With reference to religion, Mussolini’s Government promised to respect all creeds, especially Catholicism. At Ouchy he said to the Press: “My spirit is deeply religious. Religion is a formidable force which must be respected and defended. I am, therefore, against anti-clerical and atheistic democracy, which represents an old and useless toy. I maintain that Catholicism is a great spiritual power, and I trust that the relations between Church and State will henceforward be more friendly.” And while the Minister for Public Instruction, Senator Gentile, has introduced compulsory religious instruction in the elementary public schools, the Under-Secretary of the same Ministry, Hon. Dario Lupi, one of Mussolini’s closest friends, issued, as one of his first acts, a timely and peremptory order to the school authorities requesting the immediate replacement of the Crucifix and the picture of the King. Fascismo, which during the last months of 1922 had seen its membership increasing by leaps and bounds, finally won with a note of fanaticism the very heart of the country from the Alps to the southern shores of Sicily. Latterly it had exercised the functions of State almost undisturbed, and did not spare either institutions or individuals in the pursuit of its end. It had demanded and successfully obtained the dismissal of the Pangermanist Mayor of Bolzano, Herr Perathoner; it had occupied the Giunta Provinciale of Trento, causing the removal of the Italian Governor, maintaining that he had been too weak in his attitude towards arrogant Pangermanists in that region; and had acted successfully as arbitrator in the labour dispute between Cantiere Orlando of Leghorn and the Government itself. It was no wonder, then, if after the big October meeting of last year at Naples and the “March to Rome” with the famous Quadrumvirate formed by General Cesare de Bono, Hon. Cesare Maria de Vecchi, Italo Balbo, and Michele Bianchi, then Secretary-General of the Party, Mussolini, the creator of this mighty movement, was summoned by the King to form the new Fascista Cabinet.