at all; whilst the greatest care and expense have been dedicated to the reform of education, nothing being spared that can promote a deeper consciousness of the individual, and an immense scheme is a foot to improve the intellectual and spiritual conditions of adults, involving huge expense by the government and great personal sacrifice by the intellectual and artistic classes. When Mussolini was in Forli he could not satisfy any of his realistic or idealistic exigencies. His intellectual position as a Socialist made him long for a paradise to come, a dream at best; his nature, like that of many in his province, made him long for actual facts. The position proved a difficult one and he was only kept going by the strength of his convictions which were most sincere. The man who was on his staff in the _Lotta di Classe_ is still a workman and a Socialist; and speaks with as much regret for that time as with bitterness for Mussolini’s “desertion from the party,” a “desertion” which nothing will make him see as a consequence of the very sincerity to which he ascribes Mussolini’s power of fascination. It is this man who has furnished the author of this present book with the clue that made it possible to trace back the way through which Mussolini came to realise how unhistorical and, therefore, false was his position. The adversaries of the Socialists were continually reproaching them for having invented the class struggle. Just because he was absolutely sincere Mussolini minded the accusation very much. For if that was so the responsibility was indeed a heavy one. He started, therefore, looking in history for the origin of that struggle. And it was inevitable that his Italian mentality should, through the process of his researches, emerge in all its national and personal definiteness; that he should reject, more or less consciously, all that is not concrete and actual. The Italians usually call “historical” a true knowledge or realisation of a given situation of fact, whether past or present; again they call “historical” the vision of life as the eternal alteration of such situations through a process which knows no regress. To his relief Mussolini soon found out that the class struggle had existed always and everywhere, and that it was due to social and financial differences: and this cheered the convinced Socialist in him. His next step was to realise that not only had such a struggle existed in Rome, in Athens, and elsewhere, but that it was actually the main cause of social progress. And with this the Socialist triumphantly exulted.