COUNTER-REVOLUTION 85
for from now on Italian public opinion hesitated and
dropped all active opposition to the Treaty of Rapallo.
Giolitti's money had been put to a good use. But money was
not the chief part of the bargain. For Mussolini the new
arrangement presented other personal advantages. He was
free of the agreement he had made in the summer with
d'Annunzio for some vaguely defined form of action to be
made under the latter's direction. In addition, he thought
Giolitti could form a government consisting of liberals,
Popolari, fascists, and perhaps right-wing socialists, with
himself a member of the cabinet. Besides, Giolitti and his
war minister, Bonomi, were very well disposed towards the
fascists, whom they hoped to use against the socialists.
Mussolini, therefore, postponed for the time being any idea
of a c march on Rome J. He would reach Rome in any
case by way of a parliamentary alliance which only Giolitti
could bring about. Protected on the left by the socialists
who were hostile to d'Annunzio, and on the right by
Mussolini, Giolitti could now attempt his great coup.
The same day that the workers in the peninsula occupied
the factories d'Annunzio published at Fiume the £ Constitu-
tion ' of the ' Italian Regency of the Quarnero '. It was a
mixture of medieval guild and modern syndicalism, personal
government and vague sovietism, which alienated the
sympathy of the nationalists, who were reactionaries first
and patriots afterwards. In particular. Article 9 of this
constitution said :
6 The state does not recognize property as an absolute
domination of individual over matter, but looks upon it
as the most useful of social functions. No property can
be reserved by any person as if it were part of him ; it is
inadmissible for a lazy proprietor to leave his property
unused or badly used, to the exclusion of others. Labour
is the only title to power in any means of production or
exchange. Labour alone is master of the goods it has
rendered fruitful in their highest degree and most profitable
to the general economy.5
It was all rather hazy, and Mussolini has written more
subversive prose. But d'Annunzio was a poet, and poets are