Without attempting a sketch of the development of Socialism in Italy, it must be said that it certainly did a great deal of good to the country. It aroused the working masses from their slumber and bettered their material conditions, which badly wanted bettering. To stir the people out of their amorphous state and make them conscious of their rights was a very wholesome operation. It would have been better to have made them realise at the same time that rights never go without duties, and that to co-operate in public life they had to undertake the one in order to get the other. But this, however, was more than could be expected from agitators, who often had, themselves, a very poor notion of the relation of right and duties. Their incitement to the people was to make material well-being, the ultimate end of all effort. Vulgar as it was, yet it was the proper aim for a materialistic age, and it had the advantage of being concrete, positive, and within range of the people’s rudimentary political understanding. Therefore it worked. It had the first quality that an idea must have to move people to action; it corresponded to the real needs of the workers. The nobler side of Socialism, that which had made it highly idealistic and has made its ultimate end a dreamy Messianism, did not strike root in Italy. It did not appeal to the people, and whenever it fascinated some stray poet or idealist, like Andrea Costa or Mussolini’s father, they failed to arouse an echo in the minds of the labourers. This should have been sufficient to show that it did not suit the Italian mentality. Mankind, the fraternity of mankind, the lost paradise reconquered by the mutual love of men, could not mean much to Italian ears. It sounded abstract, and at best did not show much chance of being realised by the present generation. The Socialist leaders had to attract followers with more concrete things, with plans that could be realised, and to arouse in them a passion for an actual object. Consequently they harped on the necessity of getting better wages for less work. They planned Labour organisations which gradually grew stronger, and they taught the workers to hate their employers.