From 1920 to 1922 Italy was ripe for revolution. Several parties formed armed bands. The Socialists lost because of Communist excesses and the ungenerous attitude they adopted toward army officers. After all, the war, with its heavy sacrifices, had captured the imagination of the young; and there was much idealism and sincere patriotic feeling among the youth of Italy. They reacted strongly against the Socialist teaching of pacifism and internationalism. The middle class in the cities began to be alarmed at the tendency of the Socialists to assume that only those who worked with their hands were useful members of society and had rights. It was inevitable that the Socialist bullying and terrorism should lead to armed resistance on the part of the more conservative elements. Mussolini, himself of the lower classes, was keen enough to realize that the great mass of the Italian people would welcome a movement directed against the lawlessness of extreme radicalism. He and the principal men he gathered around him to direct Fascismo had all up to the last year of the war been militant Socialists. They had come into prominence through fighting the Government, and the outlaw spirit dominated them. They abhorred politics. And so, although they were sincere syndicalists, they had broken with official Socialism when the movement became a political party, using its energies to win votes. Mussolini believed that suffrage did not offer the remedy, and he was contemptuous of his friends who hoped to advance their theories by getting themselves elected to Parliament. The Italians were sick of financial and political chaos, and were so apprehensive of Communism that they were ready to stand behind any movement that would combat the Socialist terrorism, even if it meant fighting fire with fire. The Fascist leader appealed to the instinct of self-preservation in the middle classes; and in the course of eighteen months he rallied round him the youth of the middle classes, many sons of the aristocracy, and the support of big industries. All the while he considered the Government as negligible, and not any more to be taken into account than in the old days of his militant Socialism. The advent to power of Mussolini was wholly illegal, if we regard the philosophy of form. The Fascisti could hardly have won a parliamentary majority in the General Election. Mussolini knew that; but he knew also that Italy was behind him, and would remain behind him regardless of Parliament, if he succeeded in governing firmly and at the same time putting into effect fiscal and other sorely needed reforms. When the King asked him to form a cabinet, he decided upon a coalition Government, five Fascisti, three Democrats, two Catholics, one Nationalist, and one Liberal, and he gave the portfolios of war and navy to General Diaz and Admiral di Revel. He declared that the new Government was going to act and not talk and summed up his program in two sentences: