He spoke with a peculiar kind of bitterness, that showed passion too. They talked about Europe for some time. The man could listen: listen with his black eyes too. Watchful, always watchful, as if he expected some bird to fly suddenly out of the speaker’s face. He was well-informed, and seemed to weigh and judge everything he heard as he heard it.
“Why, when I left Europe it seemed to me socialism was losing ground everywhere—in Italy especially. In 1920 it was quite a living, exciting thing, in Italy. It made people insolent, usually, but it lifted them up as well. Then it sort of fizzled down, and last year there was only the smoke of it: and a nasty sort of disappointment and disillusion, a grating sort of irritation. Florence, Siena—hateful! The Fascisti risen up and taking on airs, all just out of a sort of spite. The Dante festival at Florence, and the King there, for example. Just set your teeth on edge, ugh!—with their ‘Savoia!’ All false and out of spite.”
“And what do you attribute that to, Mr Somers?”
“Why, I think the Socialists didn’t quite believe in their own socialism, so everybody felt let down. In Italy, particularly, it seemed to me they were on the brink of a revolution. And the King was ready to abdicate, and the Church was ready to make away with its possessions: I know that. Everything ready for a flight. And then the Socialists funked. They just funked. They daren’t make a revolution, because then they’d be responsible for the country. And they daren’t. And so the Fascisti, seeing the Socialists in a funk, got up and began to try to kick their behinds.”
Mr Struthers nodded his head slowly.
“I suppose that is so,” he said. “I suppose that’s what it amounts to, they didn’t believe in what they were doing. But then they’re a childish, excitable people, with no stability.”
“But it seems to me socialism hasn’t got the spark in it to make a revolution. Not in any country. It hasn’t got the spunk, either. There’s no spunk in it.”
“What is there any spunk in?” asked the other man, a sort of bitter fire corroding in his eyes. “Where do you find any spunk?”
“Oh, nowhere,” said Richard.
There was a silence. Struthers looked out of the window as if he didn’t know what to say next, and he played irritably with a blotter on the desk, with his right hand. Richard also sat uncomfortably silent.