SOMETHING LIKE A HEAD-ON COLLISION between Fascism and American democracy seems to some observers to be approaching. Here is our Department of Labor being asked to exclude Count Di Revel, President of the Fascist League of North America, on the ground that his swearing to the Fascist oath makes him an undesirable alien; and a naturalization official in Baltimore is asserting that the Fascist oath is sufficient ground for refusal of citizenship. All this is likely to be thrashed out in Congress in the coming session, the New York World hears. In the meanwhile there comes from an unexpected source the assertion that the very existence of Mussolini’s government is a direct challenge to American democracy.The vigor and efficiency of Italy under Mussolini have so often been praised by American business men that it is rather startling to find one of the most representative among them suddenly firing a broadside into the political theories upon which Fascism rests. Nevertheless, Julius H. Barnes, former head of the United States Chamber of Commerce, does that very thing in The Nation’s Business. The Italian Premier, it will be recalled, recently challenged any country to show so favorable a development as Italy has done under the Fascist regime. Mr. Barnesaccepts the challenge. He maintains that the United States has made more progress in material efficiency, under what we sometimes think is a blundering scheme of government, than Italy has made under a dictatorship. True, the American business man admits that Italy has made considerable headway under Fascism, but one gathers from his article that he believes the price paid by the people of Italy has been too great. “Only time will show,” says Mr. Barnes, “whether in the compelling force of an imposed autocracy there has been taken from a great people something of the individual character and individual conviction which make a firmer foundation for a modern State.” In his opinion:       

“The real trial in social and political theory in the world to-day is between the American theory of a free government and a free people, based on the universal vote—a theory justified by each year of superior progress in America—and the new autocracy of Mussolini.

Read the rest of the Democracy vs Fascism debate here