Yet this was not the worst part of the leaders’ activity; that was the corrupting consciousness they gave the workers of an unlimited political power without any corresponding duties. Out of unfairly treated men they made bullies, most unhappy bullies, the worst kind of bullies. The torture of Mussolini’s youth was this rapid decadence of Socialism in Italy, although it had the advantage over other parties of a stock of general ideas and a definite programme. It was only the weakness of other parties which made it look strong until the war and during the years that followed the peace; for as far back as 1910 the historic ideas it had brought to Italy had yielded their crop. Had it not been so, Socialism, between 1918 and 1920, would have worked out in open revolution. As it was, it had built up a class organisation that was the first regular Party in modern Italy, and this meant considerable experience for the whole nation; it had besides bettered the material conditions of life of the lower class and awakened them to political consciousness, which is a contribution to the development of the country as a modern State that cannot be overrated. Liberalism, be it of the Right or of the Left, had had an Italian form, which had proved its consonance with the historical position of the country by the efficiency with which it had realised its ideal. Italy, free from foreign rule and politically one under the House of Savoy, was doubtless the creation of Italian Liberalism. But as a home governing party its inefficiency was obvious; one may think that its failure was due to its non-national stock of ideas, which led to the application of foreign legislation to a country whose needs were not the same as those of the nations in which this administrative and political Liberalism had come out of a long historical evolution. Socialism, on the other hand, was yeast, and as yeast it was very good for Italy, for the unleavened masses rose into shape and life under its action; thereby emerging from their amorphousness they entered into the political world and brought with them the force and life of numbers. It brought them also to the level of the European proletariat and introduced the Party discipline and organisation that the other Italian parties had not needed, as their singleness of aim and the loftiness of their ideals had been sufficient to keep their high-minded members in unity. Yet it proved a curse, as its leaders were unable to realise that the wretched means they had to resort to, in order to arouse men into action, were due to the fact that the higher side of Socialism did not fit the mentality of the people.