252 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
without having recourse to foreign loans, and had in four
years paid off some 79,000,000,000 of war costs.
The campaign that Mussolini and his party launched in
September had rather different aims ; more precisely their
intention was to gain the confidence and the support of
Italian financial circles, by proving how completely fascism
had abandoned its 'demagogic3 programme of 1919-20,
and that it had decided to attack the workers on financial,
as it already had on syndical and political ground. The
Corriere delta Sera, the greatc liberal5 paper of Milan, gloated
over the Corglni-Rocca programme, which it regarded as a
triumphant return to the pure tradition of the Manchester
school. . . . Thus on September 6 this paper was c delighted
that a party, whatever it may call itself, is returning to the
old liberal tradition, drinking the pure life-springs of a
modern state, and it hopes that this party will not falter, but
will strive earnestly to achieve the liberal programme pure
and unadulterated '. The editor, Senator Albertini, had
applauded the fascist occupation of the Palazzo Marino,
and a month earlier, on the presentation to the Senate of
the new Facta ministry, had spoken against socialist col-
laboration, * in view of the danger it involves in the present
financial position of the state '. Whenever the Corriere della
Sera mentioned a punitive expedition it gave the fascist
version, as if the lorry loads of blackshirts were out on
innocent jaunts which were spoiled by the inevitable
'communist ambush5.1 The kidnapping of deputies by
fascists, which became common as time went on—Miglioli
in Cremona, Fradeletto in Venice, Benedetti in Pescia—
was recorded in its columns without a word of regret. After
the congress held in Bologna on October 8~io it was
obvious how far this party had moved to the right, although
it still called itself liberal. The moving spirits of this congress
1 The cowardice and collusion of the press before fascist terrorism shows
clearly the anti-working-class and anti-socialist feeling of Italian * liberalism *.
The economist, Luigi Einaudi, one of the principal contributors to the Corriere
della Sera, in one of his articles compared the * proletarians % whose birth rate,
according to him, was falling, with the * bourgeois women, who breed healthy
children, skilful wielders of the bludgeon? (allusion is to the fascist manganello).
Later on Senator Albertini suffered the same fate as Senator Bergamini (see
p. i53n). The fascist government deprived him of his property and the control
of his paper. Professor Einaudi's review, la Riforma Sociale, was also suppressed.