The poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, who so successfully defied the Powers by grabbing Fiume and setting up a new authority with which the Government of his own country has not ventured to interfere, has now tried his hand at constitution making. He has issued a set of ordinances which are quite unique in their way. it has hitherto been customary, and supposedly essential, for constitutional laws to be couched in precise terms, so as to leave as little doubt as possible in regard to the legislator's meaning and to define the rights and duties of the State and citizens with the utmost. exactitude. This is not d'Annunzio's way. He can no more keep rhetoric out of his Constitution than Mr. Dick could keep King Charles's head out of the Memorial. In Article 14 he declares: "The perfect man is he who can invent his own virtue every day and present his brethren daily with a new gift—labour, which, even when it is of the humblest kind, tends to beautify and adorn the world."
D'Annunzio does not look upon himself as anything so' prosaic as the president of a republic. He treats the community of Fiume as a regency, in which the executive power is wielded by a council of seven rectors elected by the "National Assembly" the Council of the Best" (Optimi) and the Provisional Council. This last is a sort of Parliament with 60 members, elected for two years, 10 by workmen and peasants, 10 seamen, 10 by employers, five ty industrial and agricultural experts, five by business firms, five by teachers and students, and so on. Citizens with no occupation have no representation. From 17 to 5 all citizens, men and women alike, are liable for national service in some form or other. Education is free, and the Ordinances even provide for the foundation of workmen's choral societies. It is an attempt to build up an ideal community on a basis of labour. sweetened by art. Perhaps it may prove admirably adapted to the people for whom it is intended, and some day we shall see Fiume ad vertised as an abode of peace and prosperity and a place of refuge from Bolshevism and strikes and the rest of our social troubles.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.