It might have seemed of small account that in their processions the boys of Catholic Action walked in threes, in imitation of the Fascist militia, and not in fours, as they had done up to 1922; that they carried their flags with the staffs resting on their stomachs, again in imitation of the Fascists, and not on their shoulders, as had been the custom before the March on Rome; that even the most
obscure parish magazines and
journals of religious associations showed the year of the regime along - side that of the Christian era; and that Catholics habitually observed all the outward forms of Fascism, beginning with the Roman salute and the conversational use of voi, abandoning, because the Duce
so willed it, the age - old use of the third person as the polite form of address.