of mass action which can go very far without grossly violating individual rights. "The greatest good of the greatest number” is not a moral argument, and in the end realizes the greatest good of nobody. To be morally sound and acceptable, the action must be right from beginning to end, and that includes both the goal and the method. There is such abundant good in our daily lives, and such bubbling happiness, especially for those of us who live in the country, that most of us suffer the minor injustices of the hour without too noisy grumbling; but the trouble is that these injustices tend to grow in both number and dimension, and to engender a certain callousness to injustice which robs us of spiritual insight and healthy mindedness. The tragedy of perverted mass action is not alone the material violence, but even more the spiritual confusion which leads to crooked thinking. Many of these encroachments upon personal liberty are undoubtedly well meant, but the demoralizing effect is just as reprehensible as if they were badly meant. And it may never be safely forgotten that these insidious encroachments facilitate additional encroachments.

Our conviction that along with power there always goes this tendency to abuse power does not lead us to advocate anything so spineless as a world without power,-were such a world possible, -but it does lead us to urge with all earnestness that this power shall be resolutely held in check and limited to absolutely necessary channels. The fundamental function of the State is the police function, the imperative duty to protect every individual citizen from violence and interference. And this protection should be extended not only against individual transgressors, but also against associated groups, whether these groups be Congressional blocs made up of vocational partisans, or labor unions made up of "class-conscious" working-men, or corporations made up of greedy capitalists, or societies made up of blind fanatics and single-track reformers. There is but one defensible social ideal, and that is a world in which every individual is free to work out the inner impulses of the Spirit, without aggression on his part or interference on the part of others. A State which accomplished this simple, primal duty, the protection of all its citizens, would accomplish something greater than has yet been

historically recorded, and something which no State, preoccupied with illegitimate and paternalistic activities, is ever likely to accomplish. But one must not confuse mass action with coöperation, for the two have nothing in common. Coöperation is not mass action; it is confederated individual action in which the impulse is voluntary and the direction is from within. Mass action, on the contrary, is a group activity in which the compulsion and purpose are imposed from without. Its agents are not free and their activity is not moral. Many publicists have confounded mass action and coöperation. Impressed by the immense value of coöperation, and failing to see its inner and spiritual nature, they have sought through legislation to make it compulsory. But in such an enterprise failure is inevitable. To be coöperation at all, it must be voluntary. Apply legal compulsion to coöperation, and the thing ceases to be; it becomes mere mass action, always inefficient, always materialistic, always tending to grave abuse.

America, like Europe, has been taught by recent events one large and valuable lesson. We have seen the abuse of mass action on a scale never before attempted in this country. And we shall not soon be allowed to forget this very expensive objectlesson-it will be kept in mind for years to come by a burden of unreasonable and unnecessary taxation. But Americans, while they often make mistakes, hate to make the same mistake twice. This leads us to be somewhat optimistic about the future, even though we are distinctly pessimistic about the present.

The great war was an immense, unforgivable, unjustifiable calamity. No good that may flow out of it can ever balance the colossal evil. To thank God for the war instead of blaming the Devil, seems to us a sickening impiety. But the gigantic sum of evil will be slightly lessened if one permanent result of the war is to make us turn from the brass idols of a tyrannous mass action to the vital, effective spirituality of a free and awakened individualism.

"Hands Off!"

HANFORD HENDERSON.

FASCISM AND FINANCE

BY ALZADA COMSTOCK

At the opening of 1924 only two countries of Europe, Austria and Italy, found that the year that had passed had bequeathed to them an essentially new internal order. Austria, as the ward of the League of Nations, had made its painstaking progress under the direction of a foreign Commissioner. Italy alone had been pushed toward reform from within, with a flutter of national flags and ovations to a national hero. Whatever the future may hold for Fascism, that onrush of the young men of Italy, under a leader who esteemed the Napoleonic gesture and the shouts of Parliamentary Deputies rather more than the esteem of diplomatists, will continue to hold the Italian imagination. As with the great individual coups of the past, the glamor of the leader's personality dims and blurs the exact outlines of the national questions involved.

Mussolini is far too able a leader, however, to rely wholly upon the effect of the dramatic situations in which Italy has been placed, and to ignore the economic and financial foundations of the new order which he has established. He is aware that it is upon such things as these that citizens ponder when the great public meetings are over. Again and again since the end of October, 1923, when the first anniversary of the Fascist Revolution was celebrated, the leaders of the movement have taken stock of their accomplishments and have announced the results in a press which has had far too little of European national achievement to record. Such captions as Decrease of Unemployment in Italy, Revival of Italian Industry, and Reduction of the Budget Deficit have become familiar in the succeeding months. The tale of reform is almost endless, but the Fascisti have enumerated the individual acts. At the close of 1923 they announced that one thousand reforms had been introduced.

Unfortunately public education with respect to such matters as

taxation and budget making is in a somewhat elementary state, outside of Italy as well as in it. People with a greater flair for finance than the Italians have ever claimed have been ingenuously cheered by the fine words of Ministers of Finance. And it is not alone in Southern Europe that the Treasury mountain labors and brings forth a mouse. It is therefore the proper task of the financially educated to comprehend and digest the real trend of Italian fiscal affairs, as it is also its duty to recognize the exigencies of the treasuries of France and Soviet Russia, in order that the shadows which coming political events cast before them can be distinguished.

When Fascism made its dramatic entrance upon the stage of Italian official life at the end of October, 1922, the country was well on its way to the completion of the kind of a financial system which is usually termed "democratic". Since the war ended Italy had adopted a capital levy, that favorite device of the British Labour Party which the Conservative press of that country alludes to as "the confiscation of property", and which the Left Wing calls "equality of sacrifice". Security holders were forced to have their investments registered, in order that the amount of evasion by large holders of intangible property should be cut down to a minimum. The war profits of over-energetic stay-at-home manufacturers had been confiscated, and the rates of taxation on various classes of property had been made heavier. A tax policy of this kind is bound to stimulate active and partisan interest in fiscal affairs. On one side stood the middle and poorer classes, who favored the methods used and considered them an effective way of drawing public revenue from the sources where money was plainly to be found in large quantities. They had a measure of support from some of the financial experts, who saw in Italy's strenuous fiscal policy an attempt to conform to the rigorous measures recommended by the Brussels Financial Conference of 1920 for those European countries which honestly sought rehabilitation. On the other side were the propertied classes, who felt that the mere accumulation of capital was penalized and who prophesied the economic downfall of Italy if the policy was continued.

Under Mussolini the atmosphere of the Ministry of Finance

soon changed. Following his declared intention of giving the young men of the Fascist movement positions of power, he delivered the financial affairs of Italy into the hands of Signor De Stefani, a university professor forty-four years old. (Any total of years under fifty is rated as youth in the case of a European Minister of Finance). Signor De Stefani had been a lecturer in Economics in Venice, Ferrara, and Padua, and retained many of the characteristics of the university professor.

The new Minister of Finance proved to be an uncommunicative, hardworking official, committed to the plans of the Fascist Government, not on the wings of a sudden impulse but as a matter of permanent conviction. Placed in the midst of a group of functionaries who were survivors of the former administration, he needed all of the energy, tirelessness, and perseverance with which he is said to be equipped.

The accomplishments of the reorganized Ministry of Finance in the year which followed have since been given to the public as "the setting in order of Italy's chaotic finances," as the Italian correspondent of a great metropolitan newspaper reported. Dispatches from Italy brought the news that the country's whole fiscal system had been overturned and an improved machinery substituted. It is such announcements as these, springing, no doubt, from the enthusiasm which the restored order and organization in Italian public services almost invariably arouses, which should be analyzed in the light of the facts and figures of recent history.

A change in the sales tax was the first important indication of the intention of the Mussolini Government to modify the national policy. The sales tax itself is not a Fascist measure, but a part of the former fiscal system which originated in 1921 and which provided a modest part of the revenue. What the Fascisti did was to increase the rates so that they correspond to the rates in force in several European countries although they are still lower than the rates imposed in Canada, enlarge the scope of the tax, and diminish the luxury tax rates.

With regard to the sales tax, then, the Fascisti can claim no great originality. This type of tax has been popular in Europe since the war ended, but on that continent its use has been con