_Against every Idol._ I repeat here what I said before. No demagogism. Work-worn hands are not yet enough to show that a man is capable of upholding a State or a family. We must react against these “cajolers” and these new semi-idols, in order to uplift these people from the moral and mental slavery into which they have fallen. We must not approach them in the attitude of partisans. We are syndicalists, because we think that by means of the mass it may be possible to determine an economic readjustment, but this readjustment involves long and complicated consideration. A political revolution is accomplished in twenty-four hours, but the economic constitution of a nation, which forms part of the world system, is not overturned in twenty-four hours. But we do not, by this, mean to be considered as a kind of “bodyguard” of the bourgeoisie, which, especially where it is composed of the new rich, is simply unworthy and cowardly. If these people do not know how to defend themselves, they must not hope for protection from us. We defend the nation and the people as a whole. We desire the moral and material welfare of the people. I think that, with this as our attitude, it will be possible to approach the masses. In the meantime, the Federation of Seamen has separated itself from the General Federation of Labour; the railwaymen have proved in the big strike that they are Italian and wish to be Italian; and while the upper bureaucracy of the public administration is, on the whole, in favour of Nitti and Giolitti, the proletariat of the same administration tends to sympathise with us. For fifty years generals, diplomats, and bureaucrats have been taken from the upper classes and from a certain limited number of persons of rank and position. It is time to put an end to all this, if we want to infuse new energy and new blood into the body of the nation.