MISSIONARIES OR MUMMERS?

For once, Fascism; the ne plus ultra of national feeling, has laid itself open to the charge of inconsistency. The next Grand Council, to be held this week in Rome, is to discuss, among other agenda, the possibilities of a world-wide movement by all organizations sympathetic to Fascism. Nationalism intends to make an experiment in internationalism.

Among the vile epithets applied to Bolshevism perhaps the most odious is "International". The "Reds" are supposed to violate every feeling of national unity and to eradicate from their breasts every patriotic sentiment. Of this experiment of the arch anti-Bolshevists there can be but one explanation: the Fascists have turned missionaries. The world must be made safe for the new gospel of arrogant bourgeois nationalism. A cohort of eloquent gesticulators will be dispatched throughout Europe, and behold! the new era. When the whole continent turns Fascist, the international problem will be dead, and internal affairs will run like the proverbial clock-work. A new faith, and Mussolini is its prophet!

But alas! The earnest zeal of the Fascists is too youthful. The whole world may not fall down and worship. Some may deny the articles of its faith, a few may even laugh. At all events, here is new panacea ready to compete with the Muscovite tonic-sellers for the international dope market.