peasant in the country.
Nitti's hand was forced by ever-increasing seizures of land,
and he brought in two successive measures which aimed
rather at stopping the seizures than at carrying out genuine
reform.1 The first gave prefects power * to allow in certain
conditions the occupation of uncultivated land, where
agricultural production needs stimulating ; and to put an
end to violent and arbitrary occupation by the people '.
1 Decrees Visocchi of s.Ix.rgig, and Falcioni of 22.iv.i92O.