_ It is saying
very little of that two days' strike to say that it was far the most
impressive experience of our Roman winter; in some sort it was the most
impressive experience of my life, for I beheld in it a reduced and
imperfect image of what labor could do if it universally chose to do
nothing. The dream of William Morris was that a world which we know is
pretty much wrong could be put right by this simple process. The trouble
has always been to get all sorts of labor to join in the universal
strike, but in the Italian _sciopero_ of four years ago the miracle was
wrought from one end of the peninsula to the other.
In the Roman strike of last April a partial miracle of the same nature
was illustratively wrought, with the same alarming effect on the
imagination.
As with the national strike, the inspiration of the Roman strike came
from the government's violent dealing with a popular manifestation which
only threatened to be mischievous. A stone-mason was killed by falling
from a scaffolding, and his funeral was attended by so many hundreds,
amounting to thousands, of workmen that the police conceived, not quite
unjustifiably, that it was to be made the occasion of a demonstration,
especially as the proposed route of the procession lay through the
Piazza di Venezia, under the windows of the Austrian Embassy, Austria
being always a red rag to the Italian bull and peculiarly irritating
through the reservation of the Palazzo Venezia to the ancient enemy at
the cession of Venice to Italy.
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