156 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
a resolution against any form of participation in the govern-
ment. Thus within two days the party made two decisions
which cancelled each other out, and, which was more
serious, without noticing the contradiction. Now that the
pact was signed, what did it mean ? Was it a provisional
truce between two armies in the field ? But from the
military viewpoint there was only one army in the field, that
of the fascist squads. The arditi del popolo movement had
scarcely begun, and anyway by Article 5 of the pact the
Socialist Party had expressly disavowed this organization.
It was obvious that the agreement could only work on a
basis which went beyond the ordinary doctrines of the two
adversaries, namely, a certain consciousness of the country's
interests endangered by the civil war, the recognition of a
certain positive and intrinsic value in democratic liberty,
which the working class had every inducement to protect.
The fascist rank and file protested everywhere, com-
plaining in company with their backers, the big landowners
and industrialists, c legality is killing us '. In the actual
conditions then prevailing the liberties won by the working
classes could only be protected if the state remained neutral,
interfering in certain districts to restore the essential com-
ponents of the life of the community 'where fascism had
destroyed them. The state was powerless without the
country behind it; it could only bring the fascists to
reason if the workers themselves submitted to the general
interest whose rule the unruly swarms ofsquadristi had to be
compelled to obey.
But the Socialist Party was carrying on discussions with
Moscow and with the Third International, to which, as
decided in its last congress, it still belonged. In Moscow
people only had a vague idea of what was going on in Italy,
and anyway, after the failure of the Warsaw campaign and
the removal of any immediate prospect of world revolution,
Italy was no longer in Russian eyes anything but a rather
unimportant pawn. The socialists made a point of keeping
up the official connection with Moscow, which- gave them
some defence against the desperate rivalry of the communists.
But this delivered the party into the hands of the com-
munists. They bandied formulae with each other, which,