A vast clamor greeted [Daladier], the crowd surged through the cordon of police and swept the barriers away; Milan drank and said with a laugh: “To France! To England! To our glorious allies!” Then he flung the glass against the wall; they shouted: “Hurrah for France! Hurrah for England! Hurrah for peace!” They were carrying flags and flowers. Daladier stood on the top step and looked at them dumbfounded. Then he turned to Leger and said between his teeth: “The God-damned fools!” =Fascism through Italian Eyes= Collectively, the novels of Ezio Taddei, Alberto Moravia, and Ignazio Silone present a history of Italy during the years that saw Mussolini’s rise, reign, and ruin. Taddei’s _The Pine Tree and the Mole_ (1945) is set in Livorno in 1919. On one social level the novel follows the career of Michele Pellizari, whose political odyssey leads him from the Italian Socialist Party to the Fascist Party, and eventually to a return to the land of his peasant people. On another level the novel relates the rise of Rubachiuchi from jailbird to Fascist agent provocateur and party official. There are many long passages throughout the book in which Taddei drops his characters to go directly to a recital of the events which led to the triumph of the Fascists. He describes the return of war veterans filled with unrest and plagued with unemployment. He records the failure of the Socialists as the Fascists deliberately fill their Black Shirt squads with convicted criminals. He sets down the workers’ capture of the factories and finally the Fascist march on Rome. In _The Conformist_ (1951) Alberto Moravia is more concerned with a psychological portrait of Marcello Clerici than he is with the description of the period. But in analyzing the trauma-inspired desire for conformity which led to his job in Mussolini’s secret police, Moravia tells a good deal about the political climate of Italy of yesterday--from the palmy days of the Ethiopian campaign to the time of the retribution which leaves Marcello and his family dead by the roadside from the bullets of a strafing Allied plane.