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Title: My autobiography
Author: Benito Mussolini
Contributor: Richard Washburn Child
Release date: November 3, 2024 [eBook #74673]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***
Transcriber’s Notes
Misspelled words have been corrected. These are identified by
♦♠♥♣ symbols in the text and are shown immediately below the
paragraph or section in which they appear.
Details and other notes may be found at the end of this eBook.
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan._
MUSSOLINI.
In his office at the Palazzo Chigi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
When listening intently this is his attitude and expression.
]
My Autobiography
By
Benito Mussolini
With a Foreword by
Richard Washburn Child
Former Ambassador to Italy
[Illustration:
National Fascist Party logo with perched eagle]
_Illustrated_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1928
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1928, by Curtis Publishing Co.
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration: Charles Scribner’s Sons logo]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword by Richard Washburn Child ♦ix
CHAPTER
I. A Sulphurous Land 1
II. My Father 9
III. The Book of Life 20
IV. War and Its Effect Upon a Man 28
V. Ashes and Embers 59
VI. The Death Struggle of a Worn-Out Democracy 88
VII. The Garden of Fascism 121
VIII. Toward Conquest of Power 147
IX. Thus We Took Rome 173
X. Five Years of Government 200
XI. New Paths 242
XII. The Fascist State and the Future 273
XIII. En Route 308
Index 313
♦ “v” replaced with “ix”
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mussolini in his office at the Palazzo Chigi _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The house at Varano di Costa, in Predappio, where
Mussolini was born 2
Mussolini’s mother and father, Rosa and Alessandro
Mussolini 10
The first offices, in Milan, of the _Popolo d’Italia_,
Mussolini’s paper 40
A snapshot of Mussolini and his captain on the
Carso, 1916 48
Commander Gabriele d’Annunzio 80
King Victor Emmanuel III and Mussolini 188
Mussolini walking along the seashore, May 1, 1928 204
FOREWORD
By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD
It is far from my purpose to elaborate the material in this book, to
interpret it, or to add to it.
With much of the drama it contains I, being Ambassador of the United
States at the time, was intimately familiar; much of the extraordinary
personality disclosed here was an open book to me long ago because I
knew well the man who now, at last, has written characteristically,
directly and simply of that self for which I have a deep affection.
For his autobiography I am responsible. Lives of Mussolini written by
others have interests of sorts.
“But nothing can take the place of a book which you will write
yourself,” I said to him.
“Write myself?” He leaned across his desk and repeated my phrase in
amazement.
He is the busiest single individual in the world. He appeared hurt as
if a friend had failed to understand.
“Yes,” I said and showed him a series of headings I had written on a
few sheets of paper.
“All right,” he said in English. “I will.”
It was quite like him. He decides quickly and completely.
So he began. He dictated. I advised that method because when he
attempts to write in longhand he corrects and corrects and corrects.
It would have been too much for him. So he dictated. The copy came back
and he interlined the manuscript in his own hand—a dash of red pencil,
and a flowing rivulet of ink—here and there.
When the manuscripts began to come to me I was troubled because mere
literal translators lose the vigor of the man himself.
“What editing may I do?” I asked him.
“Any that you like,” he said. “You know Italy, you understand Fascism,
you see me, as clearly as any one.”
But there was nothing much to do. The story came through as it appears
here. It is all his and—what luck for all of us—so like him! Approve
of him or not, when one reads this book one may know Mussolini or at
least, if one’s vision is clouded, know him better. Like the book or
not, there is not an insincere line in it. I find none.
Of course there are many things which a man writing an autobiography
cannot see about himself or will not say about himself.
He is unlikely to speak of his own size on the screen of history.
Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pros and
cons, are all put aside the only true measure of a man’s greatness
from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in the answer to this
question:
“How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest
number of human beings—their hearts, their thoughts, their material
welfare, their relation to the universe?”
In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit
dimensions of permanent greatness equal to those of Mussolini.
Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the
permanence of his success or not, consider him superman or not, as
you may, he has put to a working test, on great and growing numbers
of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality,
in applied plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in
the applied principle that contents are more important than labels
on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost
universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a
state. He has not only been able to change the lives of human beings
but he has changed their minds, their hearts, their spirits. He has not
merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.
He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the
bricks.
It is one thing to administer a state. The one who does this well is
called statesman. It is quite another thing to make a state. Mussolini
has made a state. That is super-statesmanship.
I knew him before the world at large, outside of Italy, had ever heard
of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the
saddle and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away
chaos’ own junk pile from Italy.
But no man knows Mussolini. An Italian newspaper offered a prize for
the best essay showing insight into the mystery of the man. Mussolini,
so the story goes, stopped the contest by writing to the paper that
such a competition was absurd, because he himself could not enter an
opinion.
In spite of quick, firm decisions, in spite of grim determination, in
spite of a well-ordered diagrammed pattern and plan of action fitted to
any moment of time, Mussolini, first of all, above all and after all,
is a personality always in a state of flux, adjusting its leadership to
a world eternally in a state of flux.
Change the facts upon which Mussolini has acted and he will change his
action. Change the hypotheses and he will change his conclusion.
And this perhaps is an attribute of greatness seldom recognized. Most
of us are forever hoping to put our world in order and finish the job.
Statesmen with some idea to make over into reality hope for a day when
they can say: “Well, that’s done!” And when it is done,—often enough it
is nothing. The bridges they have built are now useless, because the
rivers have all changed their courses and humanity is already shrieking
for new bridges. This is not an unhappy thought, says Mussolini. A
finished world would be a stupid place—intolerably stupid.
The imagination of mere statesmen covers a static world.
The imagination of true greatness covers a dynamic world. Mussolini
conceives a dynamic world. He is ready to go on the march with
it, though it overturns all his structures, upsets all his theories,
destroys all of yesterday and creates a screaming dawn of a to-morrow.
Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves
to conditions for reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have
learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believes
that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than
to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been
expended on theories and programmes.
He has marched up several hills with the thousands and then marched
down again. This strange creature of strange life and strange thoughts,
with that almost psychopathic fire which was in saints and villains,
in Napoleons, in Jeanne d’Arcs and in Tolstoys, in religious prophets
and in Ingersolls, has been up the Socialist, the international, the
liberal and the conservative hills and down again. He says: “The
sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its
power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded
yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow.
The machine first of all must run!”
I have watched, with a curiosity that has never failed to creep in on
me, the marked peculiarities, physical and mental, of this man. At
moments he is quite relaxed, at ease; and yet the unknown gusts of his
own personality play on him eternally. One sees in his eyes, or in a
quick movement of his body, or in a sentence suddenly ejaculated, the
effect of these gusts, just as one sees wind on the surface of the
water.
There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of
the tread of the cat. He likes cats—their independence, their decision,
their sense of justice and their appreciation of the sanctity of the
individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with them
until those who guard his life protest against their social set.
His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being of aristocratic
lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry but,
condescendingly, of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his
own prowl, as he walks along in his riding-boots, springy, active,
ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One
quality is feline, however—it is the sense of his complete isolation.
One feels that he must always have had this isolation—isolation as a
boy, isolation as a young radical, adventurer, lover, worker, thinker.
There is no understudy of Mussolini. There is no man, woman, or child
who stands anywhere in the inner orbit of his personality. No one. The
only possible exception is his daughter Edda. All the tales of his
alliances, his obligations, his ties, his predilections are arrant
nonsense. There are none—no ties, no predilections, no alliances, no
obligations unpaid.
Financially? Lying voices said that he had been personally financed and
backed by the industrialists of Italy. This is ridiculous to those who
know. His salary is almost nothing. His own family—wife, children, are
poor.
Politically? Whom could he owe? He has made and can unmake them all.
He is free to test every officeholder in the whole of Italy by the
yardstick of service and fitness. Beyond that I know not one political
debt that he owes. He has tried to pay those of the past; I believe
that the cynicism in him is based upon the failure of some who have
been rewarded to live up to the trust put in them.
“But I take the responsibility for all,” says he. He says it publicly
with jaws firm; he says it privately with eyes somewhat saddened.
He takes responsibility for everything—for discipline, for censorship,
for measures which, were less rigor required, would appear repressive
and cruel. “Mine!” says he, and stands or falls on that. It is an
admirable courage. I could, if I wished, quote instance after instance
of this acceptance—sometimes when he is not to blame—of the whole
responsibility of the machine.
“Mine!” says he.
And in spite of any disillusionment he has suffered since I knew him
first, he has retained his laugh—often, one is bound to say, a scornful
laugh—and he has kept his faith in an ability to build up a machine—the
machine of Fascism—the machine built not on any fixed theory but one
intended by Mussolini to run—above all, to run, to function, to do, to
accomplish, to fill the bottles with wine first, unlike the other isms,
and put the labels on after.
Mussolini has superstitious faith in himself. He has said it. Not a
faith in himself to make a personal gain. An assassin’s bullet might
wipe him out and leave his family in poverty. That would be that.
His faith is in a kind of destiny which will allow him, before
the last chapter, to finish the building of this new state, this new
machine—“the machine which will run and has a soul.”
The first time I ever saw him he came to my residence sometime before
the march on Rome and I asked him what would be his programme for
Italy. His answer was immediate: “Work and discipline.”
I remember I thought at that time that the phrase sounded a little
evangelical, a phrase of exhortation. But a mere demagogue would
never choose it. Wilson’s slogans of Rights and Peace and Freedom are
much more popular and gain easier currency than sterner phrases. It
is easier even for a sincere preacher, to offer soft nests to one’s
followers; it is more difficult to excite enthusiasm for stand-up
doctrines. Any analysis and weighing of Mussolini’s greatness must
include recognition that he has made popular throughout a race of
people, and perhaps for others, a standard of obligation of the
individual not only exacting but one which in the end will be accepted
voluntarily. Not only is it accepted voluntarily but with an almost
spiritual ecstasy which has held up miraculously in Italy during years,
when all the so-called liberals in the world were hovering over it like
vultures, croaking that if it were not dead it was about to die.
It is difficult to lead men at all. It is still more difficult to lead
them away from self-indulgence. It is still more difficult to lead them
so that a new generation, so that youth itself, appears as if born with
a new spirit, a new virility bred in the bones. It is difficult
to govern a state and difficult to deal cleanly and strongly with a
static programme applied to a static world; but it is more difficult
to build a new state and deal cleanly and strongly with a dynamic
programme applied to a dynamic world.
This man, who looks up at me with that peculiar nodding of his head
and raising of the eyebrows, has done it. There are few in the world’s
history who have. I had considered the phrase “Work and discipline”
as a worthy slogan, as a good label for an empty bottle. Within six
years this man, with a professional opposition which first barked like
Pomeranians at his heels and then ran away to bark abroad, has made the
label good, has filled the bottle, has turned concept into reality.
It is quite possible for those who oppose the concept to say that the
reality of the new spirit of Italy and its extent of full acceptance by
the people may exist in the mind of Mussolini, but does not spring out
of the people themselves but it is quite untrue as all know who really
know.
He throws up his somewhat stubby, meaty, short-fingered hands, strong
and yet rather ghostlike when one touches them, and laughs. Like
Roosevelt. No one can spend much time with him without thinking that
after all there are two kinds of leaders—outdoor and indoor leaders—and
that the first are somewhat more magnetic, more lasting and more boyish
and likable for their power than the indoor kind.
Mussolini, like Roosevelt, gives the impression of an energy
which cannot be bottled, which bubbles up and over like an eternally
effervescent, irrepressible fluid. At these moments one remembers his
playing of the violin, his fencing, his playful, mischievous humour,
the dash of his courage, his contact with animals, his success in
making gay marching songs for the old drab struggles of mankind with
the soil, with the elements, with ores in the earth, and the pathways
of the seas. In the somber conclusions of the student statesman and
in the sweetness of the sentimentalist statesman there is little joy;
unexpected joy is found in the leadership of a Mussolini. Battle
becomes a game. The game becomes a romp. It is absurd to say that Italy
groans under discipline. Italy chortles with it! It is victory!
He is a Spartan too. Perhaps we need them in the world to-day;
especially that type whose first interest is the development of the
power and the happiness of a race.
The last time I took leave of Mussolini he came prowling across the
room as I went toward the door. His scowl had gone. The evening had
come. There had been a half hour of quiet conversation. The strained
expression had fallen from his face. He came toward me and rubbed his
shoulder against the wall. He was relaxed and quiet.
I remembered Lord Curzon’s impatience with him long ago, when Mussolini
had first come into power, and Curzon used to refer to him as “that
absurd man.”
Time has shown that he was neither violent nor absurd. Time has
shown that he is both wise and humane.
It takes the world a long time to see what has been dropped into the
pan of its old scales!
In terms of fundamental and permanent effect upon the largest number of
human beings—whether one approves or detests him—the Duce is now the
greatest figure of this sphere and time. One closes the door when one
leaves him, feeling, as when Roosevelt was left, that one could squeeze
something of him out of one’s clothes.
He is a mystic to himself.
I imagine, as he reaches forth to touch reality in himself, he finds
that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined,
illusive, untouchable, just out of reach—onward!
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
A SULPHUROUS LAND
Almost all the books published about me put squarely and logically on
the first page that which may be called my birth certificate. It is
usually taken from my own notes.
Well, then here it is again. I was born on July 29, 1883, at Varano di
Costa. This is an old hamlet. It is on a hill. The houses are of stone,
and sunlight and shade give these walls and roofs a variegated color
which I well remember. The hamlet, where the air is pure and the view
agreeable, overlooks the village of Dovia, and Dovia is in the commune,
or county, of Predappio in the northeast of Italy.
It was at two o’clock Sunday afternoon when I came into the world. It
was by chance the festival day of the patron saint of the old church
and parish of Caminate. On the structure a ruined tower overlooks
proudly and solemnly the whole plain of Forli—a plain which slopes
gently down from the Apennines, with their snow-clad tops in winter, to
the undulating bottoms of Ravaldino, where the mists gather in summer
nights.
Let me add to the atmosphere of a country dear to me by bringing again
to my memory the old district of Predappio. It was a country well known
in the thirteenth century, giving birth to illustrious families
during the Renaissance. It is a sulphurous land. From it the ripening
grapes make a strong wine of fine perfume. There are many springs of
iodine waters. And on that plain and those undulating foothills and
mountain spurs, the ruins of mediæval castles and towers thrust up
their gray-yellow walls toward the pale blue sky in testimony of the
virility of centuries now gone.
Such was the land, dear to me because it was my soil. Race and soil are
strong influences upon us all.
As for my race—my origin—many persons have studied and analyzed its
hereditary aspects. There is nothing very difficult in tracing my
genealogy, because from parish records it is very easy for friendly
research to discover that I came from a lineage of honest people. They
tilled the soil, and because of its fertility they earned the right to
their share of comfort and ease.
Going further back, one finds that the Mussolini family was prominent
in the city of Bologna in the thirteenth century. In 1270 Giovanni
Mussolini was the leader of this warlike, aggressive commune. His
partner in the rule of Bologna in the days of armored knights was
Fulcieri Paolucci de Calboli, who belonged to a family from Predappio
also, and even to-day that is one of the distinguished families.
[Illustration:
The house at Varano di Costa, in Predappio, where
Mussolini was born.]
The destinies of Bologna and the internal struggles of its parties and
factions, following the eternal conflicts and changes in all struggles
for power, caused, at last, the exile of the Mussolinis to Argelato.
From there they scattered into neighboring provinces. One may be
sure that in that era their adventures were varied and sometimes in
the flux of fortune brought them to hard times. I have never discovered
news of my forbears in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth
century there was a Mussolini in London. Italians never hesitate to
venture abroad with their genius or their labors. The London Mussolini
was a composer of music of some note and perhaps it is from him that
I inherit the love of the violin, which even to-day in my hands gives
comfort to moments of relaxation and creates for me moments of release
from the realities of my days.
Later, in the nineteenth century, the family tie became more clearly
defined; my own grandfather was a lieutenant of the National Guard.
My father was a blacksmith—a heavy man with strong, large, fleshy
hands. Alessandro the neighbors called him. Heart and mind were always
filled and pulsing with socialistic theories. His intense sympathies
mingled with doctrines and causes. He discussed them in the evening
with his friends and his eyes filled with light. The international
movement attracted him and he was closely associated with names known
among the followers of social causes in Italy—Andrea Costa, Balducci,
Amilcare, Cipriani and even the more tender and pastoral spirit of
Giovanni Pascoli. So come and go men whose minds and souls are striving
for good ends. Each conference seems to them to touch the fate of the
world; each talisman seems to promise salvation; each theory pretends
to immortality.
The Mussolinis had left some permanent marks. In Bologna there
is still a street named for that family and not long ago a tower
and a square bore the name. Somewhere in the heraldic records
there is the Mussolini coat of arms. It has a rather pleasing and
perhaps magnificent design. There are six black figures in a yellow
field—symbols of valor, courage, force.
My childhood, now in the mists of distance, still yields those flashes
of memory that come back with a familiar scene, an aroma which the
nose associates with damp earth after a rain in the springtime, or the
sound of footsteps in the corridor. A roll of thunder may bring back
the recollection of the stone steps where a little child who seems no
longer any part of oneself used to play in the afternoon.
Out of those distant memories I receive no assurance that I had the
characteristics which are supposed traditionally to make parents
overjoyed at the perfection of their offspring. I was not a good
boy, nor did I stir the family pride or the dislike of my own young
associates in school by standing at the head of my class.
I was then a restless being; I am still.
Then I could not understand why it is necessary to take time in order
to act. Rest for restfulness meant nothing to me then any more than now.
I believe that in those youthful years, just as now, my day began and
ended with an act of will—by will put into action.
Looking back, I cannot see my early childhood as being either
praiseworthy or as being more than normal in every direction. I
remember my father as a dark-haired, good-natured man, not slow
to laugh, with strong features and steady eyes. I remember that near
the house where I was born, with its stone wall with moss green in
the crevices, there was a small brook and farther on a little river.
Neither had much water in it, but in autumn and other seasons when
there were unexpected heavy rains they swelled in fury and their
torrents were joyous challenges to me. I remember them as my first
play spots. With my brother, Arnaldo, who is now the publisher of the
daily _Popolo d’Italia_, I used to try my skill as a builder of dams
to regulate the current. When birds were in their nesting season I was
a frantic hunter for their concealed and varied homes with their eggs
or young birds. Vaguely I sensed in all this the rhythm of natural
progress—a peep into a world of eternal wonder, of flux and change. I
was passionately fond of young life; I wished to protect it then as I
do now.
My greatest love was for my mother. She was so quiet, so tender,
and yet so strong. Her name was Rosa. My mother not only reared us
but she taught primary school. I often thought, even in my earliest
appreciation of human beings, of how faithful and patient her work was.
To displease her was my one fear. So, to hide from her my pranks, my
naughtiness or some result of mischievous frolic, I used to enlist my
grandmother and even the neighbors, for they understood my panic lest
my mother should be disturbed.
The alphabet was my first practice in worldly affairs and I learned it
in a rush of enthusiasm. Without knowing why, I found myself wishing
to attend school—the school at Predappio, some two miles away. It was
taught by Marani, a friend of my father. I walked to and fro and was
not displeased that the boys of Predappio resented at first the coming
of a stranger boy from another village. They flung stones at me and
I returned their fire. I was all alone and against many. I was often
beaten, but I enjoyed it with that universality of enjoyment with which
boys the world around make friendship by battle and arrive at affection
through missiles. Whatever was my courage, my body bore its imprints. I
concealed the bruises from my mother to shelter her from the knowledge
of the world in which I had begun to find expression and to which I
supposed she was such a stranger. At the evening repast I probably
often feared to stretch out my hand for the bread lest I expose a wound
upon my young wrist.
After a while this all ended. War was over and the pretense of enmity—a
form of play—faded into nothing and I had found fine schoolmates of my
own age.
The call of old life foundations is strong. I felt it when only a few
years ago a terrific avalanche endangered the lives of the inhabitants
of Predappio. I took steps to found a new Predappio—Predappio Nuovo.
My nature felt a stirring for my old home. And I remembered that as
a child I had sometimes looked at the plain where the River Rabbi is
crossed by the old highway to Mendola and imagined there a flourishing
town. To-day that town—Predappio Nuovo—is in full process of
development; on its masonry gate there is carved the symbol of Fascism
and words expressing my clear will.
When I was graduated from the lower school I was sent to a boarding
school. This was at Faenza, the town noted for its pottery of the
fifteenth century. The school was directed by the Salesiani priests. I
was about to enter into a period of routine, of learning the ways of
the disciplined human herd. I studied, slept well and grew. I was awake
at daylight and went to bed when the evening had settled down and the
bats flew.
This was a period of bursting beyond the bounds of my own little town.
I had begun to travel. I had begun to add length after length to that
tether which binds one to the hearth and the village.
I saw the town of Forli—a considerable place which should have
impressed me but failed to do so. But Ravenna! Some of my mother’s
relatives lived in the plain of Ravenna and on one summer vacation we
set out together to visit them. After all, it was not far away, but to
my imagination it was a great journey—almost like a journey of Marco
Polo—to go over hill and dale to the edge of the sea—the Adriatic!
I went with my mother to Ravenna and carefully visited every corner
of that city steeped in the essences of antiquity. From the wealth
of Ravenna’s artistic treasures there rose before me the beauty and
fascination of her history and her name through the long centuries.
Deep feelings remain now, impressed then upon me. I experienced a
profound and significant enlarging of my concepts of life, beauty
and the rise of civilizations. The tomb of Dante, inspiring in its
quiet hour of noon; the basilica of San Apollinare; the Candiano canal,
with the pointed sails of fishing-boats at its mouth; and then the
beauty of the Adriatic moved me—touched something within me.
I went back with something new and undying. My mind and spirit were
filled with expanding consciousness. And I took back also a present
from my relatives. It was a wild duck, powerful in flight. My brother
Arnaldo and I, on the little river at home, put forth patient efforts
to tame the wild duck.
CHAPTER II
MY FATHER
My father took a profound interest in my development. Perhaps I was
much more observed by his paternal attention than I thought. We became
much more knit together by common interests as my mind and body
approached maturity. In the first place I became fascinated by the
steam threshing machines which were just then for the first time being
introduced into our agricultural life. With my father I went to work
to learn the mechanism, and tasted, as I had never tasted before, the
quiet joy of becoming a part of the working creative world. Machinery
has its fascinations and I can understand how an engineer of a railway
locomotive or an oiler in the hold of a ship may feel that a machine
has a personality, sometimes irritating, sometimes friendly, with an
inexhaustible generosity and helpfulness, power and wisdom.
But manual labor in my father’s blacksmith shop was not the only
common interest we shared. It was inevitable that I should find a
clearer understanding of those political and social questions which
in the midst of discussions with the neighbors had appeared to me as
unfathomable, and hence a stupid world of words. I could not follow
as a child the arguments of lengthy debates around the table, nor
did I grasp the reasons for the watchfulness and measures taken by the
police. But now in an obscure way it all appeared as connected with
the lives of strong men who not only dominate their own lives but also
the lives of their fellow creatures. Slowly but fatally I was turning
my spirit and my mind to new political ideals destined to flower for a
time.
I began with young eyes to see that the tiny world about me was
feeling uneasiness under the pinch of necessity. A deep and secret
grudge was darkening the hearts of the common people. A country gentry
of mediocrity in economic usefulness and of limited intellectual
contribution were hanging upon the multitudes a weight of unjustified
privileges. These were sad, dark years not only in my own province
but for other parts of Italy. I must have the marks upon my memory of
the resentful and furtive protests of those who came to talk with my
father, some with bitterness of facts, some with a newly devised hope
for some reform.
It was then, while I was still in my early teens, that my parents,
after many serious talks, ending with a rapid family counsel, turned
the rudder of my destiny in a new direction. They said that my manual
work did not correspond to their ambitions for me, to their ability to
aid me, nor did it fit my own capacities. My mother had a phrase which
remains in my ears: “He promises something.”
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan._
Mussolini’s mother and father, Rosa and Alessandro Mussolini.
]
At the time I was not very enthusiastic about that conclusion; I had
no real hunger for scholastic endeavor. I did not feel that I would
languish if I did not go to a normal school and did not prepare
to become a teacher. But my family were right. I had developed some
capacities as a student and could increase them.
I went to the normal school at a place called Forlimpopoli. I remember
my arrival in that small city. The citizens were cheerful and
industrious, good at bargaining—tradesmen and middlemen. The school,
however, had a greater distinction; it was conducted by Valfredo
Carducci, brother of the great writer Giosue Carducci, who at that time
was harvesting his laurels because of his poetry and his inspiration
drawn from Roman classicism.
There was a long stretch of study ahead of me; to become a master—to
have a teacher’s diploma—meant six years of books and pencils, ink
and paper. I confess that I was not very assiduous. The bright side
of those years of preparation to be a teacher came from my interest
in reforming educational methods, and even more in an interest begun
at that time and maintained ever since, an intense interest in the
psychology of human masses—the crowd.
I was, I believe, unruly; and I was sometimes indiscreet. Youth has
its passing restlessness and follies. Somehow I succeeded in gaining
forgiveness. My masters were understanding and on the whole generous.
But I have never been able to make up my mind how much of the
indulgence accorded to me came from any hope they had in me or how much
came from the fact that my father had acquired an increasing reputation
for his moral and political integrity.
So the diploma came to me at last. I was a teacher! Many are the
men who have found activity in political life who began as teachers.
But then I saw only the prospect of the hard road of job hunting,
letters of recommendation, scraping up a backing of influential persons
and so on.
In a competition for a teacher’s place at Gualtieri, in the province
of Reggio Emilia, I was successful. I had my taste of it. I taught
for a year. On the last day of the school year I dictated an essay. I
remember its thesis. It was: “By Persevering You Arrive.” For that I
obtained the praise of my superiors.
So school was closed. I did not want to go back to my family. There was
a narrow world for me, with affection to be sure, but restricted. There
in Predappio one could neither move nor think without feeling at the
end of a short rope. I had become conscious of myself, sensitive to my
future. I felt the urge to escape.
Money I had not—merely a little. Courage was my asset. I would be an
exile. I crossed the frontier; I entered Switzerland.
It was in this wander-life, now full of difficulties, toil, hardship
and restlessness, that developed something in me. It was the milestone
which marked my maturity. I entered into this new era as a man and
politician. My confident soul began to be my support. I conceded
nothing to pious demagoguery. I allowed myself, humble as was my
figure, to be guided by my innate proudness and I saw myself in my own
mental dress.
To this day I thank difficulties. They were more numerous than the
nice, happy incidents. But the latter gave me nothing. The difficulties
of life have hardened my spirit. They have taught me how to live.
For me it would have been dreadful and fatal if on my journey forward
I had by chance fallen permanently into the chains of comfortable
bureaucratic employment. How could I have adapted myself to that smug
existence in a world bristling with interest and significant horizons?
How could I have tolerated the halting progress of promotions,
comforted and yet irritated by the thoughts of an old-age pension at
the end of the dull road? Any comfortable cranny would have sapped my
energies. These energies which I enjoy were trained by obstacles and
even by bitterness of soul. They were made by struggle, not by the joys
of the pathway.
My stay in Switzerland was a welter of difficulties. It did not last
long, but it was angular, with harsh points. I worked with skill as a
laborer. I worked usually as a mason and felt the fierce, grim pleasure
of construction. I made translations from Italian into French and vice
versa. I did whatever came to hand. I looked upon my friends with
interest or affection or amusement.
Above all, I threw myself headforemost into the politics of the
emigrant—of refugees, of those who sought solutions.
In politics I never gained a penny. I detest those who live like
parasites, sucking away at the edges of social struggles. I hate men
who grow rich in politics.
I knew hunger—stark hunger—in those days. But I never bent myself
to ask for loans and I never tried to inspire the pity of those around
me, nor of my own political companions. I reduced my needs to a minimum
and that minimum—and sometimes less—I received from home.
With a kind of passion, I studied social sciences. Pareto was giving a
course of lectures in Lausanne on political economy. I looked forward
to every one. The mental exercise was a change from manual labor.
My mind leaped toward this change and I found pleasure in learning.
For here was a teacher who was outlining the fundamental economic
philosophy of the future.
Between one lesson and another I took part in political gatherings. I
made speeches. Some intemperance in my words made me undesirable to the
Swiss authorities. They expelled me from two cantons. The university
courses were over. I was forced into new places, and not until 1922 at
the Conference of Lausanne, after I was Premier of Italy, did I see
again some of my old haunts, filled with memories colorful or drab.
To remain in Switzerland became impossible. There was the yearning
for home which blossoms in the hearts of all Italians. Furthermore,
the compulsory service in the army was calling me. I came back. There
were greetings, questions, all the incidents of the return of an
adventurer—and then I joined the regiment—a Bersaglieri regiment at the
historic city of Verona. The Bersaglieri wear green cock feathers in
their hats; they are famous for their fast pace, a kind of monotonous
and ground-covering dogtrot, and for their discipline and spirit.
I liked the life of a soldier. The sense of willing subordination
suited my temperament. I was preceded by a reputation of being
restless, a fire eater, a radical, a revolutionist. Consider then the
astonishment of the captain, the major, and my colonels, who were
compelled to speak of me with praise! It was my opportunity to show
serenity of spirit and strength of character.
Verona, where my regiment was garrisoned, was and always will remain a
dear Venetian city, reverberating with the past, filled with suggestive
beauties. It found in my own temperament an echo of infinite resonance.
I enjoyed its aromas as a man, but also as a private soldier I entered
with vim into all the drills and the most difficult exercises. I
found an affectionate regard for the mass, for the whole, made up of
individuals, for its maneuvers and the tactics, the practice of defense
and attack.
My capacity was that of a simple soldier; but I used to weigh the
character, abilities and individualities of those who commanded me. All
Italian soldiers to a certain extent do this. I learned in that way how
important it is for an officer to have a deep knowledge of military
matters and to develop a fine sensitiveness to the ranks, and to
appreciate in the masses of our men our stern Latin sense of discipline
and to be susceptible to its enchantments.
I can say that in every regard I was an excellent soldier. I might have
taken up the courses for noncommissioned officers. But destiny,
which dragged me from my father’s blacksmith shop to teaching and from
teaching to exile and from exile to discipline, now decreed that I
should not become a professional soldier. I had to ask for leave. At
the time I swallowed the greatest sorrow in my life; it was the death
of my mother.
One day my captain took me aside. He was so considerate that I felt in
advance something impending. He asked me to read a telegram. It was
from my father. My mother was dying! He urged my return. I rushed to
catch the first train.
I arrived too late. My mother was in death’s agony. But from an almost
imperceptible nod of her head I realized that she knew I had come. I
saw her endeavor to smile. Then her head slowly drooped and she had
gone.
All the independent strength of my soul, all my intellectual or
philosophical resources—even my deep religious beliefs—were helpless to
comfort that great grief. For many days I was lost. From me had been
taken the one dear and truly near living being, the one soul closest
and eternally adherent to my own responses.
Words of condolence, letters from my friends, the attempt to comfort
me by other members of the family, filled not one tiny corner of that
great void, nor opened even one fraction of an inch of the closed door.
My mother had suffered for me—in so many ways. She had lived so many
hours of anxiety for me because of my wandering and pugnacious life.
She had predicted my ascent. She had toiled and hoped too much and
died before she was yet forty-eight years old. She had, in her quiet
manner, done superhuman labors.
She might be alive now. She might have lived and enjoyed, with the
power of her maternal instinct, my political success. It was not to be.
But to me it is a comfort to feel that she, even now, can see me and
help me in my labors with her unequaled love.
I, alone, returned to the regiment. I finished my last months of
military service. And then my life and my future were again distended
with uncertainty.
I went to Opeglia as a teacher again, knowing all the time that
teaching did not suit me. This time I was a master in a middle school.
After a period, off I went with Cesare Battisti, then chief editor
of the _Popolo_. Later he was destined to become one of the greatest
of our national heroes—he who gave his life, he who was executed by
the enemy Austrians in the war, he who then was giving his thought
and will to obtaining freedom of the province of Trento from the rule
of Austria. His nobility and proud soul are always in my memory. His
aspirations as a socialist-patriot called to me.
One day I wrote an article maintaining that the Italian border was not
at Ala, the little town which in those days stood on the old frontier
between our kingdom and the old Austria. Whereupon I was expelled from
Austria by the Imperial and Royal Government of Vienna.
I was becoming used to expulsions. Once more a wanderer, I went back to
Forli.
The itch of journalism was in me. My opportunity was before me in the
editorship of a local socialist newspaper. I understood now that
the Gordian knot of Italian political life could only be undone by an
act of violence.
Therefore I became the public crier of this basic, partisan, warlike
conception. The time had come to shake the souls of men and fire their
minds to thinking and acting. It was not long before I was proclaimed
the mouthpiece of the intransigent revolutionary socialist faction. I
was only twenty-nine years old when at Reggio Emilia at the Congress in
1912, two years before the World War began, I was nominated as director
of the _Avanti_. It was the only daily of the socialist cause and was
published in Milan.
I lost my father just before I left for my new office. He was only
fifty-seven. Nearly forty of those years had been spent in politics.
His was a rectangular mind, a wise spirit, a generous heart. He had
looked into the eyes of the first internationalist agitators and
philosophers. He had been in prison for his ideas.
The Romagna—that part of Italy from which we all came—a spirited
district with traditions of a struggle for freedom against foreign
oppressions—knew my father’s merit. He wrestled year in and year out
with endless difficulties and he had lost the small family patrimony
by helping friends who had gone beyond their depth in the political
struggle.
Prestige he had among all those who came into contact with him. The
best political men of his day liked him and respected him. He died
poor. I believe his foremost desire was to live to see his sons
correctly estimated by public opinion.
At the end he understood at last that the old eternal traditional
forces such as capital could not be permanently overthrown by a
political revolution. He turned his attention at the end toward
bettering the souls of individuals. He wanted to make mankind true of
heart and sensitive to fraternity. Many were the speeches and articles
about him after his death; three thousand of the men and women he had
known followed his body to the grave. My father’s death marked the end
of family unity for us, the family.
CHAPTER III
THE BOOK OF LIFE
I plunged forward into big politics when I settled in Milan at the head
of the Avanti. My brother Arnaldo went on with his technical studies
and my sister Edvige, having the offer of an excellent marriage,
went to live with her husband in a little place in Romagna called
Premilcuore. Each one of us took up for himself the torn threads of
the family. We were separated, but in touch. We did not reunite again,
however, until August 1914, when we met to discuss politics and war.
War had come—war—that female of dreads and fascinations.
Up till then I had worked hard to build up the circulation, the
influence and the prestige of the Avanti. After some months the
circulation had increased to more than one hundred thousand.
I then had a dominant situation in the party. But I can say that I did
not yield an inch to demagoguery. I have never flattered the crowd, nor
wheedled any one; I spoke always of the costs of victories—sacrifice
and sweat and blood.
I was living most modestly with my family, with my wife Rachele, wise
and excellent woman who has followed me with patience and devotion
across all the wide vicissitudes of my life. My daughter Edda was
then the joy of our home. We had nothing to want. I saw myself in the
midst of fierce struggle, but my family did represent and always has
represented to me an oasis of security and refreshing calm.
Those years before the World War were filled by political twists and
turns. Italian life was not easy. Difficulties were many for the
people. The conquest of Tripolitania had exacted its toll of lives and
money in a measure far beyond our expectation. Our lack of political
understanding brought at least one riot a week. During one ministry of
Giolitti I remember thirty-three. They had their harvest of killed and
wounded and of corroding bitterness of heart. Riots and upheavals among
day laborers, among the peasants in the valley of the Po, riots in the
south—even separatist movements in our islands. And in the meantime,
above all this atrophy of normal life, there went on the tournament and
joust of political parties struggling for power.
I thought then, as I think now, that only the common denominator of a
great sacrifice of blood could have restored to all the Italian nation
an equalization of rights and duties. The attempt at revolution—the Red
Week—was not revolution as much as it was chaos. No leaders! No means
to go on! The middle class and the bourgeoisie gave us another picture
of their insipid spirit.
We were in June then, picking over our own affairs with a microscope.
Suddenly the murder of Serajevo came from the blue.
In July—the war.
Up till that event my progress had been somewhat diverse, my growth of
capacity somewhat varied. In looking back one has to weigh the effect
upon one of various influences commonly supposed powerful.
It is a general conviction that good or bad friends can decisively
alter the course of a personality. Perhaps it may be true for those
fundamentally weak in spirit whose rudders are always in the hands of
other steersmen. During my life, I believe, neither my school friends,
my war friends, nor my political friends ever had the slightest
influence upon me. I have listened always with intense interest to
their words, their suggestions and sometimes to their advice, but I am
sure that whenever I took an extreme decision I have obeyed only the
firm commandment of will and conscience which came from within.
I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe
in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives
and characters of men.
For myself, I have used only one big book.
For myself, I have had only one great teacher.
The book is life—lived.
The teacher is day-by-day experience.
The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories
and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.
I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when
they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course
of things or when the situation appeared exceptional. I have
searched, to be sure, with a spirit of analysis the whole ancient and
modern history of my country. I have drawn parallels because I wanted
to explore to the depths on the basis of historical fact the profound
sources of our national life and of our character, and to compare our
capacities with those of other people.
For my supreme aim I have had the public interest. If I spoke of life
I did not speak of a concept of my own life, my family life or that of
my friends. I spoke and thought and conceived of the whole Italian life
taken as a synthesis—as an expression of a whole people.
I do not wish to be misunderstood, for I give a definite value to
friendship, but it is more for sentimental reasons than for any logical
necessity either in the realm of politics or that of reasoning and
logic. I, perhaps more than most men, remember my school friends. I
have followed their various careers. I keep in my memory all my war
friends, and teachers and superiors and assistants. It makes little
difference whether these friendships were with commanding officers or
with typical workers of our soil.
On my soldier friends the life of trench warfare—hard and
fascinating—has left, as it has upon me, a profound effect. Great
friendships are not perfected on school benches, nor in political
assemblies. Only in front of the magnitude and the suggestiveness of
danger, only after having lived together in the anxieties and torments
of war, can one weigh the soundness of a friendship or measure in
advance how long it is destined to go on.
In politics, Italian life has had a rather short panorama of men.
All know one another. I have not forgotten those who in other days were
my companions in the socialistic struggle. Their friendship remains,
provided they on their part acknowledge the need to make amends for
many errors, and provided they have been able to understand that my
political evolution has been the product of a constant expansion, of
a flow from springs always nearer to the realities of living life and
always further away from the rigid structures of sociological theorists.
My Fascist friends live always in my thoughts. I believe the younger
ones have a special place there. The organization of Fascism was marked
and stamped with youth. It has youth’s spirit and it gathered youth,
which, like a young orchard, has many years of productiveness for the
future.
Though it appears that the obligations of governing increase around
me every day, I never forget those who were with me—the generous and
wise builders, the unselfish and faithful collaborators, the devoted
soldiers of a new Fascist Italy. I follow step by step their personal
and public fortunes.
Some minds appear curious as to what territories my reading has
explored. I have never attached my name or my mind to a certain school,
and as I have already said, I never believed that books were absolute
and sure viaticums of life.
I have read the Italian authors, old and new—thinkers, politicians,
artists. I have always been attracted by the study of our
Renaissance in all its aspects. The nineteenth century, with its
artistic and spiritual contrasts, classicism and romanticism and their
contrasts, has held my attention. I have studied thoroughly the period
of our history called _risorgimento_ in its moral and political essence.
I have analyzed with great care all the development of our intellectual
life from 1870 up to this moment.
These studies have occupied the most serene hours of my day.
Among foreign writers, I have meditated much upon the work of the
German thinkers. I have admired the French. One of the books that
interested me most was the “Psychology of the Crowd” by Gustave Lebon.
The intellectual life of the Anglo-Saxons interests me especially
because of the organized character of its culture and its scholastic
taste and flavor.
But all that I have read and am reading is only a picture that is
unfolded before my eyes without giving me an impression strong enough
to make an incision in me. I draw out only the cardinal points that
give me above all and first of all the necessary elements for the
comparison of the essence of the different nations.
I am desperately Italian. I believe in the function of Latinity.
I came to these conclusions after and through a critical study of
the German, Anglo-Saxon and Slavonic history and that of the world;
nor have I for obvious reasons neglected the history of the other
continents.
The American people, by their sure and active creative lines of
life, have touched, and touch, my sensibility. For I am a man of
government and of party. I endlessly admire those who make out of
creative work a law of life, those who win with the ability of their
genius and not with the intrigue of their eloquence. I am for those who
seek to make technic perfect in order to dominate the elements and give
to men more sure footings for the future.
I do not respect—I even hate—those men that leech a tenth of the riches
produced by others.
The American nation is a creative nation, sane, with straight-lined
ideas. When I talk with men of the United States it does not occur to
me to use diplomacy for winning or persuading them. The American spirit
is crystalline. One has to know how to take it and possibly win it over
with a watchful responsiveness rather than with cunning words. As the
reserves of wealth are gone now from the continents to North America,
it is right that a large part of the attention of the world should be
concentrated upon the activity of this nation that has men of great
value, economists of real wisdom and scholars that are outlining the
basis of a new science and a new culture. I admire the discipline of
the American people and their sense of organization. Certainly every
nation has its periods. The United States is now in the golden age. It
is necessary to study these tendencies and their results, and this is
not only in the interest of America but in the interest of the world.
America, a land harboring so many of our emigrants, still calls to the
spirit of new youth.
I look to her youth for her destinies and the preservation of her
growing ideals, just as I look to the youth of Italy for the progress
of the Fascist state. It is not easy to remember always the importance
of youth. It is not easy to retain the spirit of youth.
It was fortunate for me that in the trenches of the Carso—one of the
bloodiest and most terrible spots of all the Allied battle fronts and
in the vicissitudes of difficult experiences in the struggle with life,
I did not leave my own youth behind.
CHAPTER IV
WAR AND ITS EFFECT UPON A MAN
I write of war and my experience in and with war. I write of popular
misconceptions as to war. I write of my convictions as to war. And I
write of war from two points of view—the politics of the world and the
reality of the trenches, where I have been and have learned the torture
of pain.
It is impossible for me to show my development and feelings from war
without showing how my nation entered war, felt war and accepted war.
My psychology was the Italian psychology. I lived it and I cannot
suppress it.
It was nonsense to believe that war came unheralded and as a new
experience.
The European war, which suddenly burst out in 1914 during a period of
apparent economic and moral peacefulness, was not a sudden return to
barbarism, as many optimistic socialists and believers in democracy
wished—and still to this day wish—people to believe. One must not
forget that in 1904 and 1905 Russia fought with Japan a long,
disastrous and exhausting war. In 1911 there was the Libyan war. In
1912 and 1913 two Balkan Wars had kept the awakened attention of
Europe on the destinies of these nations. These wars had in them
the characteristics of an extraordinary drama, as in the incident of
Lule-Burgas and in the siege of Adrianople.
The real truth of the matter was that an intense spirit of war was
all over Europe—in the air—and everybody breathed it. It was the
imponderable; we were at the dawn of a new tragic period of the history
of mankind. The beginning of that hard historic event, the World War,
was at hand. The gigantic development drew in peoples and continents.
It compelled tens of millions of men to live in the trenches, to
fight inch by inch for years over the bloody theatre of tragic
conflict. Millions of dead and wounded, victories and defeats, complex
interests—moral or immoral—spirit of resentment and hate, bonds of
friendship and disillusionments—all that chaotic and passionate world
which lived and made the Great War was part of a cyclopic ensemble
which is difficult to grasp, to define, to circumscribe in mere
autobiographic memoirs like these.
When one thinks that Germany alone has already published on the war
sixty official books, and considers many that the other nations have
published or will publish, one may lose himself in the labyrinth of
speculative thoughts. This tremendous chaos gave birth among the
defeated nations to the dissolving intellectual scepticism from which
sprang the philosophy of realities.
Therefore I proceed by impression, by remembrances. I force my memory
to build up, in a logical line running parallel to my thoughts and
actions, the rich picture and the innumerable interlocking events which
took place in the most tortured period that humanity ever knew. I
was intimately entwined with it.
The tragedy of Serajevo, the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, created a panic
in the public opinion of the whole of Europe. Remember that I was then
editor of an internationalist-socialist daily. That which wounded the
sensitiveness of the various nations was the lightning rapidity of the
tragedy. I could see the mathematical efficiency of the organizations
which made possible the plans and success of the murder in spite of all
the exceptional precautions taken by the police of Austria-Hungary.
I realized that Europe was in sympathy with the restlessness of
Serbia against the old Hapsburg monarchy. After the annexation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, that region never had a minute’s peace.
The Serbian mentality, which worked—and still does—itself along the
subterranean tunnels of secret societies, gave from time to time
unpleasant surprises to Austria-Hungary, and the large empire was
suffering from it. But no more than a thoroughbred is disturbed by
flies.
The tragedy of Serajevo, however, appeared to me to be the last straw.
Every one understood that Austria would act. Strong measures! All the
embassies, all the different political parties of Europe, realized the
gravity of the case and its terrible consequences. They went feverishly
to work to find a possible solution. And we looked on!
In Italy the echo of the murder of Serajevo aroused only curiosity
and a thirst for more news. Even when the corpses of the archduke and
his wife were taken into the Gulf of Triest, which was lighted up the
whole night with tremendous torches, the impression on Italians, even
those still under Austrian rule, was no deeper than it would have been
in the presence of a spectacular epilogue of a theatrical tragedy.
Francis Ferdinand was an enemy of Italy. I thought that he always
underestimated our race. He was not able to sense the heart throbs of
the people of Italian blood still under his flag. He could not weigh
the power of race consciousness. He was cherishing the dream of a
monarchy melting three races together. Races, I knew, are difficult to
melt. Francis Ferdinand enjoyed the display of his antipathy toward
Italy. He took interest in the affairs of Italy only to seek a possible
solution for the question of the temporal power of the Pope. It was
said that in the secrecy of his court and among his religious advisers
he contemplated the creation of a papal city in Rome with an outlet on
the sea.
Though deeply a Catholic, like myself, he accepted of Christianity
only the hard, familiar, autocratic ideals which were the base of the
old despotism forming the platform of autocratic government, but were
incapable of speaking to souls. In psychological makeup, this small,
snarling archduke believed himself to be specially anointed by God
to rule over subjects. He put fear in the hearts of smaller nations
bordering his domain. His death gave surprise; it gave no sadness to
us. For obvious reasons the pathetic end of the archduchess created
feelings of a more sympathetic nature. We Italians are responsive,
sympathetic.
The telegram of the Kaiser to the bereaved children fed the already
dramatic tune and tempo of our impressions. I saw that Germany intended
steadfastly to stand back of Austria for whatever action this nation
was going to take toward Serbia. It was thought that Vienna would make
a formal protest to Belgrade, but no one anticipated an ultimatum of
such deadliness as fatally to wound the sensibility and the honor, as
well as the very freedom, of that nation. All these currents I had to
watch as the young editor of the _Avanti_.
The dictatorial form of the ultimatum, the style in which it was
written, brought home to the world the shocking realization that war
hung in the sky. We, in Italy, had to ask whether internationalism was
having a success or whether it was an unreality. I wondered and reached
a conclusion.
Embassies went feverishly to work; the political parties added the
pressure of their weight to the diplomatic activities. The call to arms
and the clamor of gathering armies put into second line the theoretical
protests of socialist and international forces.
All of us in Italy who faced hard facts rather than mouthy theories
heard the call of our country—a call of loneliness. Illusions burst
like bubbles. Even the convention of French and German Socialists and
the murder of Jaurès in Paris were but secondary episodes. To me they
appeared as fringes of the mighty and dramatic conflict toward which
day by day the various nations were being drawn by destiny.
I must not forget that a few months previous to the Great War I
had heard and noted a voice raised in the French parliament painting
with pessimistic colors the inefficiency of the French Army, both
from the view-point of economic war and the lack of modern means of
defense and offense. Clemenceau, foaming at the mouth, was present
at this discussion. He said afterward that never in his career as a
politician since 1871 had he witnessed a more dramatic séance than
this one in which the French nation was compelled fully to realize the
insufficiency of its army, lacking the very means needed for a great
conflict. That was a lesson. We do not forget it.
War was ripe. The tardy and weak intervention, both known and secret,
of the Pope and of the benevolent nations outside the circle of the
Allies had no weight. They could not stop the procession of events. War
began the first of August, 1914. It was the full bloom of summer. Under
the deep shadow of the cloud the people of old Europe stood in awe, but
fascinated as one is fascinated by a snake.
Italy a few years previously had renewed the Triple Alliance Treaty.
It had been a marriage without respect and without trust, brought
about more in order to counterbalance military power than by political
necessity. There is small difference between security and military
alliance.
The alliance with Austria and Germany gave, however, to Italy a certain
latitude and a certain freedom of movement. The Marchese of San
Giuliano, who was at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
faced by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia and by the scheming to bring
about war at all costs, had to play fast to keep Italy neutral. As a
matter of fact, the treaty called only for action if one or more of the
nations of the Triple Alliance was assaulted by a nation outside that
alliance. We were kept in the dark, as I well knew. That was enough to
break the pact—to free us from further obligations to that alliance.
One of the first courageous actions in which Italy showed the measure
of her independence and strength was recognition of this. Meanwhile the
intervention of Russia in behalf of Serbia called also France against
Germany, the ally of Austria-Hungary.
I watched England. She was pondering deeply upon the step to take; and
then, in order to keep her supremacy, and also for the sake of her
pride and the sake of humanity, she moved her formidable war machinery
and quickened the organization of new armies to snatch from Germany’s
grip the control of the old Continent.
Public opinion in Italy was deeply moved, facing war, with its German
invasion of East France. There was the description, with horrid
details, of German methods, and above all the invasion of Belgium
in spite of every sense of right and humanity. The French Army was
helplessly forced back. The future, not of one nation but of many
nations, was in the scale. Of this, in my editorial office, I was
always conscious. There was also the feeling of a common culture which
was compelling us to forget past and present quarrels. I could not
bear the idea that my country might abandon those who were crushed
under the weight of war and unwarranted misfortune.
Germany began to influence Italian public opinion with methods of
propaganda that irritated the sensitiveness of our race. That enraged
me. To direct this propaganda, a great diplomat, Prince von Bülow, who
knew the Italian and Roman world intimately, was sent. His aim in Italy
was to ensure its neutrality for good and all.
But our nation was turning toward war. I was helping. The Socialist
party, which at that time had a certain weight in Italian life, due
more to weakness of other political parties than to its own strength,
was uncertain what attitude to take. There it wabbled. The majority in
that party stood for an absolute neutrality—a neutrality without limit
of time, pledge or dignity. In that party there were many who stood
openly in sympathy with Germany. I did not. A handful of intelligent
and strong-willed men began to ask themselves if it was really right
for Italians to lend themselves to the political aims of the King of
Prussia, and if that was good for the future of Italy and of the world.
I, myself, asked that question in the newspaper _Avanti_. For obvious
reasons it was read avidly by every class of citizens. The putting of
that question was my most distinguished effort at journalism.
It was sufficient to cause a part of public opinion to turn toward the
possibility of our standing side by side with France and England in
the war. We could not, and should not, forget that there were certain
sentimental reasons, besides the practical reasons, advising us to
review in this general conflict the old decision concerning our eastern
border, which had remained open since our war with Austria in 1886.
At night I walked to my family, to my home, with pregnant questions
in my mind, with deepening determination, with hardening resolution.
Above all, there was my own country. I saw that internationalism was
crumbling. The unit of loyalty was too large. I wrote an editorial
in which I said also how utterly foolish was the idea that even if a
socialist state were created, the old barriers of race and historical
contentions would not go on causing wars.
Italy’s borders on the eastern side reached the Judrio, but the region
of Trentino illegally held by Austria entered as a wedge between
Lombardy and the Venetian provinces. Our deal with the empire of
Austria-Hungary was still to be closed, because the borders prophesied
by Dante were dear to every Italian heart. They were still and always
would be along the line of the Brenner and of the Giulian and Illyrian
Alps, including Fiume and Dalmatia.
Facing this new situation, every political man, including myself,
began to examine his conscience. The mere mention of this problem was
sufficient to make clear and evident the hidden travail of national
consciousness. I was transformed in my thought.
“Now or never!” was the war cry of Cesare Battisti, whose noble spirit
and final martyrdom by Austrian execution has made him immortal in
Italian hearts. Then there was the prophetic vision of that fiery
revolutionary spirit, Filippo Corridoni. With their inspiration I
began to drag with me a fraction of the Socialists in favor of war.
I had with me rebels of many schools, who through the dregs of their
struggles would in the end now stand once more upon the indestructible
vitality of our race.
The Socialist Senedrium, seeing where I was going, took the _Avanti_
out of my control. I could no longer preach, by that means,
intervention of Italy in the war. I faced the Socialists in our
conventions. I was expelled. I held public gatherings.
I created the Fasciti—a group of daring youths who believed that
intervention could be forced. Do not doubt that their actions shook
deeply our political framework, existing from the time of the
independence of Italy up till 1914. I was their leader.
It is interesting to-day when democracy is challenged to recall that
the Liberal Democratic pacifist group, headed by Giovanni Giolitti, a
man of great influence in parliament and also a shrewd organizer of
political schemes, was busy in the attempt to find a formula which
would solve the problem of righting the borders of Italy, but which
would save our country from the burden, the sacrifice and the loss of
life that every war imposes. Giolitti promised that, even without war,
Italy could obtain a great deal. This “great deal” awakened a feeling
of sarcasm in the generous hearts of Italians. Naturally they are
realists and the enemies of all forms of political bargaining.
Italians were looking beyond those peaceful concessions and those
petty betterings of the borders. They did not believe in the sincerity
of this scheming. I considered it weak statesmanship—the statesmanship
of compromise. There were seers who saw in the European conflict not
only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race. In
the cycle of time, again a dramatic period had come which was making it
possible for Italy by the weight of its army to deal as an equal with
the leading nations of the world.
That was our chance. I wanted to seize it. It became my one thought of
intensity.
The World War began on July 28, 1914. Within sixty days I severed my
official connection with the Socialist party. I had already ceased to
be editor of the _Avanti_.
I felt lighter, fresher. I was free! I was better prepared to fight
my battles than when I was bound by the dogmas of any political
organization. But I understood that I could not use with efficient
strength my convictions if I was without that modern weapon, capable
of all possibilities, ready to arm and to help, good for offense and
defense—the newspaper.
I needed a daily paper. I hungered for one. I gathered together a few
of my political friends who had followed me in the last hard struggle
and we held a war council. When money alone is concerned, I am anything
but a wizard. When it is a question of means or of capital to start a
project, or how to finance a newspaper, I grasp only the abstract side,
the political value, the spiritual essence of the thing. To me, money
is detestable; what it may do is sometimes beautiful and sometimes
noble.
A few friends, bristling with ideas and ardent with faith, almost
immediately found small rooms, garret-like, in the narrow street of
Paolo da Cannobio, near the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Near by there
was a printing establishment. Its owner agreed to publish our newspaper
at a small cost. I was mad to tell Italy and Italians the truth—their
opportunity!
We had no need for great means. We wanted a newspaper that would hold
the city of Milan like a fortress, with editorial articles of such
value that they would be reprinted or quoted by every Italian newspaper.
Thus—and how dramatically!—the number of our readers would be
multiplied. That was my passion. Our offices were quickly furnished
with a desk and a few chairs. I can never cease to have affection for
that intellectual dugout, the journalistic trenches from which I began
to fight. A contract was signed with the printing establishment—a
contract that every week was in danger of smashing for the lack of the
few thousand lire needed to pay our weekly expense. But we were living
on an idea.
On November 15, 1914, the first number of the _Popolo d’Italia_
appeared. Even now I call this new paper my most cherished child. It
was only through it, small as was its beginning, that I was able to win
all the battles of my political life. I am still its director.
I could write and I may write a thousand memories of this newspaper
which was born in 1914 and remained my platform up to 1922. It was
an instrument for the making of me. The name of the _Popolo d’Italia_
will occur over and over again. Its story in any case may be told
through my personality as a political man, as a newspaper man, as a
believer in this war, as a soldier, as an Italian and as a Fascist.
My first article in the _Popolo d’Italia_ turned a large part of public
opinion toward the intervention of Italy in the war, side by side with
France and England.
Standing by me and helping my work as newspaper man were the
Fascisti. They were composed of revolutionary spirits who believed in
intervention. They were youths—the students of the universities, the
socialist syndicalists—destroying faith in Karl Marx by their ideals.
There were professional men too—and the workingmen who could still hear
the real voice of the country.
And now, while Italy remained out of the war, our first legions of
volunteers were organized and went to France to fight. In the Argonne
fell the two sons of Ricciotti Garibaldi, Bruno and Costante, nephews
of the great Garibaldi, who conquered North Sicily and Naples for
United Italy. The funeral of the two heroes took place in Rome and had
solemn echoes all over Italy. Again the red shirts, once distinguished
as the saviors of Italy, now in the land of France, testified to the
indestructibility of Latinity.
[Illustration:
The first offices, in Milan, of the _Popolo d’Italia_, Mussolini’s
paper.
]
The past quarrels—not long past—of Mediterranean interests were wiped
out. The hostilities of the French during the time of our war in Libya
were put aside. No one remembered the episode of the French ships
_Manouba_ and _Carthage_, which brought help to the Turks, who
were fighting against us, in January, 1912. Everything was off. France
was in danger, assaulted and invaded after the tragic rape of Belgium.
This I preached and set forth. France was in danger!
Gabriele d’Annunzio, on the fifth of May, made his speech at Quarto dei
Mille, near Genoa. Quarto dei Mille was the starting point of Garibaldi
and his thousand northerners and other patriots who went down to Sicily
to deliver Southern Italy from the yoke of the Bourbons. He, with
superb eloquence, exhorted Italy to enter the war.
The spirit of the country was tuned up. The opposition of Giolitti
brought about a quick decision. The crown, bound by parliamentary
formulas and by the advice of its counsellors, wanting to follow
strictly the literal and orthodox interpretation of the constitution,
told the personal representative of the Kaiser that Italy as an old
ally had been kept in the dark and thus betrayed.
The insurrection in Milan in favor of war, the strong feelings of the
same flavor in Rome, Padua, Genoa and Naples, decided His Majesty
Victor Emmanuel III to exclude Giovanni Giolitti and to reconfide to
Salandra, who had tendered his resignation, the task of reconstituting
a new ministry. I felt that I had had a part in winning this battle.
Still a young unproved man, I had already a record of untrammeled
freedom and power.
The new ministry spelled war. Thrown aside was the “great deal” of His
Excellency Giolitti; the question now was to choose the right moment
and the right way to jump into the war. We were breathing hard, our
hearts were ready, we were awaiting the great hour. It came May 24,
1915. Can any one say what were my emotions at this moment of triumph?
I cannot try to narrate in one chapter all the events of the war on
the Italian front. It is impossible. The war moulded me. I was forced
into its dramatic unfolding in the circumscribed view-point of a mere
soldier of the war. I will tell what touched me most as a soldier and
indirectly as a political man.
I made up my mind to be the best soldier possible from the very day
that I wore again the glorious uniform of gray-green of the regiment
of Bersaglieri—the best shock troops of Italy—in which regiment I had
already served during the time of my compulsory military service. I
wanted to be a soldier, obedient, faithful to discipline, stretching
myself with all my might to the fulfilment of my duty.
In this I felt that I succeeded. My political position brought me
plenty of offers of privileges and sheltered places. I turned them down.
I wanted to create the impression of a complete and rigid consistence
with an ideal. This was not a scheming on my part for personal gain;
it was a deep need in my nature of what I believed and still hold
on to as my life’s dedication—namely, that once a man sets up to
be the expounder of an idea or of a new school of thought, he must
consistently and intensively live the daily life and fight battles for
the doctrines that he teaches at any cost until victory—to the end!
Time has effaced many things; the easy spirit of forgetfulness has
erased so much. Victory, which came after forty-one months of hard
fighting, has awakened many deep resentments.
As soon as war was declared, as I have said, I asked the military
authorities to accept my services as a volunteer. They answered
that I could not be a volunteer. That was a tragedy. They said that
they refused on the ground that an article of the military by-laws
considered as possible volunteers only those who had been rejected
for physical unfitness, or were exonerated for other reasons from
compulsory military service. I could not be accepted as a volunteer.
I was to wait my turn to be called to arms until the order from my
superiors should be sent me. I was disconsolate.
Happily, my turn came quickly. On September first, only three months
after Italy declared war, I donned the simple uniform of a private
Bersagliere. I was sent to Brescia, in Lombardy, not far from the raids
of airplanes, to drill.
Almost at once I was, to my great relief, despatched to the thick of
the fighting on the high Alps. For a few months I underwent the hardest
trials of my life in mountain trenches. We still had nothing to soften
our hardships in the trenches or in the barracks. We were simply
stumbling along. Short of everything—carrying on—muddling through!
What we suffered the first months—cold, rain, mud, hunger! They did
not succeed in dampening in the slightest degree my enthusiasm and my
conviction as to the necessity and the inevitableness of war. They
did not change the direction of one hair of my head, one thought in it.
I was chosen to be the amanuensis of headquarters. That I refused. I
refused flatly. I amused myself instead by joining the most dangerous
reconnoitering expeditions. It was my will and my wish. I gained
through that. Within a few months I was promoted corporal by merit of
war action, with a citation from my superior in these words: “Benito
Mussolini, ever the first in operations of courage and audacity;”
My political past, with the suspicions of cautious and sometimes
unseeing authorities, still followed me; it was enough to keep my
superiors from sending me to the training school for officers at
Vernezzo. After one week of leave I went back to the trenches,
where I remained for months. The same life, feverish, adventurous,
desperate—and then typhoid fever sent me to the military hospital at
Cividale. When I was better I was packed off to Ferrara for a brief,
stupid period of convalescence. From there I again took my place on the
high pinnacles of the Alps where at night one looking into the dark sky
with its shimmering stars felt nearer to the great dome above.
My battalion was ordered to an advance post on the Carso—Section 144—to
take up the offensive. I was then made one of the company of soldiers
who had specialized in hand grenades. We lived only a few dozen yards
from the enemy, in a perpetual and, it sometimes seemed, an eternal
atmosphere of shell fire and mortal danger that would be our life
forever.
After the first period of hardship I became perfectly and almost
comfortably accustomed to all the terrible elements that life in
the trenches involves. I read with hungry eagerness the _Popolo
d’Italia_—my newspaper. I had left it in the hands of a few friends.
Precipitously separated from it, as one leaves suddenly a beloved
relative, I had given orders to keep alight the lamp of Italy’s duty
and destiny.
I commanded: “Continue always to call for war to the end.”
I wrote often to my friends. Never did I let myself indulge in
writing all my true feelings and opinions, because I was first of all
a soldier, obeying. I found my recreation in the trenches studying
the psychology of officers and troops. Later on that practice in
observation became invaluable to me.
In my rough heart I held a persistent admiration for the soldiers
from all corners of Italy. Many ordered to the eastern front were not
convinced of the historical basis for the war; yet they knew how to
obey their commanding officers with admirable discipline. Many of those
officers were students of the colleges and universities. It was fine
to see them striving to emulate the regulars and to prove that the
old-time valor was still alive in the new Italian generation.
The fact was that war, with its heavy toll of man and materials, and
with its terrific hardships, surprised us. It was far away from our
Garibaldian conception of what war was. We were compelled, in breakneck
haste, to modify our ideas, to change our systems of fighting and
our methods of offense and defense. My heart was gladdened to see that
the capacity for adaptability of our race brought marvellous and quick
returns. The headquarters and all the auxiliary military organizations,
particularly the medical, worked with a precision which I never have
forgotten. But often, as I went over the political situation back of
our armies, dark doubts were in my mind. The work and actions of the
men in power and of the political organizations centred in Rome caused
me deep fears. The parliamentary world seemed unable to free itself
from its old faults.
The poisonous currents of non-intervention and neutrality were still
spending their last strength upon us. They would not fairly face their
defeat. I knew they were doing their utmost to minimize the energy and
elasticity of our fighting efforts.
The foolish babblings and fears of the coffeehouse strategists, the
slackers whose presence offended the families whose sons were in the
war, contributed to depress the spirit of resistance. As a plain
soldier, I could not understand how, for instance, Rumania could be
dragged into the war with a few hundred machine guns. How could Greece
be persuaded to march against the Turks, influenced by a classic dance
that Isadora Duncan performed at the Piræus?
I was following, day by day, the movement of our army—the Battle of
the Isonzo in 1916, the fights on the Alps. With less interest, I
followed the fortunes of war in France, the unfortunate failure at the
Dardanelles and the developments in the eastern section. As for
Italy, never for a minute did I doubt that victory would finally come
to us. Though war were to last longer than the longest estimate, though
our economic power might totter under the effort and weight of the
conflict, nevertheless I was sure of a final victory.
The Italian army in its various actions was led by a method of
successive assaults, to shake the efficiency of the enemy. In spite of
all the hardship, discipline remained intact throughout our lines. The
invasion attempted on the plateaus of the Alps in 1916 was soon thrown
back. The soldiers of the Carso, where I was, had all the appearance of
seasoned veterans.
In such a gigantic drama, when thousands of our brothers fell, it is
absurd to speak of oneself.
However, to prove once more what miseries were woven into the Italian
life of politics, I was compelled from time to time to give out in
the newspapers news concerning myself. This was in order to smash the
suspicions of those persons who thought me hidden in some office,
distributing mail and entertaining in my mind doubts of the possibility
of our winning the war. I was compelled to offset this slander and
to state over and over what I had done and what I was doing. I was
then major corporal of the Bersaglieri and had been in the front line
trenches from the beginning of the war up to February, 1917, always
under arms, always facing the enemy without my faith being shaken or
my convictions wavering an inch. From time to time I sent articles
to the _Popolo d’Italia_ exhorting to endless resistance. I pleaded
for unshaken faith in final victory. For reasons of military
discipline I used a _nom de plume_. Thus I found myself fighting in two
ways—against the enemy without and in front of me and against the enemy
of weak spirit within and behind me.
On the morning of February 22, 1917, during a bombardment of the enemy
trenches in Sector 144—the sector of the hard-pressed Carso under the
heaviest shellfire—there happened one of those incidents which was a
daily occurrence in trench life. One of our own grenades burst in our
trench among about twenty of us soldiers. We were covered with dirt
and smoke, and torn by metal. Four died. Various others were fatally
wounded.
I was rushed to the hospital of Ronchi, a few miles from the enemy
trenches. Doctor Piccagnoni and other surgeons took care of me with
the greatest zeal. My wounds were serious. The patience and ability of
the physicians succeeded in taking out of my body forty-four pieces of
the grenade. Flesh was torn, bones broken. I faced atrocious pain; my
suffering was indescribable. I underwent practically all my operations
without the aid of an anæsthetic. I had twenty-seven operations in one
month; all except two were without anæsthetics.
This infernal life of pain lasted until a furious bombardment burst
into pieces one wing and part of the central building of my hospital
at Ronchi. All the wounded were rushed to a far-away refuge, but my
condition would not permit my removal. Unable to move, I remained for
days under the intermittent fire of the enemy guns among the dirty,
jagged ruins of the building. I was absolutely defenseless.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan._
A photograph of Mussolini in the war, published in the _Popola
d’Italia_
Translation: The most recent snapshot of our editor and his captain
taken at a point of the extreme lines on the Carso.
]
In spite of all, my wounds began to heal. Better days and relief
came. I received numberless telegrams of solicitude and once His
Majesty the King called; his warm sense of humanity toward all soldiers
and toward the victims of the war will never be forgotten by me or by
Italy.
After some months I found myself in a war hospital in Milan. In August
I began to walk with crutches, on which I swung about for many months.
My limbs were too weak to support my weight.
I took my place as a fighter in my newspaper office. The acute
situation created by the incredible and inconceivable failure of the
Russian front was putting upon us new duties. It was necessary to face
them. To all this there was added a subtle propaganda in the land. That
despicable poison had as a slogan the vile sentence of a Socialist
member of parliament: “We will desert the trenches before the winter
comes.”
There was need to fight to a finish these mysterious forces which were
playing upon the sentiments and sufferings of the people. Soldiers,
after a fortnight’s furlough, were returning to the trenches in a
sullen frame of mind. Life in the cities had all the characteristics of
revelry. It was the psychological moment in which it was necessary to
have the people feel highly the strength of authority. It was necessary
that the government should stand up in its shoes.
I do not choose to make posthumous recriminations. The weakness of
internal politics in 1917, the feeble parliamentary situation, the
hateful socialistic propaganda, were certainly preparing the ground
for events that could prove to be ruinous. And the blow came in
October, 1917; it took the name of Caporetto.
Never in my life as an Italian and as a politician have I experienced
a sorrow equal to that which I suffered after news of the defeat of
Caporetto.
This episode, compared with other defeats in the various theatres of
the Great War, certainly did not have an exceptional importance, but
it was a terrific blow for Italians. This sudden breaking down of our
front let a wedge of the enemy army penetrate into the high valley of
the Isonzo. In the first rush of the war we had gone over the borders
into old Austria, carrying on our warfare on enemy ground. We had
withstood in 1916 the attack on the Alps of Asiago. We had conquered
the plateau of Bainsizza. We had been ten times victorious on the
Isonzo. Our sensitiveness and tormented souls were now shaken to the
depths.
The moment was fearful. The Third Army, surrounded on the other side
of the Isonzo, must be saved. It was imperative to stand at all costs
on the Piave and to resist like stone on Mount Grappa to save the
north of the Venetian provinces from being cut off from the rest of
Italy. The rally of the army, followed by quick action, took place in
almost no time. On Mount Grappa the Army of Iron withstood. On the
Piave the enemy could not pass by. A new strength entered into play.
One could feel it coming. A new spirit of war took its unfaltering
stand. Once more we saw the enemy face to face, after losing Gorizia
and two provinces, Belluno and Udine. We were deeply wounded, and we
lived dramatic moments which seared my heart. But we may now be
sure that Italy did not go through the tragic hours that many armies
and other countries underwent. Compare with our disaster the general
picture of the Great War—the loss of three provinces with the Battle of
the Masurian Lakes, the invasion of Königsberg, the fourteen invaded
departments of France and the flooding of Belgium.
I am proud that during that year of desperate moments my paper gave
a higher note to the political life of the country. We raised the
fighting spirit of the soldiers.
Helped by the mutilated, the wounded and the pro-war veterans, I
began an active campaign of “Stand to a Finish.” With fiery style I
demanded on the part of the central government severe action against
slackers and whosoever undermined the spirit of war. I called for the
organization of a volunteer army. I asked for military rule in the
north of Italy. I insisted on the suppression of socialist newspapers.
I asked for a more humane treatment of the soldiers. I campaigned for
war discipline—first behind us and all over the land, then at the
front. This campaign developed by degrees in the newspaper, then in
public meetings, in gatherings at the front. It brought results far
beyond my highest hopes. The government seemed to be tugged after us by
our efforts, toward resistance and victory.
Thus the winter went by. With the coming of the spring the whole
Italian people stretched out their energies toward the front on the
Piave and that on the Grappa.
At last! A spirit of national solidarity, deep and alive, had
become the common property both of the soldiers and of their families.
A high spirit of duty and sacrifice was the rule of life in our Italy!
We were ready in 1918 on the Piave with a heroic army. The Arditi, the
first shock troops, composed of volunteers who went over the top with
hand grenades and daggers, was giving a unique dramatic appeal to our
aggressive spirit. In every one there was the deep desire to efface the
memory of the days of Caporetto. We were to go back—back to where our
brothers, dead and alive, were waiting for us! The remembrance of our
dead, above all, was calling to us. Surely the wish of our adversaries
to cross the Piave could never be; it was an idle hope, to be met and
crushed by our own offensive.
Aviation continued to give service of reconnoitering and bombardment. I
could feel the soul of Italy stretching toward victory. Necessity had
sharpened the more brilliant minds. June came and with it the dawn of
the enemy’s attack.
Our secret service succeeded in learning exactly the time that the
enemy would start his drive. Following sound war strategy, our supreme
command decided to surprise the enemy, and just a few hours before the
enemy was ready to move a deluge of every description fell on his front
lines as well as the supporting lines behind. His plans were smashed.
He threw bridges across the Piave, but every one was destroyed. The
Montello, which was once the key of that front and which the enemy
intended to take and use as a pincher against our army, we held
with dogged tenacity. There were oscillations for a few miles, but the
battle raged on without a stop. Our counter attacks came back always,
again and again and again. Thus after the first three days the enemy
felt that this time the Italians were like an unbreakable wall which
they could not scale or batter down!
Near Zenzon the adversary succeeded in crossing the river as far
as Monastie of Treviso, but a rapid counter attack of a few of our
brigades threw him back on the Piave again. It turned into a disaster
for the enemy, as the river, flooded, washed away bridges and soldiers
toward the sea. On the twenty-third of June, five days after the
beginning of the big battle, our supreme command assured Italy that
our resistance was bound to hold. I felt that it was a sure sign that
victory was at hand. I believe to this day that the Battle of the Piave
was one of the most decisive of the whole World War.
The enemy suffered loss beyond reckoning. About 100,000 Hungarians
were sacrificed on the Piave. That brought about deep resentment in
Budapest. Among the people of the various races in the Austrian Empire
there began discussions about the burdens that each nationality in that
empire had to suffer. From them—the enemies—each nationality felt that
its treatment was becoming intolerable.
News leaked out to us from Austria-Hungary. It was clear that internal
difficulties there were growing every moment. The enemy’s army,
however, was still holding together and under the goad of necessity was
sharpening the work of oppression on our two provinces which still
remained under the weight of occupation and misfortune.
It was at this time, right after the spirit of exhilaration of victory,
that I observed strange tendencies in the Italian political world.
Evil activity was at hand. It needed to be exposed and suppressed. It
was cloaked under the appearance of humanitarianism. It was planning
to give a series of national rights to peoples who never had the
consciousness and the dignity of nations—to peoples who had been for
more than a century instruments of oppressing the Italian elements
under Austria, under the instigation of the despotic empire. The sun of
our victory was rising, but to be a complete victory, a victory that
would carry our soldiers on the road to Vienna, it must not falter
through false sentimentality.
This crisis was sufficient to inspire many great men still under
the influence of antiquated and rusted democratic ideas to start
discussions about the problems of racial differences. They always
tended to favor our worst enemies. The spirit of our nationalism was
attacked and dwarfed by sophisticated and pernicious applications
of sentiment, irritating to our deepest feelings and to our most
legitimate susceptibilities. Voices of the Italians began to say that
every time Italy was on the verge of living its hour of joy, glory and
victory there were always those who soiled the moment, and this often
not in good faith.
Summer went by, and in October, 1918, our supreme command, with
fifty-one Italian divisions—to which were added three British, two
French divisions, one American regiment and a few Czecho-Slovakian
volunteers—determined to make a decisive and final drive on the
Austrian front.
The strategic plan was a very wise one. The enemy’s front was
pierced at Sernaglia; our army rushed through the break. We started a
surrounding movement, one to the left toward Trento, and one to the
right toward Udine and the lower Piave. The ardent dash of our soldiers
and the ability of our officers brought these movements to full success
and crumbled to pieces the whole front of the enemy. The _War Bulletin_
states the enormous number of prisoners, guns and war material that
fell into our hands.
The army of Austria-Hungary was defeated. Its navy had suffered
tremendous losses. We landed at Triest. We occupied Trento.
The final victory was not only a victory of a war. I saw more than
that. It was a victory for the whole Italian race. After a thousand
years we, awakened, were again giving a tangible proof of our moral and
spiritual valor. We were living again on warlike tradition. Our love of
country had bloomed again. We felt our formidable weight in the future
of a new Europe. New generations of Italians rejoiced, for the Italian
cities were once again rejoined to the country. Trento and Triest, as
our race had wished so long, now were within the borders—the natural
borders which Dante had prophesied and defined in the fourteenth
century.
In every corner of the land the church-bells rang, saluting the new
day. War, so long and so taxing, had ended!
It ended with a full undeniable victory of Italy in spite of the
bankruptcy of Russia and of the abominable work of slackers and
professional destroyers of ideals. For me, every family wore the badge
of a dear one dead or wounded. Widows and orphans of war were proud to
show the symbols of sadness and glory. We were in Trento and Triest.
Fiume was half conquered, while Dalmatia was still in the scale.
Over Italy reigned almost supreme a spirit of pride and of serenity
typical of those who have won. War had lasted longer than we thought,
had diminished our wealth, had supposedly reduced to the minimum our
future.
Victory, however, warmed our hearts and our souls. It exalted Italians
and spurred them to higher work, honoring the dead as well as the
living. From October to December, 1918, Italy seemed like a factory
working in full blast in complete accord with progress. War had left,
beyond its inevitable griefs, a deep poetical vein in our national
life. No one sensed it better, no one seemed more a part of it, than I.
It was in this great historical moment immediately after a victory
achieved with untold hardship that our young nation—younger as a nation
than America—with traditions not yet seasoned by age, in spite of
having thrown into the glowing brazier of the conflict men and wealth,
was treacherously deceived. Its fundamental trustfulness was played
upon in the making of the Treaty of Versailles.
This is the awful toll that Italy paid in the Great War—652,000 dead,
450,000 mutilated, 1,000,000 wounded. There is not in our country one
single family which during the forty-one months of the war had not
placed in the holocaust, on the altar of the country, a part of itself.
I know every day, ten years later, that the mutilated, the wounded, the
widows and orphans of war form a vast proportion of our population,
inspiring the respect and homage of the multitude.
I never forget. We have gone through a thousand phases of internal
troubles, from aberrations to a purifying revolution, yet—from Mount
Stelvio to the sea, in our mountain cemeteries which the hand of time
slowly effaces—there remains the most powerful citadel of the fortune
of our nation and of our people. I never forget.
I had been the most tenacious believer in the war. I had fought with
all my warm soul of Italian and soldier. I lived the joy of victory.
I lived in the midst of the unrest of after-war. But in every event,
happy or sad, I have always had as a touchstone, as a lighthouse, as
a source of every advice and of deep wisdom, the memory of the dead.
They are from every region and from every walk of life, even those who
were under foreign yoke or emigrated to other countries. They gave
their blood and were willing to offer the supreme sacrifice for the
mother country. Until the time when a nation has the right of sitting
with proud head among other nations, the surest sign of its strength,
the highest title of its nobility, the vital food needed to reach
greatness, will always be given by those who laid down their blood and
life for their immortal country.
These are the marks that war made upon one’s body, one’s mind and one’s
soul.
Above all, it gave to one, who was still young, an understanding of the
essences of mankind.
CHAPTER V
ASHES AND EMBERS
The flame of war flickered and went out. But the years 1919 and 1920
that immediately followed the end of the war seemed to me the darkest
and most painful periods of Italian life. Dark thunderclouds hung
above our unity. The progress of Italy’s unification was threatened. I
watched the gathering storm.
Already disquieting events had menaced our national life. They were
due to political happenings, even more than to an economic crisis. I
point to the movement of the Sicilian Gasei in 1894 and the bloody
demonstration in Milan in 1898. But these manifestations of rebellion
were localized. Not one of them bore in it the virile germs of
dissolution or of separatism. But I assert that the episodes of 1919
and 1920 had in them bacilli which if not treated heroically are deadly
for the life of a civilized nation.
Everything was discussed again. We Italians opened the box of political
problems and took apart the social clockwork. We pawed over everything
from the crown to parliament, from the army to our colonies, from
capitalistic property to the communistic soviet proposal for the
federation of the regions of Italy, from schools to the papacy.
The lovely structure of concord and harmony that we combatants and the
wounded had dreamed that we would build after the luminous victory of
October, 1918, was falling to pieces. The leaves were falling from our
tree of idealism.
I felt that we were left without any cohesive force, any suggestive
heroism, any remembrance, any political philosophy, sufficient to
overcome and stop the factors of dissolution. I sensed the chills and
heats of decay and destruction.
Already in January, 1919, the Socialists, slightly checked during the
war, began, the moment the ink was drying on the armistice, their work
of rebellion and blackmail. From Milan the socialistic municipality
sent a special mission of help to the so-called brothers in Vienna.
Sickly internationalism put forth its buds in this morbid springtime.
At Triest the socialist Pittoni played an important part in the
reorganization of the delivered city. In many Italian cities poor
children of the old enemy Austrian and Hapsburg capital were asked
to take precedence. It was a provoking sentimentality. A desire was
already clear in the minds of subversives and of Liberal-Giolittians;
it was to strike out of our memories the sense and feeling of our
victory.
I knew those who whipped up our degeneration. They were German and
Austrian spies, Russian agitators, mysterious subventions. In a few
months they had led the Italian people into a state of marasmus. The
economic crisis existing in every corner of the world could not be
expected to spare Italy. The soldiers, like myself, returning from
the war, rushed to their families. Who can describe our feelings?
Such an imposing phenomenon as the demobilization of millions of men
took place in the dark, without noise, in an atmosphere of throwing
discipline to the winds. There were, for us, the troubles of winter and
the difficulties of finding new garments and adjustments for peace.
We suffered the humiliation of seeing the banners of our glorious
regiments returned to their homes without being saluted, without
that warm cheer of sympathy owed to those who return from victorious
war. Now it again appeared to me and to my friends as if there was
in everybody an instinct to finish the game of the war, not with the
idea of real victory but with content that we had lost as little as
possible. Ears and spirits were ready to listen to words of peace, of
humanity, of brotherhood between the nations. At night before sleep
came I used to meditate and realize that we had no dam to stop this
general decay of faith, this renunciation of the interests and destiny
of a victorious nation. The sense of destruction penetrated very
quickly and deeply the spirit of all classes. Certainly the central
government was no dike to prevent the flood of weakness.
Politicians and philosophers, profiteers and losers—for at least many
had lost their illusions—sharks trying to save themselves; promoters of
the war trying to be pardoned; demagogues seeking popularity; spies and
instigators of trouble waiting for the price of their treason; agents
paid by foreign money in a few months threw the nation into an awful
spiritual crisis. I saw before me with awe the gathering dusk of
our end as a nation and a people.
With my heart in tumult and with a deep sense of bitterness corroding
my soul, I could smell the danger. Some audacious men were with me—not
many. My action was at first tied to the urgent duty to fight against
one important and dark treason. Certain Italians, blinded and having
lost their memories, were led on by some complicity and selfish desires
among the Allies. These Italians were actually setting themselves
against the mother country. Dalmatia, Italian in its origin, ardent
as a saint in its faith, had been recognized to be ours by the pact
of London; Dalmatia had waited for the victorious war with years of
passion, and holding in its bosom still the remains of Venice and of
Rome, was now lopped off from our unity. The politics of renunciation,
helped by foreigners, galloped forward. Wilson was the distiller or
supporter of theoretical formulas. He could not comprehend Italian life
or history. By his unconscious aid this treason to us was nourished.
Fiume, the sacrificed town, whose people called desperately for Italy
in its manifestations in the public squares, who sent pleading missions
to our military chiefs, was occupied by corps of international troops.
We were about to lose another war trophy—the Austrian navy. Sesana,
twenty kilometers from Triest, was discussed as a possible frontier!
I said then that never in the life of any nation on the day after
victory had there been a more odious tragedy than that of this silly
renunciation. In the first months of 1919, Italy, led on by
politicians like Nitti and Albertini Salvemini, had only one frantic
wish that I could see—it was to destroy every gain of victorious
struggle. Its only dedication was to a denial of the borders and soil
extent of the nation. It forgot our 600,000 dead and our 1,000,000
wounded. It made waste of their generous blood. These leaders wanted
to satisfy foreign impulses of doubtful origin and doctrines brewed of
poisons. This attempt at matricide of the motherland was abetted by
Italians of perverted intellect and by professional socialists. Toward
both, later on, the Fascist revolution showed so much forbearance that
it was more than generosity.
I was snatched up in this fight against the returning beast of
decadence. I was for our sacred rights to our own territories.
Therefore I had to neglect in a degree the petty internal political
life that was floundering in bewilderment and wallowing in disorder. On
the international playground the stake was higher. One had to remain
on the field to save what could be saved. As to internal politics, I
knew very well that a strong government would quickly put in order
the Socialists and the anarchists, the decadents and wreckers and the
instigators of disorder. I knew at first hand their soul. It has always
been the same at all times, in all ages—it is the spirit of coward
wolves and ferocious sheep.
And thus one day, a few months after the Armistice, I saw at Milan a
fact more disquieting and more important than I thought possible. I
saw a Socialist procession, with an endless number of red flags, with
thirty bands, with ensigns cursing the war. I saw a river in the
street made of women, children, Russians, Germans, and Austrians,
flowing through the town upward and downward from the popular quarters
to those of the centre, and finally dispersing at one of the most
central points of the town, at the amphitheater of the Arena. They had
had numerous meetings. They clamored for amnesty for the deserters!
They demanded the division of the land!
Milan was then considered, more than now, the city where the pulse
of the working nation could be felt. Milan, where I had labored with
ideals, had experienced in 1914 and in the first months of 1915 epic
days for the war. The city always had a strong and gallant spirit. In
it citizenship was more active than in many other parts of the country.
It had known how to prepare itself with dignity to sustain war effort.
And now, after the triumph, even this town, the town of the 10,000
volunteers, seemed to yield itself to a disease.
This procession I said was an evidence of the deep mire in which all
the classes of the population were sinking, especially those belonging
to the _populari_. As the procession passed through the streets the
bourgeois—the shopkeepers, the hotel keepers—hastily closed their
windows and doors. They pulled down the roller blinds.
“There,” said I, “are eyes closing with the weariness of anxiety and
fear.”
Naturally enough, the revolutionists, observing their effect, puffed
up with new braggart triumph. Not a single force, _interventista_ or
any other, set foot in the street to stop the irresponsibles. The
beloved tricolor flag of Italy was taken as a mark. It was hastily
taken off balconies!
I remember an episode in the shame of those days; a woman, a
school-teacher in the popular quarters, ran to the defense of the
Italian flag. Risking her life, she stood with blazing eyes against a
herd of communists. You may be sure that in the period of redemption
and resurrection, when we stood upright again, the golden medal for
valor was bestowed on this woman of saintly courage.
The _Popolo d’Italia_, of which I was the founder and editor, lived
then its life of intense polemics. Every day was a battle. The little
street of Via Paolo da Conuobio was constantly blocked by police or
by detachments of _carabinieri_ and soldiers. All the staff were
guarded whenever we appeared in public. One could understand that the
government was anxious about us. The authorities wanted to control
all that the _Popolo d’Italia_ was doing and to curb all agitation
for virile methods in the political struggle. The censorship was
re-established exclusively and solely for the _Popolo d’Italia_.
Through a back-door channel a disgusting Socialist deputy tried also to
bring about an inquiry. His proposal was ridiculed out of the door.
I wrote, on the next day after the Procession of the Defeat of Milan,
an article the title of which was taken from a famous polemical book of
Giordano Bruno—“Against the Return of the Beast.”
That article was published in the _Popolo d’Italia_ on the
eighteenth of February and ended in these precise words:
If the opposition to a war that is not only finished but was
victorious is now a pretext for an ignoble doubt, then we who are
not ashamed to have been _interventiste_, but feel the glory of our
position, will shout to the heavens, “Stand back, you jackals!” No
one shall separate the dead. They constitute a sacred heap, as big
as a gigantic pyramid that touches the skies, a heap that belongs
to nobody; nobody can give or take away from the dead. They do not
belong to any party; they belong to the eternal motherland. They
belong to a humanity too complex and too august to be put into any
wine club or into the back room of some co-operative. This political
stew is supremely ignominious. Must we be forced to defend our dead
from filthy profanation? Oh, Toti! Roman! One man! Thy life and thy
death is worth infinitely more than the whole Italian socialism! And
you files on parade—innumerable heroes that wanted the war, knowing
how to want war; who went to war knowing what was war; who went to
death knowing what it meant to go to death—you, Decio Raggi, Filippo
Corridoni, Cesare Battisti, Luigi Lori, Venezian, Sauro, Rismondi,
Cantucci—you thousands and thousands of others that form the superb
constellation of Italian heroism—don’t you feel that the pack of
jackals is trying to rummage your bones? Do they want to scrape the
earth that was soaked with your blood and to spit on your sacrifice?
Fear nothing, glorious spirits! Our task has just begun. No harm shall
befall you. We shall defend you. We shall defend the dead, and all the
dead, even though we put dugouts in the public squares and trenches in
the streets of our city.
That was a warning blast—a trumpet call. Many, hit in the face,
fled. Some around us, trembling, thought of the danger that they
might get into on account of such a polemic. But some others—not
many—gathered around the old banner of my newspaper.
It was necessary to organize our resistance, to take care in
discussions of international character, to strengthen our position on
the front of internal politics, to be guarded from false friends, to
fight false pacifists and to confound the false humanitarians. We had
to make a general assault upon all that bundle of various degenerate
tendencies;, diverse in their appearance but absolutely identical in
their utter failure to understand the logical and absolute meaning of
the victory in war.
Our delegation in Paris was in a sorry strait. The ability and the
injustice of some of the Allied statesmen had almost strangled it.
Owing to our internal situation, it was impossible for our delegation
to take a firm stand with feet well-planted. The regions to be restored
to Italy were in a state of restlessness that made many of us anxious.
What a grave moment! An action of a handful of us on the public square
was not sufficient; there were so many different fronts where one had
to fight. We who were to defend Italy from within had to create one
more unbreakable unity of strength, a common denominator of all the old
pro-war partisans and loyalists, of all those who felt, like myself,
desperately Italian. Then it was that I decided, after days and nights
of reflection, to make a call through the medium of my newspaper for a
full stop in the stumbling career toward chaos.
And on the twenty-third of March, 1919, I laid down the fundamental
basis, at Milan, of the Italian _fasci di combattimento_—the fighting
Fascist programme.
The first meeting of the Italian battle Fascists took place on the
Piazza S. Sepolero in Milan. It was in a hall offered to us by the
Milan Association of Merchants and Shopkeepers. The permission was
granted after a long discussion among the managers of the association.
Common sense prevailed in the end; a guaranty was given that no noise
or disorder would occur. On that condition we got what we wanted.
The meeting was of a purely political character. I had advertised in
the _Popolo d’Italia_ that it would have for its object the foundation
of a new movement and the establishment of a programme and of methods
of action for the success of the battle I was intending to fight
against the forces dissolving victory and the nation.
I prepared the atmosphere of that memorable meeting by editorials and
summonses published in the _Popolo d’Italia_. Anyhow, the ones that
came were not numerous. One of my fighting friends of good will was in
the hall and he took the names of those who were willing to sign up.
After two days of discussion, fifty-four persons signed our programme
and took the pledge to be faithful to the fundamental basis of our
movement.
I speak of movement and not of party, because my conception always was
that Fascism must assume the characteristics of being anti-party. It
was not to be tied to old or new schools of any kind. The name Italian
Fighting Fascisti was lucky. It was most appropriate to a political
action that had to face all the old parasites and programmes that had
tried to deprave Italy. I felt that it was not only the anti-socialist
battle we had to fight; this was only a battle on the way. There
was a lot more to do. All the conceptions of the so-called historical
parties seemed to be dresses out of measure, shape, style, usefulness.
They had grown tawdry and insufficient—unable to keep pace with the
rising tide of unexpected political exigencies, unable to adjust to the
formation of new history and new conditions of modern life.
The old parties clung in vain to the rattling programmes. These
parties had to make pitiful repairs and tinkerings in an attempt
to adapt their theories as best they could to the new days. It was
therefore not sufficient to create—as some have said superficially—an
anti-altar to the altar of socialism. It was necessary to imagine a
wholly new political conception, adequate to the living reality of the
twentieth century, overcoming at the same time the ideological worship
of liberalism, the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted
democracies, and finally the violently Utopian spirit of Bolshevism.
In a word, I felt the deep necessity of an original conception capable
of placing in a new period of history a more fruitful rhythm of human
life.
It was necessary to lay the foundation of a new civilization.
To this end—through every day’s observation of events and change,
morning and evening, in vigor and in weariness—I aimed all my strength.
I had a perfect and sure consciousness of the end I was driving at.
This was my problem—to find the way, to find the moment, to find the
form.
Those discussions over which I presided and dominated strengthened
some of my conceptions that still conserve to-day the freshness of the
original idea. Later, in this review of my life until now, I shall take
up some of the details of the evolution of our plans. At our meetings
there were present various elements—syndicalists, old interventionists,
demobilized officers still in uniform, and many _arditi_, those brave
grenade-and-knife shock troops of the war.
The Italian _arditi_ were a creation of the war. The idea was born in
Garibaldi’s impetuous, fighting vigor and dash, and finds its remote
origin in the heroic city militias that flourished in many parts of
Italy at the happy time of the townships—the communes. The _arditi_
rendered first-class service during the war. They were our troops of
assault, of the first rush. They threw themselves into the battle with
bombs in hands, with daggers in the teeth, with a supreme contempt for
death, singing their magnificent war hymns. There was in them not only
the sense of heroism but an indomitable will.
This typically Italian formation lived on after the war. The first
fighting Fascisti were formed mostly of decided men. They were full
of will and courage. In the first years of the anti-socialist,
anti-communist struggle, the _arditi_ war veterans played an important
role. I was several times nominated their chief and still hold the
title of honorary president of the _Arditi_ association, which has
assumed now a purely relief character, with the idea of maintaining
intact its spirit of civic and military virtues.
Those who came to the meeting for the constitution of the Italian
Fascisti of Combat used few words. They did not exhaust themselves
by laying out dreams. Their aim seemed clear and straight-lined. It
was to defend the victory at any price, to maintain intact the sacred
memory of the dead, and the admiration not only for those who fell and
for the families of those who were dead but for the mutilated, for the
invalids, for all those who had fought. The prevalent note, however,
was of anti-socialist character, and as a political aspiration, it was
hoped a new Italy would be created that would know how to give value
to the victory and to fight with all its strength against treason and
corruption, against decay within and intrigue and avarice from without.
There are some who profess not to understand what Fascismo had as
its intent, and some who believe that it grew without a gardener. I
was certain at the time that it was necessary to fix, without any
possibility of equivocation, the essential brand of the new movement.
For this reason I made three planks for our platform. The first was the
following:
The meeting of the twenty-third of March sends its first greeting and
reverent thought to the sons of Italy who died for the greatness of
their country and for the freedom of the world; to the mutilated and
to the invalids, to all those who fought, to the ex-prisoners who
fulfilled their duty. It declares itself ready to uphold with all its
energy the material and moral claims that will be put forward by the
associations of those who fought.
The second declaration pledged the Fascisti of Combat to oppose
themselves to the imperialism of any other countries damaging to
Italy. It accepted the supreme postulates of the League of Nations
regarding Italy. It affirmed the necessity to complete the stability
of our frontiers between the Alps and the Adriatic with the claim of
annexation of Fiume and of Dalmatia.
The third declaration spoke of the elections that were announced for
the near future. In this motion the Fasci di Combattimento pledged
themselves to fight with all their means the candidates that were
milk-and-water Italians, to whatever party they belonged.
Finally we talked of organization—the organization that would be
adapted to the new movement. I did not favor any bureaucratic
cut-and-dried organization. It was thought wise that in every big town
the correspondent of the _Popolo d’Italia_ should be the organizer of
a section of the Fasci di Combattimento, with the idea that each group
should become a centre of Fascist ideas, work and action. The first
expenses—amounting to a few thousand lire—were covered by the feeble
resources of the _Popolo d’Italia_. A central committee was formed to
guide the whole movement.
It is amusing for me to recall that this meeting remained almost
unnoticed. The stupid irony of the Socialists and the narrow-minded
incomprehensiveness of the Italian Liberal party could not grasp its
significance.
The _Corriere della Sera_, that great liberal newspaper, dedicated to
this news about twenty lines in its columns!
The internal situation in Italian politics and Italian policy continued
to be nebulous and full of uncertainty.
Disillusion and the shattering of ideals could be noticed, even
among those who had fought. A sense of weariness dominated all
classes—every one. The Church, which had put herself apart during the
great European conflict, now started activity in order to have her
voice listened to at the peace negotiations and to have a say about all
the questions that interested the nations that had taken part in the
war.
So far as our national life was concerned, the Church limited her
action to the creation of the Partito Popolare—the so-called Popular,
or Catholic, party. It was faithful to some important programme points
regarding the family and religion and the nation. It represented
at that time an attempt to stop the prevalent diffusion of those
Bolshevik ideas of socialistic parliamentary systems that were then
disintegrating Rome and the provinces. But the Partito Popolare itself
ran off the rails and jumped the fences; it tried to compete with the
Socialists themselves. Of little and doubtful patriotic faith, it ran
square against the Fascisti and the _interventisti_. The Popular party,
along with the others, was too much in a hurry to close the parenthesis
of the war.
Political riots, disturbances and strikes took place alternately in a
kind of sickly rotation in every Italian city.
It is necessary for me to review the conditions which we faced.
Orlando, president of the council, was incapacitated by temperament
to dominate the internal situation, just as he was unable to be a
master in foreign affairs. His work was contradictory, full of
false sentimentality and failure to comprehend the real interests of
Italy. Not knowing French, and ignorant of the treaties concluded with
the Allied nations, Orlando, in spite of the presence of Sonnino, was
a disastrous influence during the peace negotiations at Versailles.
Wilson, so far as Italy was concerned, was ambiguous—so much so that on
the twenty-third of April the Italian delegation had to leave Paris.
It returned on the fifth of May—a dubious situation. In June, after a
vote of the chamber, the Orlando cabinet retired. In the meantime—also
in June—serious clashes took place at Fiume between French sailors and
Italian soldiers.
Never did Italy have a man so damaging to the Italian interests and
programmes as he who came next—Nitti.
He was and remains a personality that is the negation of any ideal of
life and of manly conflict. He has a fairly good knowledge of finances.
He is impudent in his assertions. He is intensely egocentric. He always
wants to play the most important part in cabinets, whether he is
president of the council or simply a minister.
His first act when he came into power was the granting of an amnesty.
This amnesty was followed by two others. The first had a character of
general principle and I approved it, but by granting the two others
Nitti committed a great moral crime, for he abolished the difference
between those who wore the ensigns of valor in sacrifice and those who
had basely betrayed the nation during the war and even had gone
over to the enemy!
All the work of Nitti was fish-bait for the approbation of the
Socialists. He conceived the ambition of holding the presidency of a
future Italian republic. His measures, which wore demagogic dress, did
not prevent disorders or devastations sometimes brought about with
the cost of lives. He never would face Bolshevism and the dissolutive
forces in the open field. He had a decree issued and signed by the King
establishing the price of bread; he had it withdrawn on the next day
and replaced by another decree, also signed by His Majesty.
There was no point in the national life that he failed to bring up
for discussion. All this puffed up the Socialists. They laughed in
their sleeves as they foresaw a strong political success for them at
the elections. The elections had to take place under the proportional
system! The Socialists would become, through the election battle,
masters of Italian political life!
It seemed to me that the season was our summer of torment and resolve.
In June, 1919, the Treaty of Peace with Germany was consummated at
Versailles. The event for Europe was the end of a nightmare. The
continual disillusionments, the reservations and the protests of
Germany and the diatribes between the Allies constituted a permanent
danger and a reason for anxiety for many nations. The conclusion of the
treaty was therefore for them a liberation.
For Italy, on the contrary, it was a complete shattering of ideals. We
had won the war; we were utterly defeated in the diplomatic battle.
We were losing—except Zara—the whole of Dalmatia, our land by tradition
and history, by manners and costumes, by the language spoken and by the
ardent and constant aspirations of the Dalmatians toward the mother
country. Fiume, most Italian of cities, was contested. The colonial
problem was resolved for us in an absolutely negative way. To a nation
like ours, powerful and prolific, that has a need of raw materials, of
outlets, of markets and of land, on account of the exuberance of its
population, only some insignificant rectifications of frontiers were
granted when the glut of colonial spoil was passed around.
I could feel the discontent oozing down through our masses and
infecting the _combattenti_ themselves. Once more Italy, who had thrown
into the conflict men, means, patrimony and youth, went out of a peace
settlement with empty hands and manifold disillusions.
The Nitti government, with its continuous note of pessimism, was
doing no better than to describe our situation as near to bankruptcy,
economic as well as political! Nitti himself, his newspapers and his
acolytes, tried to make the Italian people believe that the Versailles
Treaty was for us the best result obtainable. A sense of humiliation
had crawled over our whole peninsula, but many there were who did not
want to resign themselves to accept the tragic facts. No one knows
better than I that many meditated, in sullen silence, most desperate
actions.
The government was watching the turn of the psychological tide, while
in the practical field it did not know what to do except to prepare
and revise the mechanism of an election law by a vicious proportional
system. In the field of destruction it reached an unbelievable decision
to demobilize the aviation camps, and to cap the climax, in August,
1919, the report of the Commission of Inquiry on the painful episode of
Caporetto was published.
I thought to myself, “This is fat on the fire!” The _Avanti_, a
socialist newspaper that for the time being was published in three
editions—one at Turin, one at Rome and one at Milan—had started
a ferocious campaign against the army. On account of a strike of
typographers, the _Avanti_ was the only newspaper published in Rome
for two months! During street demonstrations, officers, merely because
they were in uniform, were insulted and assaulted. Charity toward
the dignity of the nation prevents my presentation of episodes that
now make the worst blackguards blush. The few Fascist! that had
accomplished an act of faith in March, 1919, now met in all their
work enormous difficulties. They were isolated, attacked, spied upon,
sometimes by the subversives, sometimes by the government.
Every day in the _Popolo d’Italia_ I wrote about the painful bath of
fire of the _combattenti_, about the inflamed pride of the volunteers,
about the necessity of concord, about the sordid hostility of the
government that did not feel the beauty and the greatness of the sense
of patriotic heroism. Gabriele D’Annunzio, the poet, who lived in
Rome, wrote that his approbation “of my good shots was trembling with
admiration.”
Victory was losing her laurel leaves every day in spite of all.
The national parliament was discussing and approving the new election
laws. Disorders and blackmailing of the government were on the daily
calendar. The debates had a character of pettiness and gossip and the
flavor of a base world that knew nothing of war, virtue or heroism.
“Elections! Elections! Elections!” thought I. “These constitute
the only subject that is able to rise to its feet in the Italian
parliament!”
Incidents had taken place at Fiume between Italians and French sailors,
and the population of that city did not hide its growing hostility
toward the Allies. The latter therefore planned to have the city
garrisoned by a mixed corps of their troops. So Fiume, a city purely
of virile Italian stamp, had a mosaic of troops. It was the summit of
inefficiency and, what is more, of stupidity.
D’Annunzio, who was trembling in his solitude, told me that he
contemplated with grim brooding the taking of Fiume by force. There was
no other way of salvation. Everything seemed to be lost. There were
only a handful of men with the poet. But they were the most trustworthy
elements of our army. They were old volunteers. They were Fascists
who felt once again in the incandescent atmosphere of the streets of
Rome and other cities the poetry of the war and of the victory. They
started, armed, from Ronchi.
The occupation of Fiume, at the moment when the English sailors
were getting ready to evacuate it, was rapid and startling. The
government, as soon as it knew the truth, wanted to rush to offset the
raid. It meditated a blockade, it sent thunder against the rebels.
But D’Annunzio and his legionaries, having prepared their action in
silence, now threw down a gauntlet of audacious challenge to the
Nittian triflings.
Gabriele d’Annunzio, before starting from Ronchi, wrote me the
following letter:
_Dear Companion:_ The dice are on the table. To-morrow I shall take
Fiume with force of arms. The God of Italy assist us!
I arise from bed with fever. But it is impossible to delay. Once more
the spirit dominates the miserable flesh.
Sum up the article that the _Gazetta del Popolo_ will publish; give
the end in full.
Sustain the cause without stint during the conflict.
I embrace you,
11 September, 1919. Gabrielle d’Annunzio.
The Italian atmosphere, so long checked and humiliated, exploded like
Vesuvius after the announcement of the new D’Annunzio gesture. Again
we heard the tune of high sentiments of fraternity and of enthusiasm.
Again we felt the spirit of May, 1915. The best of our manhood felt the
breath of poetry that came from this sacred liberation carried on in
the face of the policy of the Nittian government.
The Fascisti were amongst the ardent legionaries of Fiume, while at
home they were leading resistance against the defeatists, old and
new. The Italian colonists all over the world—these colonists who had
followed with anxiety and with unspeakable fright the negotiations
of Versailles—sent money in great quantity for D’Annunzio’s
expedition. Fiume felt an intuition of its salvation. There were
manifestations of frantic enthusiasm. Audacity had repaired injustice;
the city was strongly held, so that it could resist by force of arms
and with courage all the Nittian or international interference.
The president of the council, Nitti, in parliament on this occasion,
took an ignoble attitude. He summoned up the dangerous idea of protest
by a general strike. By his ambiguous language he invited the classes
which leaned toward socialism, and especially the Socialists and
radicals themselves, to agitate for street demonstrations against
D’Annunzio’s enterprise.
Nitti, after conversations with Trumbic, the Jugo-Slav minister, saw
all his tangled and slimy net of humiliating understandings going to
pieces through the will of a few brave boys.
Nitti thought and acted only as a consequence of physical fear.
Attacked full front and exasperated in his mad and miserable dream,
he plotted with every means to overcome the resistance of the Fiumean
legionaries. The soldiers were declared deserters. The city was
blockaded so that economic pressure would squeeze the spirit of the
citizens. Parliament was closed and the elections were fixed for
November 16, 1919, under the troublesome proportional system.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Brown Brothers._
Commander Gabriele d’Annunzio.
]
The elections re-established, for a moment, an apparent truce. Every
party wanted to measure the masses and the groupings. The Socialists,
who were speculating on the misfortunes of the war and were pointing
to the danger of another war due to the D’Annunzian enterprise, were
the favorites. The Church, which in politics always has an ambiguous
attitude, urged on the activity of the priests in the villages so that
the Partito Popolare, which had been created originally by the lay
Catholics, in service of the church policy, might play the preponderant
part in parliament. The Liberals, Democrats and some radicals built up
a block that passed under the name of the Forces of Order. They were
changeable forces, without any ideal base and without precise aims.
They were another grouping among groupings whose futilities I had
observed for years.
I wanted the Fascisti to try alone the chance of the elections. We
did not ally ourselves with any other party, even with the nearest
to them—the Nationalists. The atmosphere was against us, but it was
necessary to count our own heads. It was necessary to know, even
through the means of elections, what point had been reached by the
Italian nation in moral disintegration and in moral reawakening as a
victorious nation. I created an electoral committee with little means,
but with ample courage. I ordered meetings for the principal towns of
Italy and especially in Milan.
I remember so vividly the meeting on the Piazza Beligioioso. How
typical it was! The place was a lonesome corner of old Milan, where
from a camion that was used for a tribune on a dark night, by the light
of torches, I addressed a big, closely pressed crowd. They were people
not only from Milan but from other towns. The Fascisti of Bologna,
of Turin, of Rome and of Naples had in fact sent their representatives
in order to have precise rules and sure orders for the impending
electoral battle.
I made on this occasion some declarations of principles that still
stand in the Fascist line. They have served me as a guide in all my
political actions.
I said that revolutions were not to be denied _a priori_; that they
might be discussed. I said that the Italian people could not copy
Russian Bolshevism. We have in the history of our political struggles
our own elements of greatness of concept. These have given to the
spirit of the time all the strength of their Italian genius and the
qualities of their Italian courage.
“If a revolution,” said I, “has to take place, it is necessary to make
one typically Italian, on the magnificent dimensions of the ideas of
Mazzini and with the spirit of Carlo Pisacane.”
I had already in my mind, clear and strong, the concept of complete
rebellion against the decrepit old state that did not of itself know
how to die.
The elections of the sixteenth of November took place and the
Fascisti were beaten. I faced, and all of us faced, complete
defeat. Not one of us had the necessary votes to become a member of
parliament. Some Nationalists saved themselves in Rome and were later
excellent interpreters of the national idea in the wallow of general
bewilderment. At Milan, I was a long way off from the number of votes
necessary to be elected. It was tragic, our record, but in the passage
of time it is amusing and may be remembered by all losers.
Our uneasiness was now profound. The crowd was anti-Fascist. Under the
skin of the population a sad illusion was being fed; in their minds a
dark hope was stirring. The coming of Bolshevism! The plan for seizing
the means of production, the installation of the soviets in Italy!
The _Avanti_ had already published the general scheme and its details.
My defeat did not bother me out of any personal consideration. It gave
me a clear and precise idea of the desperateness of our situation. The
Socialist newspaper wrote on that occasion a short notice about me: “A
dead body has been fished up from the Naviglio.” It was said in this
note that in the night, in the modest Naviglio canal that cuts Milan in
two, a dead body had been picked up. According to the documents they
said it could be identified as the dead body of Benito Mussolini—his
political corpse. They did not say that its eyes were gazing ahead.
Amidst the general feast of their victory the Socialists did not forget
to imitate a regular funeral. This parade passed through the streets
with a coffin, surrounded with burning candles. There were ribald
psalms on the air. The strange procession, however, showed the distress
and shoddiness of its ranks; it passed up and down the city of Milan—a
city that had become now the absolute property of the Socialists.
The procession passed under the windows of my house, where my family
was living in anxiety amidst the general anxieties and with violence
trembling in the air. I have not forgotten the episode, but I always
see it in its frame—the frame of the misery and of the threadbareness
of the paraders.
The elections had given 150 seats to the Socialists in parliament.
They were themselves frightened by their staggering success. The
situation was saved by the South of Italy—always more faithful to men
than to organized mass parties.
The victory, of course, swelled up in most Socialists a desire to
dominate. It distended their impudent abuse of power. Enormous
processions with red flags, howling in the streets, strikes called not
for protest but for celebration, occupied a whole week.
At Milan a crowd of 30,000 demanded that the red flag should be exposed
on the Municipal building. During the cock-crowing over victory, all
institutions, rules and regulations and orderly life were upset.
Nobody thought about work. That last of all! Only an audacious handful
formed by Fascisti, _arditis_ and Fiumean elements resisted the
intoxication. An incident was provoked because of this. Bombs were
thrown, a few were killed and many wounded. A commission of Socialist
members of parliament, headed by Filippo Turati, marched up the stairs
of the Prefetura, the governor’s office of Milan, to claim my arrest
and the arrest of the Fascisti chiefs.
That was an episode of political partisanship useless and evil. The
authorities showed weakness and fear. They wanted to give satisfaction
to the Socialists. But my clear and straight-lined political action did
not suffer from this abuse of power. Having been let out after only one
day of imprisonment, I consulted with my associates as to the whole
work before us. What should we do now? How could we act before the
damage to Italy became irreparable?
The electoral tragedy had broken up our central committees. Many of
us had been arrested; many, threatened, had disappeared. Little by
little, calm having been restored, I rewove at the _Popolo d’Italia_
the fabric of our cause and tried to build again the structure of
our organization. In various meetings I explained the gravity of the
Italian situation. I spoke independently of the particular attitude of
the Fascisti.
The victory of the Socialists was a danger, not so much because of the
fact itself as because of the phenomenal retreat to their holes of all
the weak and the incapables which followed the day after the Socialist
victory. That victory crushed the Liberals and the Democrats. For some
time a low furtive literature of propaganda had spread stories about
disquieting episodes in the defeated German and Austrian countries.
This literature spun narratives about professors obliged to become
servants and scullions, Russian princesses engaged as ballet dancers,
generals who were selling matches on the streets. All this put together
with the Socialist victory produced a wave of fright in all classes,
and I could see a serious fact of corruption and political paralysis.
The old parties had been beaten by pussyfoot socialism. That socialism
had no aim. It was victorious only through cowardice in the others and
because of the general uneasiness in the population. Certainly it did
not win on any declaration of a great faith.
I did not fold under the smallest edge of my flag. From my
editor’s office that was getting barer and barer, to my readers that
were getting fewer and fewer, I addressed the most bitter and severe
exhortations to resist, resist, resist.
I made a little fortress out of the editor’s office. The newspaper was
sequestrated and censored every day; but notwithstanding difficulties
and lack of means, I succeeded in keeping the little paper alive. I was
throttled by the skinny hand of poverty. I could have sold out, but I
held on.
So that I might be completely withdrawn from circulation, various
messengers of the Nittian government came to me advising me to go and
study the autonomous republics of Southern Russia. I understood the
double game. They acted with me as they acted with D’Annunzio when they
advised him to try the flight from Rome to Tokio. But D’Annunzio was
now still resisting at Fiume, and I, with my newspaper, was renewing
and reassembling the dispersed ranks of the Fascisti. I held meetings
constantly. Not for a moment did I cease my activity. It cannot be said
that I failed to look the triumphant beast in the face.
One day, just after the elections, I had to go personally because of
postal regulations to the money-order window of the main post office in
Milan. I was to receive some considerable contributions that Italians
from oversea colonies were sending for the Fiume enterprise. In the
huge buildings of the Central Post Office one could still see visible
signs of the elections—the murmur of the discussions, the stenciled
inscriptions on the walls were all there. I presented myself with
my brother, Arnaldo, at the window of the money-order office.
The Bolshevik clerk, with evident irony, said I had to make myself
known. He did not know any “certain Benito Mussolini.” A short
discussion arose that attracted other Bolshevik elements, who amused
themselves by affirming that nobody knew Benito Mussolini. The
development of this discussion, impudently provoking, was stopped by
an old clerk of the post office, a faithful servant of the state who
certainly was not intoxicated by the Socialist success.
He said, “Pay this money transfer. Do not be silly. Mussolini has a
name that is not only known now here but will be known and judged all
over the world.”
I have never learned the name of this gentleman. He was straight and
fair.
Some symptoms of reaction against the Socialist victory were to be
noticed now. One day at the editor’s office of the newspaper, facing
the anxieties of my associates and the doubts of some half-hearted ones
in my service, I felt it necessary to disclose my own hopes and faiths:
“Don’t fear. Italy will heal herself from this illness. But without our
watchfulness it might be deadly. We will resist! Resist! I should say
so! Indeed, within two years I will have my turn!”
CHAPTER VI
THE DEATH STRUGGLE OF A WORN-OUT DEMOCRACY
I have little doubt that all inefficient party and parliamentary
governments die from the same causes and with the same, typical
mannerisms of decay.
I have watched one die and have been present to hear the raucous
drawings of its last breaths. But these were times which tried the
souls of us. We saw passing before our eyes the dreadful panorama of
chaos and of evil forces which had broken into a gallop, ridiculous to
behold, tragic beyond words to one who loved his country. Above all,
these forces were trivial and insincere.
The political elections of November 16, 1919, had painted and glossed
over Italian political life with a mere veneer of quiet. Not one of
the weighty problems of domestic or foreign policy for which a quick,
brave solution was needed had yet even been put under the microscope
for study. Everything was boiled up in the joust of political parties.
There was the usual seething of inconsequential prophecy about the new
ministerial combinations.
The Socialists dominated the scene. They continually harassed the
government, while it was concerned on account of the attitude of the
extreme left—communists.
The occasion of the crown speech, at the beginning of the twenty-first
legislature, was upon us. For this ceremony there had been some worry
on the part of Nitti. He tried to hold the Socialists in check. But
they could not help showing their cold hostility to the king. I was
told in advance that they would refuse to be present in the hall during
the king’s speech.
On the day of the opening of the chamber, when the king was solemnly
entering the Hall of Parliament, what was the demonstration? The
Socialists made a parade of their pinks in their buttonholes and went
out in groups, singing the Hymn of Workers and the Internationale.
With them, making a clumsy show of doubtful political taste, filed the
Republicans, the Independents, and members of the Left.
The speech of the crown did not take a clear position against the
subversive forces which were menacing nothing less than our whole
national unity. It forgot the question of Fiume—a torch which held
out a flame for our national spirit. The speech even renounced
some sovereign prerogatives. It conceded a good share of the crown
patrimony, in behalf of the war veterans, combatants and wounded, for
they also were full of evident signs of restlessness. Furthermore, in
a period when foreign policies were in a snarl and the economic crisis
serious indeed, I could see little else besides the petty shifts and
maneuvers of parliamentary cloakrooms and corridors in the same old
disgusting struggle to grab places in the Ministry.
During the first three months the Ministry of Nitti fell three times at
the chamber. It outlived itself and then succeeded itself.
The _Stampa_ an old Piedmont newspaper, liberal in character, began to
be willing to indict the war. It began an attempt to carry in triumph
the very man who was the breeder and teacher of neutrality—Giovanni
Giolitti. The Church, together with the Popular party, wanted to draw
the utmost profit from the abnormal situation. The Socialists revealed
themselves very badly prepared for their victory. Victory had only set
them down in a marsh of trouble; I knew that they could not create an
equilibrium between the communists and the extreme right. On one side
it was the nation; on the other politics—inefficient, empty politics.
Meanwhile Gabriele d’Annunzio, in Fiume, was resisting with his
legionaries the flatteries of political secret agents who, we all knew,
were pouring into Fiume, and was resisting also the blockade. Fascism
was again setting in order its disunited ranks, after the electoral
defeat of November 16, 1919, and the light was everywhere dim and the
atmosphere murky with selfish, small, cowardly breathings.
Nevertheless, we began to see our way through.
To reorganize the ranks of Fascism was not a matter of impossible
difficulty, because the Fasci di Combattimento—Bundles of Fight—had
learned discipline and enthusiasm; we could stand our shocks from mere
electoral vicissitudes. And on the other hand, some strategic
leadership began to show itself at Florence, where, in October,
1919, there was held the first international meeting of the Italian
Fasci di Combattimento. What a characteristic meeting! The adherents
were obliged to defend the liberty of assembling by the voice of
the revolver. Florence, a city with a tradition of kindness and
hospitality, received the Fascists with violent hostility. Ambushes!
Provocations! Nevertheless, the meeting was held. Our friends were able
to control the place. By great energy they broke down resistance and
suppressed the unprovoked violence of our opponents.
The meeting of Florence wrote the real problem of government across the
sky. On October ninth, by way of starting that sky writing, I made an
unadorned speech. I made clear appeal to the subversive forces of the
nation. On the next day, after a sharp, needle-pointed speech by the
poet F. T. Marinetti, the secretary, Pasella, presented a resolution
in which the Fasci di Combattimento claimed the right to formulate
for Italy a fundamental transformation of the state. It was a clearly
defined programme of political convenience and expediency, aiming to
create an absolutely new social and economic state.
I have interpreted and carried out that purpose. If the end I now seek
is to disclose the paths which have led to the development of the self
I am, then surely it was during this period of training and test, of
trial and error, that the most significant guideposts may be found.
The programme of the Fasci was approved to a man. There,
indeed, was the disclosed warning of the Fascist régime to come.
To the régime’s problem, however, there was being added—and sharp
it was—the problem of the syndicates. For that reason, during the
afternoon sitting of October tenth, I myself proposed a resolution
which declared “adhesion to the movement of economic deliverance and
autonomy of the worker.” We sent a greeting “to all those numerous
groups of proletarians and employes who are not willing to submit to
the leadership of political parties composed and controlled chiefly by
little and big mediocrity which is now trying, by impoverishing and
mystifying the masses, to gain applause and salaries.” I often wonder
if other nations do not feel the same.
The whole spirit of that meeting, which closed with a greeting for
Fiume, was such as to rivet the old conception of the irreconcilable
character of the fight.
I arrived at Florence, coming from Fiume, where I had gone by airplane.
There had been a long, affectionate and definite heart-to-heart talk
with Gabriele d’Annunzio about all that needed to be done in Italy. On
my journey back, the plane, on account of the _bora_—a violent wind of
the Upper Adriatic—was obliged to come down on the aviation field of
Aiello, in the province of Udine. Chafing under the delay, I continued
my journey to Florence by train, where I came just in time to preside
at the meeting and to take what may be called a lively part in our
resistance against the violence of our opponents. At bottom, I was the
most harassed in spirit of all who were there. But to the eyes of
the glowing crowd I was a patriot, a preacher of resistance, he who
succeeded, through the violent articles written from day to day in the
_Popolo d’Italia_, in beginning the smashing of Bolshevism. The meeting
was ended in Fascist style; we swore to see one another again; we
promised ourselves victory at any price.
I set out from Florence by auto, to go to Romagna. The machine was
driven by Guido Pancáni, well known in Florence in his capacity of war
volunteer and airplane pilot—a great athlete. In the same machine there
were also the brother-in-law of Pancáni, Gastone Galvani, and Leandro
Arpinati, of the railway workshops of Bologna, since then well known in
the political clubs. When we came to Faenza the auto stopped before the
Orpheum Coffee Shop, where I met and greeted some old friends of mine.
On continuing the trip, the auto, driven at full speed, crashed into a
railway crossing with closed gates. Under our terrible impact the first
iron railing was broken to bits and the auto was hurled over the rails
onto the second barrier. We were all, with the exception of the driver,
Pancáni, flung yards away, like toy men. I, who came out unhurt, and
Arpinati, who had been lightly bruised, went shouting for help for our
two friends, who were groaning in agony. People arrived, the injured
men were laid down in our auto, which, dragged by oxen, conveyed the
two wounded to the hospital of Faenza. During the surgical treatments
I also helped the two patients. I did what I could to comfort them.
Finally I departed again by train to Bologna. The incident might have
had greater consequences, but fortune assisted me; I felt that the
hatred of our adversaries had been my talisman.
Already I have told how, after the electoral defeat of November 16,
1919, some of my friends were terrified and others asserted how useless
it was to go against the stream. They said—for there are always minds
of this type—that it was much better to come to an agreement with the
opposition, which in those days held all strategic political positions
and dominated the parliament. Compromise, negotiation and agreements
were offered me.
I rejected flatly any agreement whatever. I did not admit even one
moment’s thought of coming to a covenant with those who had repudiated
our Italy in war and now were betraying her in peace. Not many
understood me—not even those close to me. Two of my editors on the
_Popolo d’Italia_, my newspaper, asked permission to leave. They made
their excuses on the grounds that they had moved from their political
streets and house numbers. They even accused me of having helped
myself—during the electoral fight—with funds gathered by the _Popolo
d’Italia_ in the cause of smarting Fiume. So I have seen myself—a
bitter experience—obliged to defend myself from those who had been my
friends.
I appeared before the convention of the Lombardian journalists,
demanding opportunity to hear and be heard as to the charges made. My
justification was ample and precise. The board was forced by the facts
to do me justice. And afterward, without waiting for the hour of my
triumphs, the self-same slanderers, it is fair to say, made honorable
amends for their errors.
But meanwhile, taking a pretext from this episode, there was
launched against me the furious wrath of the Socialists and of the
members of the Popular party, led by the priests. Ferrets were sent to
smell into my life. Soldiers and police were bribed. Secret inquiries
were made into my every-day routine, into all my acts, all my beliefs.
The deluded, the rejected, the unmindful—all whom my upright and
fierce soul had fired at in some way or another—gathered against me.
They could do nothing. In spite of the length and breadth of the
investigation, up high and down low, no dragon was dredged out of my
pool. As for the disposition of the funds for the Fiume campaign, and
other unworthy calumnies, I published in my newspaper documents and
testimony which could never be refuted.
The conclusion arrived at then has been and always will be the same
until I cease to exist: on the score of integrity there is no assault
to be made upon me. My political work may be valued more or less, this
way or that, and people may shout me up or howl me down, but in the
moral field it is another matter. Men must live in harmony with the
faith by which they are pushed on; they must be inspired by the most
absolute disinterestedness. True men, in politics, must be animated by
the humane and devout sense; they must have a regard, a love toward
and a deep vision regarding their own fellow creatures. And all
these qualities must not be defiled by dissimulations or rhetoric or
flatteries or compromises or servile concessions. On this ground, at
least, I am proud to know myself as one not to be suspected—even by
myself—and feeling that my inmost moral fiber is invincible.
I believe that this, above all else, has been the stuff and fabric of
my strength and of my success.
The beginning of 1920 found Italy engaged with a most difficult
international situation. While in Paris the diplomats were sordidly
debating, the bleeding wound of Dalmatia was yet open, and in it
was D’Annunzio at Fiume. The Socialists, to be sure, had obtained a
boisterous electoral victory, but they proved from day to day more
and more impotent and incapable of maintaining their positions in
government with dignity. The most temperate were overturned by the
extremists. There was the gorgeous myth of Lenin! The Italian Liberal
party had resigned all its prerogatives. The ministry was living from
day to day, at the mercy of political extortions, of blackmail, of
those who wanted special favors. There was turbulence in parliament and
uproars of political nature on the streets.
Under such conditions it was necessary to struggle, even though
sometimes victory seemed very difficult and almost unattainable. I
started the year by an article entitled “Let’s Navigate.” I said: “Two
religions are to-day contending with each other for the sway over the
world—the black and the red. From two vaticans depart to-day encyclical
letters—from that of Rome and from that of Moscow. We declare ourselves
the heretics of these two expressions. We are exempt from contagion.
The issue of the battle is of secondary importance to us. To us
the fight has the prize in itself, though it be not crowned by
victory. The world now has some strange analogy with that of Julian the
Apostate. The Galileo with the red hair! Will he be a winner again? Or
will the winner be the Mongol Galileo of the Kremlin? Will there be
realized the upsetting of all valiant and virile thought?
“These questions weigh upon the uneasy spirits of our contemporaries.
“But in the meantime it is necessary to steer the ship! Even against
the stream. Even against the flow. Even if shipwreck is waiting for the
solitary and haughty bearers of heresy.”
There was little time to spare for dwelling upon these highbrow
controversies. Events were tumbling over themselves in a most troubled
way. In the month of January, after harsh discussion, it appeared
impossible to avoid a threatened railway strike. Soon after, the
general strike of the post and telephone employees burst out and lasted
six days. It disorganized not only the private interests of citizens
but also state communications. It cut off the shuttle of thoughts in
a moment made even more delicate by the international situation. The
_Avanti_, the official newspaper of the Socialist party, of which I
had once been editor, wrote on that occasion that the post, telegraph
and telephone offices were a luxury of modern times; that the ancient
peoples had been great even without telegraphic apparatus. Who knows
whether this gibberish came from a mocking spirit or from the kind of
confirmed idiocy with which extremists are afflicted?
The stated cause of the agitations was always economic, but in
truth the end was wholly political; the real intention was to strike
a blow full in the face of the state’s authority, against the middle
classes and against disciplined order, with a view to establishing
the soviets in Italy. That was the plain purpose behind all the
ornaments and masks. It is little realized how easily a combination of
disorders can put a whole nation—by control of its exchanges and its
communications and cities—in the hands of a tyrannous minority.
In the midst of general hardships and of cowardice, of grumbling of
impotents, of the vaporings of dull critics, I, almost alone, had the
courage to write that the state’s employees, if they were right in
view of the feebleness of the government, were wrong, in any case,
toward the nation. To inflict upon a people the mortification of an
ill-advised strike, to trample upon the rights of the whole, meant to
lead men from modern civil life back again to tribal conflict.
“These dissensions,” I wrote in my paper on January 15, 1920, “are
between function and government. The sufferer who suffers after having
paid, the sufferer, with the inevitable prospect of paying more,
is the Italian nation—the word ‘nation’ understood in the sense of
human collectivity.” And further on I added: “The material damages
of a strike of this kind are enormous, incalculable. But the moral
damages at home and abroad are still greater. The moment chosen for
the strike gives to the strike itself the true and proper character
of a support to Allied imperialism. This is the culminating moment of
the negotiations in Paris. This is the moment in which there is
the one question—to get, finally, a peace. Why didn’t the postal, the
telegraph and telephone operators wait two weeks more, until the return
of Nitti from Paris? Was it just ‘written,’ was it just ‘fatal,’ that
the ultimatum to the government should fall due on the thirteenth? All
this confirms the sinister political character of the act.”
As God pleased, on January twenty-first, the post and telegraph strike
was ended, but already there had begun, on the nineteenth of January, a
railway strike. It was a useless strike. The leaders of red syndicalism
had been willing to proclaim it at any price, even when it was against
both the sentiment and the interest of the workmen themselves. I
defined this strike as “an enormous crime against the nation.” The
country was in desolation. Italy was in the claws of disorder and
violence; the foreigners left our charming resorts and byways; the
withholding of credit grew general among bankers, while catastrophic
rumors held sway over the international world, entangling more and more
our diplomatic negotiations.
In the midst of the most unbridled egoism, the Fascists firmly held
their places during the strikes of the public services. I will not
forget that some groups of our men, inspired by faith, thoroughly did
their duty during these agitations. They faced with firm boldness the
insults and threats of their striking fellow countrymen.
Meanwhile, in the face of the righteous indignation of public opinion,
some Socialists began to feel timid. They tried to separate their
responsibility from that of the leaders who had proclaimed
the strike. On that occasion, in the _Popolo d’Italia_ of January
twenty-first, I published an article entitled “Too Late!” I thrust into
the light—with words that later on revealed themselves prophetic—the
real situation of socialism.
“The Turatians,” I wrote—“and by this word we intend all those who in
Filippo Turati, the leader of the Right, recognize their chief—should
have been awakened before. Now the car is thrown upon the steep slope
and the reformist’s brake is creaking, but it does not hold; nay, it
exhausts the strength of those who are dragging on the lever. At the
bottom there is the impregnable massive wall against which the car will
break to pieces. Out of the ruin will come wisdom. This was said also
by the French fabulist, La Fontaine:
_À quelque chose malheur est bon: à mettre un sot à la raison._
“It would be preferable, nevertheless, that the blockheads might
restore their reason without plunging the nation into destruction and
misery.”
The railway strike was protracted up to January twenty-ninth, and
all the time diplomatic discussions were bringing us to disastrous
compromises in our foreign policy. About this time, into the aridity
of the disputes of classes there was thrust an event colored with
highest idealism. It was arranged that the suffering children of Fiume
should be brought to Milan. They had been enduring the hardships of
a blockaded town, without economic resources; they were at the mercy
of their own distress. Already the children of Vienna, the sons of
our enemies, had obtained in Milan kind treatment. Was it not
admissible that there should be found love and pity for the Italian
infants of Quarnero? The episode of kindness, brought about by the
Fascists with the consent of the Fiume command, resounded throughout
Italy. Great manifestations of joy greeted these children at every
junction or way station of their journey. The censors of the press,
however, prevented us from writing of the triumphal journey of these
children. It was all part and parcel of a programme systematically to
slander our spirit, which always stamped the political handicraft of
Nitti, like an ugly hall-mark on a leaden spoon.
This man, in order to justify his vile and inept diplomacy, dared to
deliver in the chamber a speech on the Fiume question with a friendly
intonation toward the Slavians, at the very time that Wilson was
pressing his even stranger project to create of Fiume and Zara two
isolated, detached, aborted free cities under the control and the
authority of the League of Nations!
On the next day, February eighth, my newspaper bore on the first page
the following head-line: “The Abominable Speech of H. E. Cagoia—The
Snail.” By this surname Gabriele d’Annunzio had stamped F. S. Nitti
and the term had become popular. Following the head-line was a short
editorial of mine, entitled “Miserable.” In it, after having set forth
again in a few words the painful history of the negotiations in Paris,
I concluded:
The truth is that Nitti is preparing to go back again. He goes
to Paris in order to give away his shirt. Before the stubborn
Juglo-Slavian irreconcilableness our Cagoia knows nothing better
than to wail, weep and—yield. The whole tone of his speech is vile,
dreadfully vile. Not in vanquished Germany, nor in Austria, has there
been so vile a Minister as Nitti. If there had been one, he could not
have lasted. This one is the Minister of runaways, of autolesionists;
he is the Minister of Modigliani, the man of peace at any price. By
trying to remember continually that the objectives of Italy were
Trento and Triest, Cagoia offers arms to the Jugoslavian resistance.
The peace of 1866, in comparison, is a masterpiece with that offered
by His Indecency. On his next journey to Paris, Cagoia will make
another renunciation. Zara? Valona? Who knows? Quite likely. It is not
impossible that he will yield Gorizia too. Perhaps also Monfalcone.
And why not the line of Tagliamento? Maybe only by this price can we
hope for the friendship of Jugo-Slavia!
Before such infamy we feel that it would be preferable to be citizens
of the Germany of Noske than subjects of the Italy of Cagoia.
We have before us days of dolor and shame; worse than those of
Caporetto, worse than those of Abba Carima!
We will recover our strength, but first there is some one who will be
forced to pay.
The domestic policies and the foreign policies pursued by the
government of that time did not fail to provoke some stiff discussions
among those newspapers that were reflecting the varied tendencies of
national life. The _Stampa_, at the head of which was Senator Frassati,
who some time later was to be selected as ambassador to Berlin, was
one of my targets. I violently attacked it because of the programme
it adopted. It gave itself airs as if it would be the redeemer of our
fatherland. It is necessary to remember that Senator Frassati had been
against the entrance of Italy into the World War. He always stood
apart during the most bleeding and tragic periods of Italian life.
Consequently, he was the least capable of taking a pose as redeemer
of our fatherland at the time when peace was to be concluded with the
enemies after the victorious end of our war.
The _Corriere della Sera_, representing and interpreting the thought
of a great flow of so-called liberal public opinion, was defending
arbitration for Fiume and Dalmatia, proposed by Wilson and supported by
the prose of Albertini, who followed a pernicious policy inspired by
Salvemini and Nitti. The _Avanti_, the red publication, availed itself
of all these polemics and of the slanders against me to libel me in
general before the whole of public opinion. And all this campaign, vain
and ineffectual, was even supported by the press of the Popular party.
But more important, it was employed against the raising of Fascism and
against the war victory.
Strikes were characterized by violent, disgraceful clashes between
police and soldiers and the citizens; the interminable parliamentary
discussions were marked by fist fights on the floor of the chamber.
These were pitiful spectacles, humiliating not only to citizenship and
to government itself but to the whole fabric of our political life.
In the short cycle of a few months there had been three ministerial
crises, but Nitti always came back to power. The question, as always
in a democracy gone drunk with compromise of principles, was one of
mutual concessions, and very heavy ones. Miserable. Useless. Nobody was
thinking of the rebuilding of social order in a nation which had
won a bloody war and which had to face the fact that it was living in
the presence of a world of moving realities.
Fascism, unique lighthouse in a sea of cowardice, of compromise and
of foggy, plum-colored idealism, had engaged itself in battles; it
was overpowered by mere blind multitudes. I was the bull’s-eye of the
target of the government of Nitti. He unloosed against me all his
hounds, while his journalists tired themselves in vain to note down
my contradictions in political matters. The Socialists, mindful of my
moral and physical strength, covered me with their vengeance and their
ostracism. At least, they roamed at a distance. They were cautious and
far off the trail of real things.
During one of the many evenings when Milan was at the mercy of these
scoundrels, I found myself surrounded and isolated in a café of the
Piazza del Duomo, the central hub of the Lombardian metropolis.
While I was sipping a drink, waiting for Michele Bianchi, a hundred
Socialists and loafers hemmed in the café and began hurling abuses and
insults at me. I had been recognized. Perhaps they intended, in their
collective wrath, to give me a beating in order to place on my person
the vengeance they had long since had in mind. The crowd, growing in
numbers, became more and more menacing, and so the owner of the café
and the female cashier hastened to pull down the shutters. She invited
me, according to the fashion of those disorderly times, to go out
because I was endangering their interests. I did not wait for a second
invitation. I am used to facing the rabble without fear. The more
there are of them, the more a man can move toward them with a sure
courage which, to some, may appear as an affectation. I cannot say that
there was any reluctance on my part to face these cowards.
I looked at the leaders and said, “What do you want of me? To strike
me? Well, begin. Then be thereafter on guard. For any insult of yours,
any blow, you will pay for dearly.”
I remember the picture of that wolf pack. They were silent. They looked
furtively at one another. The nearest withdrew, and then suddenly fear,
which is as contagious as courage in any crowd of people, spread among
the group. They backed away; they dispersed and only from a distance
flung their last insults.
I recite this incident because it was typical of the usual occurrence
in the life of a Fascist. But it must be remembered that in other
cases the end was quite different—beatings, knife thrusts, bullets,
assassinations, atrocities, torture and death.
In these days there began to develop a contest between General Diaz,
victor of our last campaign, and Nitti.
The London pact, which had given Italy certain promises, broke down.
The Adriatic coast-line was in a state of complete insecurity.
Absurd rumors spread in the diplomatic clubs. The danger of seeing
the Jugo-Slavians settled along the whole Adriatic shore had caused
a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions.
Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were
entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. There was an
appeal from all the groups representative of the best Italian life in
behalf of Dalmatia. All these forces of righteousness, on the occasion
of the anniversary of Italy’s entry into war, organized a Dalmatian
parade, with the object of dedicating, in the name of the fatherland,
their indestructible loyalty to their country.
Then, in the capital, came about an episode which is still vivid in our
memories. It raised general indignation. The Royal Guards, a new police
corps, created exclusively to serve the designs of the Nittian régime,
took the parade by storm. They fired gunshot volleys. Many victims
dropped and some fifty were wounded. This was the most unworthy episode
that ever happened under the sky of Rome within any memory. And as if
this assault and outrage were not sufficient, the Dalmatians living in
Rome were arrested, including the women. Very few dared to raise their
protests. Supine victims and bullying authorities were the fashion. In
the chamber certain deputies, among whom were the nationalist writer,
Luigi Siciliani, and Egilberto Martire, moved interpellations which
found no echo. From the columns of the _Popolo d’Italia_ I spread far
and wide my contempt. I hurled anathema against the system by which a
whole people were disgraced. My cry had some echoes in the senate—in
that senate where in historic hours some great name always rose up to
defend the dignity, the right and the nobility of the Italian people.
A group of senators, at the head of whom was the Generalissimo
Diaz, presented the following motion:
The senate regrets the methods of government which, by tolerating a
want of discipline destructive of the state’s power, diminishes the
glorious victory of our arms and the admirable resistance of our
people. It threatens any co-operative work for the prosperity of
the unified fatherland and the peaceful attainment of every civil
progress. These are methods opposite to Italian tradition, and they
have culminated in the violent repression of a patriotic manifestation
on May twenty-fourth with the arbitrary arrest of Dalmatians and
Fiumeans, guests of Rome.
Among the signatures, with the name of Diaz, were to be seen the names
of the Senator Attilio Hortis, a celebrated historian, of Admiral
Thaon de Revel, and of many personalities of high Italian culture. The
signers were sixty-four, among whom were the four vice-presidents of
the senate.
The motion, in addition to its hint to awake Italian tradition, had
strength and vigor, and disdain for the outrage done to the Italian war
victory. The leader of that disdain, before all others, was Armando
Diaz. The generalissimo bore about him the glory of Vittorio Veneto.
He saw from day to day that his fine and lofty idealism as soldier and
chieftain was fading away.
The Nitti government—part and parcel of a decadent party and futile
parliamentary system—the Nitti government, bearing the stamp of mere
pandering for favor and burned with the brand of politicians scrambling
for power without regard for the nation and without brave
idealism—fell ingloriously for the third time.
Giolitti came back.
After so many humiliations and oscillations, parliament and the
political system had revealed itself as an assembly wholly unworthy
to control or guide the destinies of a people. At the third fall of
Nitti, Giolitti, of whom it may be said that he made the premiership a
profession, came back upon the scene. His return gave some of us the
impression that he was a kind of a receiver in bankruptcy for so-called
self-government.
Justice requires our recognition of a great rectitude in the private
life of Giolitti; we cannot say so much for his rectitude in his
political character. He was a dissolver. He never gave evidence of
believing in the deep idealistic springs and streams of Italian life.
As a creature of the bureaucracy, he trusted the whole Italian problem
to the vicissitudes of democratic and parliamentary pretense and
artificiality. Thus, owing to his temperament, he held off during the
war. Soon after the victory he returned to the political scene like a
man who had to wind up a business. That business he was liquidating had
been certainly the most bloody and yet no doubt the most magnificent
and, in idealism, the most successful in our history as a united people.
The disclosed purposes of the Giolitti ministry as to domestic policy
were good. After the most unhappy Nittian mire, public opinion was
induced to accept new pilots without hostility. Foreign agents,
provoking elements, supported also by some domestic political
compromises, were inciting the Albanian population against us.
This noble land, which is but twelve hours distant from Bari, and
which had always absorbed an influx of our civilization, this land in
which some sparks of modern civil life had gleamed only because of the
influence we exercised there—all at once revolted against our garrison.
We had been at Valona with sanitary missions since 1908, and since 1914
we had had military there. We had built there the city, the hospital,
the magnificent roads which were a refuge for the Serbian army, routed
in 1916. In Albania we had sacrificed millions of lire and had devoted
thousands of soldiers to maintain her in efficiency and to give the
little state a future and a well-ordered existence.
I knew and urged that it was useless to expect any decided Albanian
policy from Giolitti. The domestic situation, which continued troubled,
deprived him of energy or mind to devote to foreign policy. At that
time the Honorable Sforza was Minister of Foreign Affairs; that was
quite enough to accomplish the last vandalism in the Adriatic question.
Meanwhile our military garrison was obliged to quit Valona, owing to
the ineptitude of our government.
We entered another phase of defeatism.
In 1920 there was adopted among the railway employees the systematic
practice of preventing the movement of trains carrying soldiers,
carabinieri or policemen. Sometimes a similar policy extended also
to the clergy. Against this inconceivable abuse of power, I alone
protested. The Italian people were suffering passively from a
stupid conception of their opportunities and from blindness which
closed their eyes to their own power and pride. Those who dared to
resist and were critical of the bureaucracy or of government policy
were persecuted by the government itself.
There was the incident of the station master of Cremona, Signor
Bergonzoni, which fell within my observation. He, by an energetic act,
ordered the railway men subject to his authority to hook onto a train
a car conveying some troops to Piacenza. For this episode, exhibiting
the most ordinary case of regularity in routine, the Railway Syndicate,
dominated by Socialists, demanded of the Ministry of Public Works the
dismissal of the station master, Bergonzoni. And because the ministry
by its firmness rejected this demand of the syndicate, Milan, which
had nothing to do with all this matter, had imposed upon it a railway
strike lasting thirteen days. Milan, a city of 900,000 inhabitants,
choked by an enormous traffic, found itself incommunicado from its
suburbs and the whole world. It was thrown back on the use of stage
coaches, autos, camions, and was obliged to use even the small boats
along the Naviglio River.
Milan, our greatest modern city, was in the power of political anarchy.
Those same military forces who would have been able easily to take
the situation in hand and dominate it were put at the mercy of the
local authorities. They were even obliged to ask the authorities for
the flour to make bread for the troops! The stations, situated at
the boundaries of the district of Milan, had in store heaps on
heaps of goods; of course these stores decayed or deteriorated and
were at the mercy of ware-house and freight-car robbers. At length,
after thirteen days, on the morning of June twenty-fourth and after a
meeting on behalf of the striking railway employees during which there
was a fusillade of firearms, with dead and wounded, the railway men,
overpowered by the indignation which had spread through the whole body
of citizens, were convinced that it was better to return to work. But
the state’s authority was dead; it was now ready for the grave.
The Giolitti ministry muddled amid a quantity of financial
difficulties. Giolitti himself hoped to be able to appease the
Socialists with the project of general confiscation of all war profits,
and still more with a plan to institute a strong tax on hereditary
succession. This latter measure, wholly socialistic, would have
annihilated the family conception of a patrimonial line. It would
have threatened the rights of an owner to bequeath to his heirs his
riches with his name. It had consequences which were not only economic
but also moral and social. Capital as an institution is only in its
infancy; the right of disposal is necessary to foster the functioning
and development of this instrument of ambition, of human welfare and of
civilization.
In international policy, Count Sforza, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
concluded the agreement of Spa, signed the protocol of Tirana with the
renunciation of Valona and Albania, signed the weak treaty of Sèvres
with Turkey, and prepared by fits and starts to attempt an end
also of the question of Fiume. This last happened at the conclusion of
the treaty of Rapallo.
The application of the pact of London, by which Dalmatia was assigned
to Italy, seemed to have been twisted without a single justifiable
reason into something not to be argued. And Senator Scialoia, a
gentleman of the old stamp, said amid the weak voices of the senate
that the London treaty “has continually been tricked out of force and
effect by those who are themselves Italians.”
Believing with all my being that it was necessary to stop the flood
of decadence in our foreign policy, I began to use our Fascisti
organization and the _Popolo d’Italia_. I tried to raise some dikes.
It was difficult to hold back the dirty water. There was a tendency
to go toward communism whatever the cost. The power of Lenin—I admit
it—had assumed a quality of potency only paralleled in mythology.
The Russian dictator dominated the masses. He enchanted the masses.
He charmed them as if they were hypnotized birdlings. Only some time
afterward did the news of the dreadful Russian famine, as well as the
information furnished by our mission which had gone to Russia to study
Bolshevism, open the eyes of the crowd to the falsity of the Russian
paradise-mirage. Enthusiasm ebbed away little by little. Finally Lenin
remained only as a kind of banner and catchword for our political
dabblers.
The aviation fields of Italy had been closed, the machines were
being dismounted. There had been, however, some attempts to engage
in civil aviation. One of the most unhappy and dramatic episodes of
that time came out of the sky above Verona. Returning from a trip
to Venice, a big airplane fell upon the city. The mishap caused the
death of sixteen persons, including the pilots. Among the dead there
were several journalists from Milan. The tragedy affected all Italy.
Mourning was general. But to my horror the authorities seized this
opportunity to abandon discussion of aviation and to dismantle the few
machines, motors and wings which were left.
It was just at that period that I wanted to take lessons to become
a pilot. The machine which crashed in Verona had been guided by a
neighbor of my birthplace, Lieutenant Ridolfi. His body was carried
to the churchyard of Forli. I had gone to Forli for a rest, with some
political friends. My reception in my own home district had been cold
and even hostile. My efforts to be agreeable and my willingness to
learn to fly just after Ridolfi had lost his life seemed to be quite
wasted. Anything in those days that did not have a material value
seemed to be superfluous. Those were years when men’s hearts were
gray. For the same reason the state for which Gabriele d’Annunzio was
preparing a durable form in Fiume did not catch the imagination of
mankind.
But I did not give up. I repeated my flights. I flew over Mantua
with the staff of the _Popolo d’Italia_. I was determined to show in
action that aviation ought not to disappear from our vision of Italian
possibilities and progress, to be won, if necessary, at the cost of
hardships. I gave an example personally every time I had the chance,
and my friends did likewise.
The growing exaltation of the bewitched masses and the incredible
weakness of the government culminated at the beginning of September
with the occupation of the factories on the part of the metal workers.
The occupation of the factories was to be an example of Bolshevism in
action. The doctrine to be illustrated was the taking possession of the
means of production. The workmen, with their childish understanding,
and much more the chiefs who were betraying them—and well aware of
their treachery as they did so—pretended that they were able to
administer directly, without an order from any one planned beforehand,
all the workshops, all the processes, and even the sales of the output.
In truth, though it is not commonly realized, they did nothing but make
some side arms, such as daggers and swords. They lost not less than
twenty-one days in forced leisure and childish manifestations of hatred
and impotence.
The occupation once begun, the managers, the owners, and the employes
of the establishments were sequestered by the workmen. The trade-marks
and factory signs were taken away, while upon the roofs and the doors
of the factories the red banners with the sickle and hammer, symbol
of the soviets, were hoisted with cheers. In every establishment a
committee was formed subject to a socialist-communist set of by-laws.
Telephones were used to threaten all who were keeping out of the
movement and who, like us of the _Popolo d’Italia_, were setting out to
war against this grotesque sovietist parody.
The seizure of the factories was accompanied by the most ferocious
acts. At Turin, the old capital of Piedmont, which had such glorious
monarchical and military traditions, the red court of justice worked
with all its might. Mario Sonzini, a nationalist and patriot, who had
gone over to Fascism among the first, was arrested by the workmen and
given a cruel and grotesque revolutionary trial. He was riddled by
bullets and his body was then thrown into a ditch. Somebody had a kind
Christian thought and threw him into the smelter ovens, but, as these
were extinguished and as cold as industry itself, somebody else thought
to put an end to the poor martyr by beating and kicking out what
remained of life. Sonzini’s guilt was only that he was a Fascist. The
same fate befell others. To this kind of inhuman brutality not even the
women were strangers. Apparently a bestial type of cruelty had taken
hold of men and women drunk with licentiousness.
The newspaper _Avanti_ on that occasion reported this barbarous murder
as follows:
It may happen in life for one to be nationalist, to pass to Fascism,
to reflect the tendencies of order and to be, nevertheless, arrested
and shot to death; this is an average stroke of destiny.
The occupation of the factories in several Italian towns was merely an
opportunity for violent demonstrations. There were dead at Monfalcone,
there were dead in Milan and there were dead in other towns on the
peninsula.
Our credit abroad had been extinguished like a puffed-out candle.
Even after the conclusion of peace, there was little thought any longer
devoted to a rehabilitation of our nation. One could feel a clear
sensation of collapse. The printing press began to spew out paper
money. It was necessary to increase circulation; it was necessary to
have recourse to inflation to prevent our economic life from going into
complete ruin. After ten years, we are still feeling the burden of the
consequences of that inauspicious period.
The exigencies of such artificial finance hastened the wreck. I
denounced the peril in a series of articles in a debate with Meda, a
member of the chamber, a man believed to be erudite in public finance.
I can say now that nobody in that murky time had the ability to
indicate any clear course to the Italian people; in financial matters
we were going straight toward utter ruin—and playing an accompaniment
on the strings of his foreign policy, Sforza was continuing his series
of renunciations. He arrived at Rapallo and from that moment Fiume was
doomed to become a detached, exiled city lying on a bed of thorns.
On November fourth the celebration of the anniversary of our victory
gave opportunity for slight symptoms of reawakening. Rome and Milan
both had extensive patriotic demonstrations. All Italy celebrated. I
did.
But that was transitory. Almost at once affliction came in those
mournful incidents—the tragedy of the Palace d’Accursio in Bologna,
that of the Palace Estense in Ferrara, and the Bloody Christmas in
Fiume.
In Bologna there was a bold handful of Fascists led by Arpinati. We
were aware that the Socialists were preparing, in the red city and
through the whole valley, pompous demonstrations to celebrate the
installation of the new city government of Bologna, composed for the
most part of reds. On November twenty-first, quantities of red banners
were hoisted on the high towers of the City Hall Palace as well as
on the private buildings. There had been planned also the release of
flocks of pigeons to bring the greetings of the Bologna Socialists to
their comrades of other places. The whole town was in the hands of the
Socialists. They were on the point of adopting a constitution of the
soviets. The city government minority, composed of elements of good
order, with Fascists and combatants, was present at the meeting. This
was considered by the reds as a provocation and a challenge.
The Fascist group of Bologna, which had its headquarters in a street
called Marsala, organized several squads to defend the public order at
any price. In the afternoon the Fascists were being singled out for
continuous and increasing insults and provocations. The Fascio—the
organization of the Fascisti—by placards made it plain that it was
resolved not to be bull-dozed, and it warned the women and children
to keep at home behind locked doors. It was foreseen that the streets
of Bologna might witness a tragedy. This firm attitude of the Bologna
Fascists, guided by Arpinati, whipped up the Socialists, not only
because they felt themselves no longer able to do as they pleased but
also because physical fear had taken possession of their leaders
all up and down the line. I say categorically that fear and cowardice
have always been typical characteristics of the Socialist party in
Italy.
At the moment when about thirty Fascists formed in tiny squads and
tried to go from Indipendenza Street, the open space crowded with the
Socialists, there came a general scattering and a disordered shouting
and clamor. A portion of the terrified crowd poured over to the City
Hall and entered the courtyard. The Socialists, barricaded there as
in a fortress, blinded by their own base fears, supposed that all
the fugitives were Fascists; they feared that the City Hall might be
invaded; therefore they threw from above, upon the crowd, hand bombs
with which they had armed themselves.
This increased the general terror in the crowd. Many of the people ran
off, tearing up their tickets of the Socialistic organizations.
While these events were going on around the palace and in the
courtyard, in the Hall of the City Council there exploded a sudden
tragedy. The red members of the council, frightened by the apprehension
of a Fascist invasion, thronged for the most part toward the exit.
Some of them, however, preferred joining the public, composed of red
elements; some flung themselves against the little group of the council
conservatives. The first shots were now heard in the hall. The guards,
not to be caught, threw themselves upon the ground. The few minority
councilors—among whom were the advocate Giordani and advocates Oviglio,
Biagi, Colliva, Manaresi—firmly kept their places, offering a
conspicuous mark for wrath whipped up by fear. Somebody fired. The
bullet missed Oviglio by a miracle. But a second shot killed Lieutenant
Giordani, a _bersagliere_, mutilated in war, hated for his record by
the reds. Meanwhile, the organizers of the bloody riot were continuing
to hurl bombs, as if they had gone out of their minds, into the square
crowded with people, and they hit fugitive Socialists under the
impression that their victims were Fascists. Horrible was the carnage
and the butchery.
Something of the same kind happened a little later at Ferrara on the
occasion of a great Socialistic manifestation which was to have taken
place in the historic castle of the Estensi. A column of Fascists,
advancing to the spot of the meeting, met a fusillade of lead. The
Fascists left on the ground three dead and numbers of wounded. Ferrara,
the red, Ferrara, in which all municipalities and the province were in
the hands of the Socialists; Ferrara, which had threatened to arrest
its own prefect—passed hours in anxiety. The same exasperated passion
of Bologna seized the noble province of the Estensi. I felt, however,
that one could catch a glimpse of tragedies which were mere preludes to
certain revolution. What revolution?
I called to Milan the responsible chiefs of the Fascist movement, the
representatives of the Po Valley, of Upper Italy, of the towns and
countrysides. Those present were not many, but they were men resolved
to take any risk. I made them understand, as I had suddenly understood,
that through newspaper propaganda, or by example, we would never
attain any great successes. It was necessary to beat the violent
adversary on the battle-field of violence.
As if a revelation had come to me, I realized that Italy would be saved
by one historic agency—in an imperfect world, sometimes inevitable
still—righteous force.
Our democracy of yesterdays had died; its testament had been read; it
had bequeathed us naught but chaos.
CHAPTER VII
THE GARDEN OF FASCISM
In certain contingencies violence has a deep moral significance.
In our land a leading class was neither present nor living. The Liberal
party had abdicated everything to the Socialists. There was no solid,
modern, national unity.
Ignorance was still astride the workmen and peasant masses. It was
useless to attempt to blaze a trail by fine words, by sermons from
chairs. It was necessary to give timely, genial recognition to
chivalrous violence. The only straight road was to beat the violent
forces of evil on the very ground they had chosen.
With us were elements who knew what war meant. From them was born the
organization of Italian Bundles of Fight. Many also volunteered from
our universities. They were students, touched by the inspiration of
idealism, who left their studies to run to our call.
We knew that we must win this war too—throw into yesterday the period
of cowardice and treachery. It was necessary to make our way by
violence, by sacrifice, by blood; it was necessary to establish the
order and discipline wanted by the masses, but impossible to obtain
them through milk-and-water propaganda and through words, words
and more words—parliamentary and journalistic sham battles.
We began our period of rescue and resurrection. Dead there were, but on
the horizon all eyes saw the dawn of Italian rebirth.
The unhappy year of 1921 was closed with the tragic dissolution of the
Fiume drama. After the Treaty of Rapallo, by which Fiume was doomed to
be a separate body, the Italian resistance in Fiume made itself more
decided than ever. D’Annunzio declared that, whatever the cost, he
would not abandon the city which had suffered so long and painfully to
keep alive and keep pure its Italian soul.
I, too, had been living this drama, day by day. D’Annunzio and I had
been close together since the first days of the campaign. Now for more
than a year I had been accustomed to receive his brotherly letters.
They brought to me the breath of the passion of Fiume. Since the first
moment of the occupation of the holocaust city the poet had disclosed
to me his firm will to fight. Significant evidence is found in a letter
which D’Annunzio had sent me on September 14, 1919, transmitting to me,
for my newspaper, one of his most virile messages. He wrote:
_My dear Mussolini:_ Here are two lines in a hurry. I have been
working for hours. My hand and my eyes are aching. I send my son,
Gabriellino, brave companion, to bring you this manuscript. Look out
for any needed correction, and thank you. This is only the first act
of a struggle that I will see to the end after my own style. In the
event that the censorship should be bold enough to interfere, please
publish the letter with the white intervals showing where words
are omitted. Then we will see what we shall see.
I will write you again. I will come. I admire your constancy and the
strength of your well-directed blows. Let me clasp your hand.
Yours,
Gabriele d’Annunzio.
From July to December the situation in Fiume grew more and more
difficult. In the face of the determined attitude of D’Annunzio,
Giolitti—to be faithful to the engagements assumed at Rapallo by Count
Sforza—resolved to blockade the city. The results of the blockade were
dubious; therefore the government made up its mind to occupy the city
by a military expedition. They chose Christmas, because there were two
holidays during which newspapers did not appear. Italian soldiers were
being hurled against an Italian city, against a handful of audacious
legionaries, ardent-souled Italians, the combatants of D’Annunzio’s
brothers. Blood was on the streets. There were even dead. All Italy was
saturated with deep indignation.
Thereafter a sense of remorse and conciliation took the upper hand. A
formula was found. D’Annunzio gave up his authority to a committee of
citizens and left Fiume. It had been held by him during sixteen months
with invincible faithfulness. Now it was requisite to intrust its
destinies to its best citizens and to the events which were maturing,
inexorably. I wrote at that time a message which found an echo in all
Italian hearts:
Beneath all the verbosity and the shuttle of mere words, the drama is
perfect; horrible, if you choose, but perfect. On one side is the
cold Reason of State determined to the very bottom, on the other the
warm Reason of the Ideal ready to make desperate, supreme sacrifices.
Invited to make our choice, we, the uneasy and precocious minority,
choose calmly the Reason of the Ideal.
A few days later, on January 4, 1921, I commemorated the dead of the
Legion of Ronchi by one of the most fervid articles I ever wrote. It
ended with the following words:
They are the latest to fall in the Great War, and it is not in vain!
The Italian tricolored banner hails them, Italian earth covers them.
Their graves are a shrine. There all factions and divisions are
obliterated. The dead of Carnaro bear witness that Fiume and Italy are
one, the same flesh, the same soul. The opaque ink of the diplomats
will never undo what has been sealed by blood forever.
Hail then to the Ronchi Legion, to the Duce—the leader, D’Annunzio—to
his living who return and to his dead who never will.
They have remained to garrison the snowy mountains—Nevosso!
The iron necessity of violence already had been confirmed. Every one of
us felt it. Now came the moment to move to action with a clear sense of
the definite issue. The formation of squads and battling units which
I had drawn up by intuition had been accomplished. I had given them,
in precise directions, well-specified tasks within clean limits. They
began their work of discipline and retaliation.
Our violence had to possess impetuosity. It had been trained to be
loyal, as were the legions of Garibaldi, and above all chivalrous.
The Central Committee of the Italian Bundles of Fight co-ordinated,
under my direction, the whole work of the local executives and of the
action squads, not only in the provinces but even in the towns. Valiant
and vigorous elements joined us from the universities. Italian schools
are enriched by the glorious names of students who quitted their
halls for political life and Fascism. These eager boys left, without
regret and without wavering, a merry existence to face mortal dangers
during punitive actions against betrayers of our country. Later on,
to these heroes of bold youth I ordered the awarding of degrees _ad
honorem_; they had given their blood freely so that their nation might
be saved. Among them was the best type of Italian young manhood, who
by disciplined methodical action, full of impetus, as were the actors,
met and destroyed the social-communist spiders which in the web of
foolishness and ignorance were exterminating every life germ of the
Italian people. Wherever there popped up a vexation, a ransom, a case
of blackmail, an extortion, a disorder, a reprisal—there would gather
the Fascist squads of action. The black shirt—symbol of hardihood—was
our uniform of war.
The Liberal-Democratic government quite naturally put difficulties in
the way of the Fascist movement. It relied principally on the royal
guards—Guardia Regia—blind instrument of anti-national hatred. But we,
who had sane courage, resource and ability, accepted the fact of facing
ambush, traps and death. When instead we were taken to prison, we
remained there long periods waiting for trial. I had an effect on
my soldiers which seemed to me almost mystical. The boys saw in me the
avenger of our wronged Italy. The dying said, “Give us our black shirts
for winding sheets.” I could not remain unmoved when I knew that their
last thoughts were of “Our native land and the Duce.” Love and songs
bloomed. A revival of youth, filled with Italian boldness, swamped by
its virile male beauty the unrestrained rages of the irresponsibles,
painted out the fear of the Socialists, obliterated the ambiguity of
the Liberals. The poesy of battle, the voices of an awakening race were
multiplying, in those years of revival, the energies of our nation.
Our dead were innumerable. Italy’s imps, the red dabblers, our
organization of so-called Freemasons who were steeped in political
intrigue, already were seeing the danger, menacing to them, of the
coming of Fascism. Therefore they used every means to put us down;
they created their snares and ambushes more and more carefully and
built their pitfalls more and more cunningly. Every day both the public
streets and the open rural fields of Italy were smeared with the
blood of frightful conflicts. Sundays, holidays and any occasions for
gatherings seemed particularly marked out for attack.
I restrained our own violence to the strict limit of necessity. I
enforced that view-point with lieutenants and with the rank and file.
At times they obeyed me with regret and pain. They were thinking of
companions treacherously murdered. But they always submitted to my
orders against reprisals. They accepted my authority voluntarily
and completely. If I had had a mind to do so, I could have ordered a
pitched battle. The boys would have leaped at the chance; they were
looking to me as to a chief whose word was law.
There were evidences of such a deep attachment to me that I felt lifted
up and refined by it. It created in me a deep sense of responsibility.
Among the episodes I remember the death of a young man, twenty years
old, the Count Nicolo’ Foscari, treacherously stabbed to death by a
communist dagger. This fine boy died after two days of agony. In the
agony of the wound and at the point of death, he wanted to have always
near him my photograph. He declared himself glad and proud to die and
through me he knew how to die.
I was calloused to political battles. My inclination, however, has
always been against all but chivalrous battles. I understood the
sadness of civil strife; but in desperate political crises, when the
bow happens to be too much bent, the arrow either flies off or the cord
breaks. In a few months of action and violence we had to win no less
than fifty years lost in empty parliamentary skirmishes, lost in the
marshes of little political intrigues, lost in the wretchedness of an
atmosphere defiled by selfish interest and petty personal ambition,
lost in the maze of attempts to treat government as if it were a jam
pot to attract the flies.
In 1921 I tried a political agreement and truce with our adversaries
under the protection of the government. The utter incomprehension of
the Socialists and Liberals was enormous. My gesture, prodigal and
generous, created solely by me, served only to raise new fogs,
miasmas and equivocations. The truce had been signed by the Socialists
but not by the communists. The latter continued the open struggle,
helped in every way by the Socialists themselves. A generous experiment
in pacificism had been quite useless. Socialism had corrupted Italian
life. There would be always some irreconcilable antagonists, and so
the struggle, after a short parenthesis, was taken up again. It lasted
until the final outcome, but its renewal was the beginning of the great
political battle of 1921.
I will not set forth all the deadly frays of this year. They have gone
into the past. But in the houses of my men are burning perennially
the votive lamps of the survivors and on their hearths is the living
memory of the fallen. The Fascist legions are of every age and of every
condition. Many died when the victory was as yet uncertain, but the God
of just men will guide all the fallen to eternal light and will reward
the soul who lived nobly and who wrote in blood the goodness and ardor
of his faith.
The first months of 1921 were characterized by an extreme violence
in the Po Valley. The Socialists came to the point where they were
even willing to shoot at the funeral processions of the Fascists. It
happened even in Rome. It was at that time that in Leghorn there was
held the congress of the Socialist party. A schism broke out. On that
occasion the autonomous Communist party was created, which afterward
in all the manifestations of Italian political life played such a
loathsome part. I knew—and it was evident to every one in spite
of concealment—that the new Communist party was inspired and supported
and even directed from Moscow. We were invaded just as other lands have
since been invaded.
At Triest, a city dear to every Italian, which had always kept alive
the flame of faith and enthusiasm, a great Fascist meeting was held.
At the head of the Triest Fascists was Giunta, a member of the Italian
Chamber and an ardent and valiant Fascist from the first call to
action. He knew, in various circumstances, how to raise formidable
barriers against this Slavic inroad and against the stupidity of
the men who had taken authority in Triest. The gathering was held
at the Rossetti Theatre. There I spoke. I set forth our fundamental
principles, not only for the Fascists but for all those who were
interested in a new and complete Italian policy. After a panoramic
examination of the knotty problems which at that time were vexing
Italian foreign policy, I demanded a complete, definite withdrawal of
the Rapallo Treaty by which Sforza and Giolitti had signed away Fiume.
I acknowledged, none the less, the impossibility of setting oneself, at
that moment, against the tragic consequences of the treaty—the fruit of
a long disintegration fostered by those who had led us into a morass.
“The fault of the renunciation,” I affirmed, “is not to be attributed
entirely to the negotiators at the last hour; the renunciation had
been perpetrated already in parliament, in our journalism, even in a
university where a professor has published books—translated, of
course, at Zagabria—in order to demonstrate according to his style of
thinking that Dalmatia is not Italian!
“The Dalmatian tragedy lies in this ignorance, this bad faith and utter
incomprehension. We hope to put a stop to these grotesque errors by our
future work. We will know, love and defend Italian Dalmatia.
“The treaty signed, it was possible to make it void by one of the
following means: Either a foreign war or by insurrection at home. Both
are absurd! It is impossible to excite the man in the street against a
treaty of peace after five years of bloody calvary. Nobody is able to
perform a miracle!
“It was possible to awake in Italy a revolution in favor of the
intervention, but in November, 1921, it was not possible to think of
a revolution in order to annul a peace treaty which, good or bad, has
been accepted by ninety out of every hundred of Italians.”
Having delineated clearly the uncertain and transitory position in
which Italy found herself at that time in respect to the Fiume tragedy
and herself, having shown the impossibility of creating a revolution
which would have been premature and condemned to failure, I laid down
and fixed by firm, precise tacks and nails what was to be the political
programme of the Fascists in 1921.
“From these general premises,” I said, “it follows that the Italian
Bundles of Fight should ask:
“First, that the treaties of peace be re-examined and modified in parts
which are revealed as inapplicable or the application of which can
be a source of hatred and incentive to new wars;
“Second, the economic annexation of Fiume to Italy and the guardianship
of Italians living in Dalmatian countries;
“Third, the gradual disengagement of Italy from the group of the
Occidental plutocratic nations by the development of our productive
forces at home;
“Fourth, an approach once again toward the nations of Austria,
Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary, but with dignified attitude, and
safeguarding the supreme necessities of our north and south boundaries;
“Fifth, the creation and intensification of friendly relations with all
peoples of the Near and Far East, not excluding those which are ruled
by the soviets.
“Sixth, the recognition in colonial policy of the rights and
necessities of our nation;
“Seventh, the reform and renewal of all our diplomatic representatives
abroad by elements with special university training;
“Eighth, the building up of Italian colonies in the Mediterranean
sea as well as those beyond the Atlantic by economic and cultural
institutions and rapid communications.”
I concluded my speech by an ardent affirmation of faith.
“It is destiny,” I said, “that Rome again takes her place as the city
that will be the director of the civilization of all Western Europe.
Let us commit the flame of this passion to the coming generations; let
us make of Italy one of the nations without which it is impossible
to conceive the future history of humanity.”
The year 1921 was the centenary of Dante. I was dreaming, in the
name of Alighieri: “The Italy of to-morrow, both free and rich,
all-resounding, with seas and skies peopled with her fleets, with the
earth everywhere made fruitful by her plows.”
Later on, in a meeting of Lombardian Fascists, I indicated some
landmarks of the Fascist battle. In a speech that I made to my friends
in Milan I affirmed that by its fatiguing work Fascism was preparing
men of a spirit suited to the task of an imminent to-morrow—that of
ruling the nation.
Already in germination through all these affirmations, there was
growing the definite intention of preparing by legal action, as well as
by violence, for the conquest of power.
The Socialists and Communists, though debating between themselves on
doctrinarian questions, vied with one another to show themselves more
anti-Fascist than the others. The Communists had no scruples. Every day
they gave proof of their contempt for law, and they evidenced a foolish
disregard for the strength of their adversaries.
At Florence, during a parade of patriotic character, there had been
an attempt at a communist insurrection. Bombs were thrown, isolated
Fascists were pursued. It happened on this occasion that a very young
Fascist named Berta was horribly murdered. The unhappy boy, surprised
upon a bridge of the Arno River, was beaten to a bloody pulp and thrown
from the parapet into the water. As the poor victim, by a dull
instinct of self-preservation, clung to the railing bars with his
fingers, the Communists rushed upon him and beat his hands until our
martyr, whose jellied hands were slackening their grip, finally let
go and was plunged into the Arno. His body was whirled about in the
current.
This single episode of incredible ferocity gave evidence of how deeply
Communist outrage had penetrated into Italy. As if that were not
enough, soon afterward there occurred the butchery of Empoli, where
two camions were loaded with marines and carabineers. The proof of the
degenerative ferocity of the Communists was provided by the corpses of
the poor victims, for their inert bodies were treated as jungle savages
treat the corpses of their victims.
This was not confined to any one province. At that time there happened
also the trap and massacre of Casale Monferrato, where among the dead
were two old Sardinian drummers and where Cesare Maria de Vecchi, a
brave companion, was wounded. At Milan isolated Fascists were singled
out and attacked by stealth. One of our most beloved friends, the very
young Aldo Sette, was murdered with all the accompaniment of savagery.
But on the twenty-third of March occurred the culminating episode of
premeditated horror, with dreadful consequences. The Communists caused
a bomb to explode in the Diana Theatre in that city. It was crowded
with peaceful citizens attending an operatic performance. The bomb sent
twenty persons to sudden death. Fifty others were mutilated. All Milan
gave itself up to anguish and anger and to chills of vengeance.
There was no possibility of checking public sentiment. Squads of
Fascists assaulted for the second time the newspaper _Avanti_ and it
was burned by them. Others tried also to assault the Workers’ Chamber,
but a strong military garrison barred the Fascists from an attack.
The action squads turned their activity into the suburbs, firmly held
both by Communists and Socialists. The swift, decisive action of
the Fascists served to drive from their nests and put to flight the
subverters of civil order. The political authority was powerless; it
could not control the disorders and disturbances. On the twenty-sixth
of March I concentrated all the Fascists of Lombardy. They filed off,
marching compactly in columns, through the principal streets of Milan.
It was a demonstration of strength not to be forgotten. At last over
the horizon I had brought defenders of civil life, protectors of order
and citizenship. There had come a spirit of revival for all good
works. The martyrs of the Diana and the Fascist victims were the best
inspiration. A whole people might now be united in the name of the
Roman Littorio, under the direction of Italian youth—a youth which had
won the war and now would again attain the serene peace of the spirit
and the rewards of fruitful virtue, of discipline, work and fraternity.
Unforgettable were the demonstrations for the victims of the dastardly
bomb at the Diana. It was from that day on that there began the
progressive crashing down and crumbling of the whole structure of
Italian subversive elements. Now they were driven like rats to their
holes and were barricaded in the few forts of the Workers’
Chambers and of the district clubs.
I led a life of intense activity. I managed the _Popolo d’Italia_
and every morning I was able to give the political text for the day,
not only to Milan but to the principal cities of Italy in which the
political life of the nation found its sources. I led the Fascist party
with a firm hand. I must say that I gave some very strict orders. I
had an ear open to all who came to Milan with communications about our
organization in the various provinces. I watched the activity of our
enemies. I guarded for the Fascists the clear, clean stream of purpose.
I maintained the freedom necessary for our elasticity of movements.
I wished not to mix or adulterate such a pure and strong faith as
the Fascist faith. I wished not to blend that ardent youth which was
the essential soul of Fascism with old elements of trade and barter,
combinations, coalitions, parliamentary compromises and the hypocrisies
of Italian liberalism.
Among the many vicissitudes which have accompanied my existence I
have always kept an invincible passion for flying. At that period,
so tumultuous, so colored by dramatic hues, every morning found me
on a bicycle going and coming some eighteen miles to take lessons in
aviation. My teacher was Giuseppe Radaelli, a modest and brave aviator,
full of passion for flight and happy to have a chance to teach me the
difficult craft of being a good pilot.
One morning I took a seat in a plane with Radaelli. The first flight
came off without incident. During the second flight, on the
contrary, the motor for some reason stalled, just at the moment when we
were executing the maneuver of coming down. The machine veered sidewise
and after gliding on one wing, precipitated us onto the field from a
height of about forty metres. The pilot came off with some light wounds
on the forehead. I had several about the head which would require two
weeks to heal. After an emergency treatment at the field I was treated
more thoroughly by Dr. Leonardo Pallieri at the Guardia Medica of Porta
Venezia. That incident, which might have had marked consequences to
my life, was, thanks to the kind treatment by my personal friend, Dr.
Ambrogio Binda, passed off as nothing.
This incident, however, gave me the opportunity to measure how many
Italians were following my affairs. I got almost a plebiscite of warm
sympathy from all over the land. I rested, suffering, for some days,
and then I took up my usual activity at the _Popolo d’Italia_, knowing
that Italy no longer disregarded the part I was to play.
On the day of the carnage at the Diana and of the consequent reprisals,
while spirits were kindled and irritated, a certain Masi, sent by the
anarchists of Piombino, came to Milan to attempt my life. He presented
himself at my house, rang the bell and boldly climbed the stairs. He
was a strange creature of extraordinary mien. My daughter Edda went to
open the door.
The unknown man asked for me. He was sent to the _Popolo d’Italia_, but
went below and waited for me on the large public square of Foro
Bonaparte. When he saw me he came toward me at first rapidly, and then
slowly he wavered. He asked me in a halting voice if I was Professor
Mussolini, and when I said I was he added that he wanted to speak to me
at some length.
The strange behavior of the individual with the grim eye made me
understand that I found myself in the presence of a madman. I said that
I did not give audience in the street; I told him that I received at
the _Popolo d’Italia_, where in fact he came half an hour later, asking
to be introduced to me. I consented at once and willingly. Masi—who,
I repeat, was a young man with burning eyes—as soon as he came into
my presence appeared embarrassed. He said he wanted to speak to me.
His behavior was so curious that I asked him to tell me promptly and
sympathetically what he wanted to say.
After a moment of hesitation he told me that he had been chosen by lot,
in a drawing by the anarchists of Piombino, to murder me treacherously
with a Berretta pistol. Later, having been caught in some doubts, he
had resolved to come and confess everything to me, to hand me the
weapon with which he had intended to kill me and to put himself at my
mercy. I listened to him, but I said not a word.
Taking the revolver from his hands, I called the chief clerk and
telephone operator of the newspaper, Sant’ Elia, and intrusted to
him that unhappy man, so ensnared by anarchy and frightened by the
consequences of his dreams. I wanted Sant’ Elia to accompany him to
Triest, with a letter of introduction to the Fascist Giunta. Soon
afterward, however, the police—informed by what means I know not of the
episode—arrested the anarchist of Piombino as he went away. This was
the one clever piece of detective work performed at that time by the
Milan police. They had utterly failed to trace out the dynamiters of
the Diana even two months after the crime.
Oh, many had meditated upon my funeral! And yet love is stronger than
hatred. I always felt a power over events and over men.
Giolitti in those days was in a most difficult parliamentary situation.
On the political horizon there had appeared a political constellation
of first magnitude—it was Fascism. Facing this fact, the president of
the council of that epoch deemed it opportune to measure the parties on
the basis of parliamentary suffrage, and he announced the elections for
the month of May.
After a preliminary discussion the various parties which were pledged
to order, in opposition to Socialist communism, found it expedient to
go into the elections as a body, which could be defined as a national
bloc.
In the centre of the bloc—the only motivating and encouraging force—was
Fascism. All other parties kept their complexions as subverters in
political and economic matters. The Socialist party presented itself
separated from the Communist party, while the Popular party, which
always claimed an inspiration of ecclesiastical, religious character,
moved on the field alone, leaning heavily upon the political influence
of the country vicars.
In order to make myself acquainted with the real efficiency of our
party, I started reconnoitering in several provinces. I received an
enthusiastic welcome at the beginning of April in Bologna, a fortress
of socialism and a barometer indicating the level of the whole Po
Valley. Bologna greeted me in a jubilation of colors, with parades,
fanfares of welcome and speeches favoring Italian resurrection. The
butchery of the Palace of Accursio was still too fresh and red in
memory. Fascism was in a hot fervor; therefore my presence could not
fail to whip up in all the young men a singular strength of will, hope
and faith.
From Bologna I went to Ferrara, another stronghold of socialism. And
there again there was waiting for me an unforgettable demonstration
of strength. Bologna and Ferrara are two magnificent towns, centres
of regions exclusively agricultural. In those days I could measure
by my youth and intimate knowledge the strength, the mentality, the
ways of thinking and the longing for order of the workers of the
land. I understood that their thinking had lost its way, but it was
not dominated by red propaganda. At bottom their mentality is that of
people wise and praiseworthy, who have always been, at the crucial
moments, the bulwark of the fortunes of the Italian race.
The electoral struggle lasted exactly a month. During that period I
made but three speeches—one in Bologna, once in Ferrara and one in
Milan, on the Place Borromeo. Contrary to what happened during the
political elections of 1919, I succeeded this time in getting a
plurality not only in Milan but also in the districts of Bologna and
Ferrara. Great demonstrations of joy followed the news. Furthermore,
all Fascism in the electoral field was gaining in undoubted strides.
In November, 1919, I had not succeeded in getting more than 4,000
votes. In 1921 I was at the head of the list with 178,000 votes. My
election to the Italian Chamber caused a great rejoicing among my
friends, my colleagues, my assistants. To all my faithful sub-editors,
Giuliani, Gaini, Rocca, Morgagni and others, I recalled the episode
of 1919, when I said to my discouraged and perplexed assistants that
within the space of two years I would have my revenge. The prophecy had
proved true within two years. A new moral atmosphere was being breathed
by every stratum of our population. Though not many Fascists entered
the parliament, the few represented in themselves a tremendous force
for the new destinies of Italy.
At Montecitorio, the House of Parliament, in order to follow the rules
of the chamber, the Fascists formed their own group. There were only
thirty-five representatives. It was numerically a small group, indeed,
but it was composed of men with good livers and excellent courage.
During the session I made few speeches. I think I spoke five times
and that was all. Certainly I tried in all cases to give my oratory a
spirit and to make it stick to realities. Certainly I confined it to a
devotion to the interests of Italian life. I put aside parliamentary
triflings and the tin sword play of parliamentary politicians.
In a speech made on the twenty-first of June, 1921, I criticised
without reserve the foreign policy of the Giolitti ministry. I put on a
firm, realistic basis the question of Northern Italy, the Upper Adige.
I pointed out the feebleness of the government and of the men placed
in authority over the new provinces. One of these, Credaro, was “bound
also by means of the symbol of the political compass and triangle to
the immortal precepts” of false liberalism—to wit, he was swayed by
that Masonry which in Italy was representing a “web of foreign and
internationalistic ideas.” Therefore, I affirmed solemnly: “As the
government of Giolitti is responsible for the miserable Salata and
Credaro policy in the Upper Adige, I vote against him. Let us declare
to the German deputies here in our present Italian parliament that we
find ourselves at the Brenner Pass now, and that at the Brenner we will
remain at any price.” I took up again the hot, impassioned subject of
Fiume and Dalmatia. I assaulted violently the shameful foreign policy
of Sforza, leading our land to humiliation and ruin.
I spoke of our domestic policy. I stripped the covering from the
Socialists and Communists and made them face Fascism. I pointed out
with irony the fact that, among others, with the Communists stood
Graziadei, who, at other times, had been my opponent when he was a
Socialist reformer. I exposed to the light the utter lack of principles
to be found in representatives who dipped their paws into this or that
party group or programme solely for the purpose of gaining petty power
or personal gain.
The speech, which had only the purpose of clarification, gave some
needed hints as to our political action as Fascists in destruction
of the methods and principles of our adversaries. To my surprise it
created a deep impression. It had a vast echo outside the chamber and
was undoubtedly among the factors which finally doomed the Giolitti
ministry, like all the rest, to topple over like a drunken buzzard.
I was not alone in the parliamentary struggle. The group was helping me
valiantly and with ability. Already the Deputy Federzoni, since then
a distinguished official of the Fascist state, had started a review
and revision of the whole work of Count Sforza, Giolitti’s Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and particularly of the Adriatic policy. There had
been dramatic sessions in which the work of the aforesaid minister not
only was put under a strict and inexorable examination, according to
both the logic and conscience of Fascism, but was examined in the light
of the negotiations and treaties, open or secret, which the parliament
had to know and approve.
After various parliamentary ups and downs, the Giolitti ministry fell
and was followed by that of Bonomi—a Socialist who arrived at being
a Democrat through varied captious reasonings. He tried to set up
a policy of internal pacification. He was interested in the truce
between Fascists and Socialists, of which I have already told the
meagre results. Just at the moment when Bonomi was developing this
political fabric came the tragic episode of the massacre of Sarzana.
There not less than eighteen Fascists fell. Then came the butchery
of Modena, where the Royal Guards shot into a parade of Fascists,
leaving some ten dead and many wounded. The home policy had not found
as yet, one could mildly say, any perch of stability. I constantly was
unfolding my active task as leader of the party, as journalist and
politician.
I had a duel of some consequence with Ciccotti Scozzese, a mean
figure of a journalist. He was the long hand of our Italian political
Masonry. Among other various imperfections, one might say he had that
of physical cowardice. Our duel was proof of it. After several assaults
the physicians were obliged to stop the encounter because of the claim
that my opponent had a heart attack. In other words, fear had set
him all aflutter. Shortly before that duel I had another with Major
Baseggio over some parliamentary squabble.
I think I have some good qualities as a swordsman—at least I possess
some qualities of courage, and thanks to both, I always have come out
of combat rather well. In those combats having a chivalrous character,
I endeavor to acquit myself in a worthy manner.
Finally in November, 1921, I convoked in Rome a large congress of the
Fascists of the whole of Italy. The moment had arrived to emerge from
the first phase, in which Fascism had had the character of a movement
outside the usual political divisions, into a new phase, in which
the organic structure of a party, which had been made strong both by
firm political intrenchment and by the growth of central and local
organization, should be crystallized.
The Italian Bundles of Fight had been inspired by an impetuous
spirit. They possessed therefore an organization of battle rather than
a true and proper organization of party. It was now necessary to come
to this second phase in order to be prepared to be a successor of
the old parties in the command and direction of public affairs. The
congress at the Augusteo—the tomb of Augustus and now a concert hall in
Rome—had to agree on the terms for the creation of the new party. It
had to fix both the organization and the programme.
That was a memorable meeting. Thanks to the number of the followers and
the quickness and solidity of the discussions, it showed the virility
of Fascism. My point of view won an overwhelming victory in that
meeting. The Italian Bundles of Fight were now transforming themselves.
They were to receive the new denomination of Fascist National party,
with a central directory and supreme council over the provincial
organizations and the lesser Fascist sections which were to be created
in every locality. On that occasion I wanted with all my desire to
strip from our party the personal character which the Fascist movement
had assumed because of the stamp of my will. But the more I wished to
give the party an autonomous organization and the more I tried, the
more I received the conviction from the evidence of the facts that the
party could not have existed and lived and could not be triumphant
except under my command, my guidance, my support and my spurs.
The meeting in Rome gave a deep insight into the fundamental strength
of Fascism, but especially for me it was a revelation of my
personal strength. But there were several unpleasant incidents. There
had been some men killed in Rome. The workers’ quarter of Rome was
hostile to us. The work of the congress had, however, its full and
normal development, and the parade of Fascists at last filed off in
battle array through the streets of Rome. It served notice to everybody
that Fascism was ripe as a party, and as an instrumentality with the
heart and the means to battle and to defend itself.
The Bonomi ministry developed its pacification policy in the midst
of difficulties of all kinds. The time and the moment were rather
murky. The year 1921 presented difficulties which would have made any
politician shiver. On the horizon a line of clarification was to be
discerned, but the sky was nevertheless still heavy with old clouds.
About the end of this formless, gray year, awaiting a great dawn,
occurred an event in the financial world which threw a shadow of
sorrow over the whole land. This was the crash of the Banca Italiana
di Sconto. The collapse was felt particularly in the southern part of
Italy by the humble classes who had deposited their savings in that
bank. This great banking institution had been born during the war and
had done notable service for the organization of our efficiency, but
in the postwar period it could not bear the burden of its engagements.
The big banking organization, in which the laboring populations of the
South and of Upper Italy were interested so deeply, crumbled on itself,
giving all the postwar Italian financial policy a sensation of dismay
and failure. Ignorance, foolishness, fault, levity? Who knows?
Certainly our credit as a power and as a rebuilding force in comparison
with foreign countries diminished enormously. To the faults of our
domestic policy was added now, in the eyes of the world, a plutocratic
and financial insufficiency.
From the broils of financial chaos and in the maze of debates which
ensued, Fascism kept itself aloof. It delayed not to consider the past,
but chose to determine carefully a sound, wise and foreseeing monetary
policy for the nation.
For the first time I found myself squarely challenged by the gigantic
problem of public finance.
For me it was a new airplane—and there was no competent instructor
anywhere on our field.
CHAPTER VIII
TOWARD CONQUEST OF POWER
Finance, the proper use and easy flow of capital, and the development
of the banking structure of a nation must not be underestimated when
one has to face the clear responsibility of building a state or of
leading a people out of chaos.
The noisy crash of the great Banca Italiana di Sconto in Italy
revealed, as I have said, a deep weakness in our economic structure.
After the war it was clear that many banking and industrial enterprises
were out of adjustment and must disappear or be succeeded by stronger
institutions.
There were struggles between opposing groups of capitalists. These
created a cynical attitude among the modern middle class; at the same
time it was shown that our capitalistic industrial group resented the
vice of having no comprehensive plan. We needed a strong capitalistic
tradition, rigorous experience; we found that in the whir of events it
was difficult to perceive who was right and who would probably be able
to save himself, when the pressure came and a test of strength was made.
The other nations, who saw deeply into this strange cauldron through
the cold eyes of their financiers, made dark prophecies as to our
economic life. The Italian government itself did not know how
to behave in its money affairs, and, not finding anything better,
did as is often done in such circumstances—began to print money.
That contributed to render a situation which was already bad and
complicated, grotesquely worse.
In January, 1922, the Inter-Allied Conference was held at Cannes
in southern France. It was a very good junket and it was made more
pleasant by the fine hospitality of the French. I went there to serve
my newspaper, the _Popolo d’Italia_. What an excellent occasion it
was to distract public opinion from our internal crisis, at least
temporarily! We could examine thoroughly, instead of domestic thorns,
problems of international character!
At Cannes I wanted to interview the great world politicians—responsible
men. I would have liked, from a full survey, to have informed Italian
public opinion as to the various ingredients which we could find in the
pudding of our international situation. The Cannes conference was the
overture to the opera of the conference in Genoa. Italy should have
selected her own policy. It should have been one which would not betray
vital interests arising from our most urgent historic and political
necessities.
At any rate because of these considerations, I decided to go to
Cannes. I collected ten thousand lire for necessary expenses. My
brother, Arnaldo, went to convert them at a money changer and brought
me the equivalent in French money, which amounted to no more than
five thousand, two hundred francs. Though I had followed the
course of foreign exchange this little personal experience made a deep
impression. It made me realize an angular fact; the Italian currency
had lost nearly half of its value in comparison to French currency! It
was a grave symptom. It was a humiliation. It was a blow to the self
respect of a victorious nation, a vexing weathervane; it indicated
our progress toward bankruptcy! Up leaped the thought that this
situation must be cured by the vital strength of Fascism. It was one
of our opportunities; the desperate developments unfortunately had not
compelled the government, or political parties, or parliament itself to
act. The monstrosity of inflation instead gave to everybody a fatuous,
inconsistent, artificial sense of prosperity.
The Cannes conference had no importance; it was a preface for Genoa. It
was clothed in an atmosphere of indifference. International meetings
had followed each other with tiresome regularity here and there in
resorts of Europe which appeared pleasant places to hold meetings.
The last reunions had lost interest and were, instead of being
important, the object of newspaper satire and of mocking “couplets”
in comic reviews. To me, however, the sojourn at Cannes gave a means
of extracting personally, from a direct and realistic examination of
peoples and events, deep and well-rooted conclusions.
The Cannes conference had provoked a sudden ministerial crisis in
France. Briand, whom I interviewed in the course of these days,
resigned without waiting for a vote of the Chamber of Deputies. And
I, in an article of January 14th, 1922, entitled “After Cannes,”
having given due weight to the numerous sharp interrogation marks of
the international situation, concluded:
“The unsolved problems, questionings and challenges could be ranged
in line to infinity. It is urgent, instead, to take note of the most
important lesson of the French crisis. It is a bitter verification.
It will bring the masses of the populations who suffer morally and
economically to say in their hearts, ‘These gentlemen are either
without conscience, or they are powerless and flabby. They either have
no wish to make peace or they are not able to make it. A Europe in such
terrible spiritual and economic conditions as those of the present must
embark on reason or sink. The Europe of to-morrow, broken in divisions
of impoverished peoples, may become a colony: two other continents are
already high up on the horizon of history!’”
To the plight disclosed by the wide picture of the European horizon
unfolding to my eyes, was to be added that due to our domestic
troubles, always growing a little worse.
I have always spoken as a journalist, as a politician, as a deputy, of
the existence of two Italies. One appeared to me freed from servitude.
It was noble, proud, loyal, devoutly dedicated by a bloody sacrifice of
war, resolved to be always in the first rank to defend the right, the
privilege and the great name of the Italian people. On the other side,
however, I saw another Italy, dull to any consciousness of nobility and
power, indifferent to origin and traditions, serving obscure “isms,”
a slave to apathetic tendencies, cold, egotistic, incapable of
gallantry, dead to sacrifice.
In a thousand hardships, in numerous fights, those two Italies were
arrayed by immutable destiny one against the other; their opposition
was revealed in bloody manifestations, typical of the fierce and final
struggle between the Fascisti and their enemies. To see in its right
light the character of this antithesis, let us examine some of the
typical episodes.
In Pistoia, for instance, a brave officer, Lieutenant Federico Florio,
who fought valiantly during the War and who had followed D’Annunzio
in Fiume, was treacherously murdered by a deserter anarchist, Cafiero
Lucchesi. It was a crime premeditated by a craven to strike down a
gallant man. This criminal outrage filled the souls of the Fascisti
with utter indignation. The last words of our martyr were simple and
solemn, “I am sorry now I will not be able to do something else for my
Country.” No more. Then the agony came. I felt that such sacrifices
cemented indissolubly the unity of Fascism.
“A formidable cement!” I wrote in my paper. “It binds the Fascisti
legions; a sacred and intangible bond keeps close the faithful of the
Littorio. It is the sacred bond of our dead. They are hundreds. Youths.
Mature men. Not a party in Italy, nor any movement in recent Italian
history can be compared to Fascism. Not one ideal has been like the
Fascist—consecrated by the blood of so many young souls.
“If Fascism were not a faith, how did it or could it give stoicism
and courage to its legions? Only a faith which has reached the heights,
only a faith can suggest those words that came out from the lips
of Federico Florio, already bloodless and gray. Those words are a
document; they are a testament. They are as simple and as grave as a
passage from the Gospel.
“The Fascisti of all Italy must receive and meditate these words—in
silence—but unceasingly marching, always more determined—toward the
goal! No obstacle will ever stop them.”
All of us had full realization of the command and the impulse which
came from the dead. When faith leaps out of the hearts of martyrs it
carries irresistibly the sure impression of nobility, and brands men
with the symbol of its eternal greatness.
The groups of the Fascisti, their meetings, their compact parades,
and their services in patriotism had as ideal leaders our martyrs,
invincible knights of the Fascist faith and passion. We called them by
name, one by one, with firm and sure voice. At every name, the comrades
answered, “Present.” This was a simple rite; it had all the value and
the affirmation of a vow.
Quite an opposite symptom of the two contrasting Italies was plainly
manifested in the politics displayed by the two senators, Credaro
and Salata, who were in border zones, as high commissioners of the
government. These two men seemed to ask from the natives who were
not of Italian blood a kind of mercy and tolerance for the fact that
they themselves were Italians. No demand of the German-speaking
people on the frontier was considered unjustified. Little
by little, following that policy of cowardice and servitude, we
renounced our well-defined rights, sanctified by the blood spilled by
volunteer heroes. Already in June, 1921—as I said in the preceding
chapter—without mincing words I had denounced and ridiculed in the
presence of all the chamber of parliament the work done by Credaro and
Salata. Their destructive, eroding activity, however, continued. The
Fascisti, confronted by successive proofs of such innate and inane
weakness, were roused; they accused the two governors with violent
words. On January 17th, 1922, at the meeting held in Triest, the
Fascisti demanded the recall of Salata and the suppression of the
central office for the New Provinces. That campaign succeeded in making
its own way some time afterward. In fact the two senators, Credaro and
Salata were recalled even though they were replaced by the government.
But the consequence of their errors were to be suffered for a weary
time. Quite differently, with pride and dignity, would the black shirts
have garrisoned the sacred limits of the Brenner and the Nevosso.
In that period of bitter charges, counter charges, debates and
squabbles, while the European horizon was still filled with thunder
storms, came the death of the Pontiff Benedict XV, Giacomo della
Chiesa, of a noble family of Genoa. He passed away January 22nd, 1922.
He had ruled the Church in the stormiest period of the war, following
Pius X, the kind-hearted patriarch of Venice, who distinguished his
pontificate by a strong battle against the fads of political and
religious modernism.
Benedict XV did not leave in our souls a sympathetic memory. We could
not, if we tried, forget that in 1917, while people were struggling,
when we had already seen the fall of Czarism and the Russian revolution
with the defection of the armies on the eastern front, the Pontiff
defined the war with the unhappy expression, “a useless massacre.”
That phrase, inconceivable in such a terrible moment, was a blow to
those who had faith in sacrifice for an ideal and who hoped the war
would correct many deep-rooted historical injustices. Besides, war had
been our invention; the Catholic Church had ever been a stranger to
wars, when she did not provoke them herself. And yet, the ambiguous
conduct of the Pope amid the fighting nations is considered nowadays by
some zealous persons who are deficient in critical sense and blind to
historical consciousness, as the maximum of equity and the essence of
an objective spirit.
But that attitude and its expression had, for us Italians, a very
different value. It served to make evident an anomalous phase of
Italy’s situation—that is, the position of the Pontiff in Rome during
a period in which Italy was engaged in a terrible struggle. For that
reason, on the death of Benedict XV, the succession to the pontificate
took on at that moment a particular importance for the future.
There is a saying in our country which is applied to the most
extraordinary events to imply that the most complex things can be
reduced to very simple terms. The expression is, “When a Pope is
dead, another one is made.” There is no comment to be made on that
simple statement. But to succeed to the throne of St. Peter,
to become the worthy substitute for the Prince of the Apostles, to
represent on earth the Divinity of Christ, is one thing; the weight and
value of a conclusion reached by an elective assembly is another. In
view of the relationship that existed between the State and the Church
in Italy one can easily understand that there could be reasons for
apprehension, as well as deep interest in the results of the Conclave.
The eyes of all the Catholic world were turned toward Rome. Great
vexations stirred all the European chanceries; secret influences were
penetrating deep places; they were trying to suppress and overpower
each other.
Spectators and diplomats of every country in the world were spell
bound by the complexities at the very moment that preparations for
the Conclave were being made, when all Rome was getting ready to wait
patiently in the Plaza of St. Peter’s during the balloting.
Meanwhile in Italy there arose a debate on the political effects of
Benedict XV. Various prophecies were made as to his successor; the
journalistic row that went on had never been surpassed. Many problems
of vast consequences were superficially treated.
The fall of the Bonomi ministry, attributed to inefficiency in domestic
politics and to the fall of the Banca Italiana di Sconto, was really
due to the failure of a commemoration for Pope Benedict XV from the
national parliament.
I had already on various occasions disclosed to the Fascisti, whom I
considered and consider always the aristocracy of Italy, that our
religious ideal had in itself moral attributes of first importance. I
had affirmed the necessity of condemning the unfruitful conception,
absurd and artificial, of affected or vicious anti-clericalism.
That tendency not only kept us in a situation of moral inferiority
as compared with other peoples, but also divided the Italians in
the religious field into various schools of thought. Above all it
exposed us to such corrupting, sinister and tortuous power as that of
international Masonry of a political type, as distinguished from the
Masonry known in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
I had wanted to show that the problem of the relations between the
State and the Church in Italy was not to be considered insoluble, and
to explain how necessary it was to create, after a calm and impartial
objective examination, an atmosphere of understanding, in order to give
to the Italian people a basis for a life of harmony between religious
faith and civil life.
The Fascisti, as intelligent people worthy of the epoch in which they
were living, followed me in the new conception of religious policy. To
it was attached our war against Masonry as we knew Masonry in Italy. It
was a war of fundamental importance and Fascism was almost unanimous in
a determination to fight it to the end.
Let us not forget that the Masons of Italy have always represented a
distortion, not only in political life, but in spiritual concepts.
All the strength of Masonry was directed against the papal policies,
but this struggle represented no real and profound ideal. The secret
society from a practical point of view rested on an association
of mutual adulation, of reciprocal aid, of pernicious nepotism and
favoritism. To become powerful and to consummate its underhanded
dealings, Masonry made use of the weaknesses of the Liberal governments
that succeeded each other in Italy after 1870 to extend its
machinations in the bureaucracy, in the magistracy, in the field of
education, and also in the army, so that it could dominate the vital
ganglions of the whole nation. Its secret character throughout the
twentieth century, its mysterious meetings, abhorrent to our beautiful
communities with their sunlight and their love of truth, gave to the
sect the character of corruption, a crooked concept of life, without
programme, without soul, without moral value.
My antipathy for that disgusting form of secret association goes back
to my youth. Long before, at the Socialist congress of Ancona in 1914,
I had presented to my comrades the dilemma: Socialists or Masons?
That point of view had won a complete triumph, in spite of the strong
opposition of the Mason-socialists.
Later, in Fascism, I made the same gesture of strength. It took
courage. I obeyed the positive command of my conscience, and not any
opportunism. My attitude had nothing in common with the anti-Masonic
spirit of the Jesuits. They acted for reasons of defense. After all,
their inner organization as a religious society is almost completely
unknown.
For my direct, methodical and consistent course of policy the hate of
the Masonic sect persecutes me even now. Masonry of that type has
been beaten in Italy, but it operates and conspires behind mask of the
international anti-Fascism. It utterly fails to defeat me. It tries to
throw mud at me, but the insult does not reach its mark. It machinates
plots and crimes, but the hired assassins do not control my destiny.
It goes gossiping about my weaknesses, and the supposed organic
afflictions of my body, but I am more alive and stronger than ever.
This is a war without quarter, a war of which I am a veteran. Every
time that I have wanted to cauterize difficult situations in Italian
political life, every time that I have wanted to give a sincere, frank
and loyal moral rectitude to the personnel in politics, I have always
had against me our Masonry! But that organization, which in other times
was very powerful, has been beaten by me. Against me it did not and
cannot win. Italians won this battle for me. They found the cure for
this leprosy.
To-day in Italy we breathe the open air; life is exposed to the light
of day.
When Bonomi fell, the King consulted with many minds. I too was called
twice to the Quirinal, his official palace, where conferences are held.
Obvious reasons of reserve forbid me to make known what I said to the
Sovereign. This political crisis took on abnormal aspects. We groped in
the dark. The number of men in the political field who were fit to fill
a minority was very limited. They looked toward Orlando, then toward De
Nicola, but nobody wanted to accept the responsibility of forming
a ministry under the prevailing conditions. They were obliged to go
back to Bonomi, who fell for the second time on the “via crucis” when
he presented himself again at the chamber.
New consultations and new suggestions were made. Always the same
names were given: Orlando, De Nicola, Bonomi. The picture presented
that degree of helplessness which has afflicted so many democracies,
and which has enabled many countries to vie with each other in the
humiliating and derisive boast that they have had more governments and
ministries than years of existence! The requirements for leadership
were unchanged—the ability to compromise principles and sometimes
even integrity, to barter and negotiate with palavering artistry in
an effort to build another shaky structure which would perpetuate
the whole depressing system. This system may be dear to the heart of
doctrinaires. It was quite another affair in practice.
The “Popular” or “Catholic” party, following its bad political
instinct, which caused it to be ultra conservative under cover and
revolutionary in the street and in parliament, vetoed any return of
Giolitti. The posture of the “popolari” was quite unique. Unfortunately
they controlled a strong group in the chamber. While they refused to
accept the responsibility of power, they blue-pencilled Giolitti and
denied support to Bonomi. They rendered the composition of any ministry
well-nigh impossible even as a makeshift.
In spite of repeated consultations the same names always came to
the surface. It was such a stagnation as comes finally to weak
democracies. It was tearing to pieces political logic, common sense,
and, unfortunately, also Italy herself.
At last the Facta ministry was formed. This mediocre selection of a
member of parliament, closely bound to Giolitti, was made as the only
anchor of safety in an absurd extravaganza. Every day we went down one
step on the stairs of dignity. Nevertheless, because of the conditions,
and because Facta undertook a burden that nobody else wanted, I did
not hesitate to declare in my paper that the new cabinet, colorless
as it was, might function to some end. I was prepared to say that it
could represent, if nothing else, a will to go on, at least in the
affairs of ordinary routine administration. It is bad enough to suffer
a government which creates nothing; it is even worse to suffer a system
of politics which cannot of itself create even an administration!
Facta was an old veteran of parliament and I feel sure that he was a
gentleman stamped out by the old die. Respectful of the third rate
political morals of the men of his age, he had only one devotion. That
was for his teacher, Giolitti. Facta had been a discreet Minister of
the Treasury in other times. He had not, as even his friends admitted,
the strength and authority needed to draw up a ministry at a serious
moment. He had to face the gas and smoke of the struggle between
parties, of the pretensions of the “popolari,” of the growing strength
of Fascism, and, finally, a delicate international situation abroad.
It was in just such ways that the old “liberal” Italy with its
petty dealing with problems, its little parliamentary pea-shooting, its
unworthy plots in corridor and cloak rooms, ante-rooms and sidewalk
cafes, for puny personal power, its recurring crises, its journalistic
bickerings, was breaking the real Italy. Italy, with its struggling
co-operatives, its inadequate rural banks, its mean and superficial
measures of economy, its incapable and improvident charity! Italy, in
its position of humble servant, with napkin on arm to wipe other mouths
at international conferences! Italy, prolific and powerful! Italy, like
a mother able to supply, even for foreign ingratitude, laborious sons
to make fruitful other soils, other climates, other cities and other
peoples! Such was her leadership; such was her plight!
Facta was the man who fully represented that old world. Facta was the
first to be surprised that he had suddenly found so many admirers. He
often said that he failed to understand why he should be at the head
of the Italian government. This timid member of parliament forgot
that all these people around him who gave him by their mouthings a
sensation of strength and influence were only the survivors of an old
Liberal-Democratic world, incapable of living, outdated, shipwrecked,
clinging for safety to the last Liberal planks of compromise.
But the powerful machine of Fascism was already in motion. Nobody could
step into its path to stop it, for it had one aim: to give a government
to Italy.
In these days there were some attempts at Fascist secession and schism.
I removed them with a few strokes of the pen and a few measures
taken within. I was troubled less by mistaken disaffections than by
a single grave incident in Fiume. There a renegade Italian, Zanella,
nursed and nourished an ignoble anti-Italian plot. The Fascisti imposed
banishment upon him. This evil representative of the autonomists and
of the Jugo-Slavs was obliged to leave the unhappy city which without
Italy would never have been able to put its lips to the cup of peace.
At this time Charles of Hapsburg died, after having twice tried vainly
to seize again the crown of Saint Stephen. The nemesis of history
completed its work and took away from the Hapsburg line the last
possibility of return. In Italian history this reigning house had
represented always a most unfortunate influence. It had been invariably
adverse to our solidarity.
Without attracting deep attention or intelligent public interest,
living this way and that, up and down by alternate hopes and crises,
optimisms and weary despairs—came the Conference of Genoa.
On the first of that May was celebrated the so-called Festival of
Labor. Unfortunately the only distinctions given this festival were an
increased outburst of Socialist and Communist attacks and ambushes.
Even the anniversary of the declaration of war, May 24th, was saddened
by blood. Solemn celebrations were held throughout Italy, but in Rome
the Communists dared to fire at the parade which was doing honor to
Enrico Toti, the Roman who, besides his life, had hurled against the
fugitive enemy also his crutches. One person fell dead and there were
twenty-four wounded.
As if that was not enough the Alliance of Labor, a hybrid
coalition of all the anti-Fascist groups, proclaimed a general strike.
It was too much! There was no sign of any act of energy from the
government. Without hesitation I ordered a general mobilization of
the Fascisti. I affirmed on my word of honor that we would break the
back of the attempt of the red rabble. “We are sure to smash, _we say
crush_, this bad beast once for all.”
Considering the timid behavior of the middle classes and of the
government, this virile decision, taken after full analysis, with full
determination and full responsibility, served as a cold douche for the
socialists and the reds. The Fascist mobilization came like lightning.
On the same day the strike ended.
While the public streets, squares and fields were being put in order
by the energetic intervention of the Fascisti, in the parliament at
Montecitorio the usual intrigues went on. There was oscillation of
plans and programmes. These ranged from proposals of a dictatorship to
collaboration with the reds! In the general marasmus there came on July
12th a statement from the Minister of the Treasury, Peano, which marked
for me the maximum of our anxiety.
_The budget of the nation had a deficit of six billions and a half._ It
was a terrific figure for Italy. It was a situation impossible for our
economic structure to bear. To errors in foreign and domestic policy
was added financial chaos. Minister Facta in record-breaking speed
had demonstrated his incapacity in every way. I made a speech
in parliament on July 19th, 1922, in which I specifically and flatly
withdrew from the ministry the votes of the Fascist group. After having
demonstrated the equivocal position of the Socialists, who wanted to
collaborate with the government so that they might blackmail it the
better, and of the “popolari” who wrongly considered themselves supreme
rulers of the situation, I said these clear and sharp words to the
Premier himself:
“Honorable Facta, I tell you that your ministry cannot live because
it is unbecoming from every point of view. Your ministry cannot live,
I might better say vegetate, or drag its life along, thanks to the
charity of all those who sustain you. The traditional rope in the same
manner sustains the not less traditional hanged. After all, your makers
are there to testify to the character of your ministry; you have been
the first to be surprised into the presidency of the council.”
I went on then to examine the disheartening mistakes of the Facta
policies and I concluded by asserting that Fascism by getting away
from the parliamentary majority, had accomplished a “gesture of high
political and moral modesty....” “It is impossible to be part of the
majority,” I added, “and at the same time act outside as Fascism is now
forced to act.”
These words excited a brisk stir of mumbles, exclamations, and
comments, which went to a higher pitch when I added:
“Fascism will make its own decisions. Probably it will soon say if it
wants to become a legitimate party, for that means a government
party, or if it will instead be a party of insurrection. In the latter
case it will no longer be able to be part of any governmental majority.
Consequently it will not be obliged to sit in this chamber.”
I gave in that way, not only to the dying Facta ministry, but also to
any other new government, an energetic and unmistakable warning. I had
put up the signboard of my intentions and declared in the open where I
stood.
On that day the Facta ministry fell. And immediately they began to
grope in the dark again, trying to find a successor. Orlando, Bonomi,
Facta, Giolitti. Again these were the names mouthed about.
By process of deductions and eliminations the name finally hit upon
was Meda. He was the Popular party deputy from Milan, and the chief of
the “popolari” deputies who with their secret, sinister tactics kept
any ministry under their power. Meda, who had already been a minister,
made his gesture of refusal and renunciation because of fear. That
was our paradox—nobody in Italy, amid this so-called strength of the
constituted order, which included priests and radicals, wanted or was
able to assume responsibility of power. Whatever claims “liberalism”
and “democracy” had for power, now at least nobody would touch the
treasure.
In this situation the socialists cheerfully blackmailed the nation,
while the Fascisti were silently preparing the yeast and the bread, the
will and the weapons for an insurrection of national dignity.
While the conferences to find ways out of the crisis went on
slowly, at the moment of inability to constitute a government there
came about in Italy an almost inconceivable situation. All the strength
of the left party, not only those openly subversive, but also the
organization of the Labor Confederation, the Socialist parliamentary
group, the Democratic groups, and the Republicans, staged a general
strike all over Italy. Its character was typically and solely
anti-Fascist. Its pretense was to save the liberty of the people,
threatened by Fascism!
This galaxy of political elements, more despicable than riffraff,
these inert, wasteful, hopeless forces which in the past had massacred
every liberty and had trampled in every imaginable way on our morals,
our peace, our efficiency, and our order, could not have done a more
illogical, a more unjust, a more offensive and provocative act toward
Fascism and the Italian people.
The days marked by these sinister forces were days in which I made
irrevocable decisions. Our development brought by degrees a political
and a military reserve strength, which was to bring us in the end to
the March on Rome and the conquest of power.
As an answer to the anti-Fascist provocation, I ordered another general
mobilization of the Fascisti. The council of the “Fasci Italiani di
combattimento” was ordered to sit permanently. The Fascist technicians
were to be brought together to continue the work in the public
services. The “squadristi” were to disperse subversive organizations.
The Fascisti of Milan assaulted the _Avanti_, which was considered
the lair of our opponents. They burned the offices. They occupied the
street-car barns. They began to make the public services operative in
spite of the declared strike.
To crush a strike the government was powerless, but a new strength had
been substituted for the government! The Fascisti, well armed, occupied
the electric stations in order to prevent acts of sabotage. It was
necessary to destroy forever all the nerve centres of disorder. The
Fascisti did it.
In Milan alone three young black shirts lost their lives. Of these, two
were university students. We had many wounded boys.
The trial of strength, however, was successful. The enemies of Italy
were taken with convulsions. They tossed responsibilities back and
forth in foolish oratorical and literary battles. The life of the
people had come back to a normal rhythm. Fascism had revealed a
profound strength, one able to dominate our Italy of to-morrow, not only
in the sense of mere force, but in determination, fundamental wisdom,
character and unselfish patriotism.
Our antagonists were defeated, confused and humiliated. One of those
who called themselves interpreters of the liberal idea recognized—how
generous!—that Fascism was now a power which could not be neglected.
The _Corriere della Sera_, the serious and in some ways admirable Milan
newspaper—which had always used its circulation to become the speaking
trumpet for the spirit of moribund, middle class mediocrity—had given,
in the past, a sort of halo to Filippo Turati, the Socialist
leader. Now it felt that it was necessary to give a bit of space to
recognize the right of Fascism to participation in the government. The
unsettled crisis went lumbering along. I was again called by the King.
I had some interviews with Orlando. One after another all the projected
combinations fell apart and were put aside like old rejected castings.
So, wearily, they came back to Facta. He sent one of his emissaries to
me and asked me under what conditions the Fascisti would accept places
in the new government. I sent back word by the messenger that Fascism
would ask for the most important offices.
I was urged to take a position in the Cabinet, but how absurd!
Naturally I had to stay out of the coalition so that I could maintain
my freedom to criticise, and if need be to take action. My claims,
however, for Fascist representation were judged immoderate. The
ill-starred Facta ministry was launched without us, but as the ship
took the water the nation’s sole greeting was a mutter of contempt and
indifference.
Friends and enemies both looked only toward Fascism. It was the one
element that sparked interest in the life of the Italian people.
I had made up my mind to lead the black shirts myself. I already had
crystallized my determination to march on Rome.
The situation admitted of no other solution.
I called to Milan on October 16th a general who had special fitness
and who was saturated by real Fascist faith. I made a scheme
of military and political organization on the model of the old
Roman legions. The Fascisti were divided by me into “principi” and
“triari.” We created, after conferring with the high leaders, a
slogan, a uniform, and a watchword. I knew perfectly the Fascist
and anti-Fascist situation in every region of Italy. I could march
on Rome along the Tyrrhenian sea, deviating toward Umbria. From the
south the compact formations of Puglie and Naples could join me. The
only obstacle was a hostile zone, which centred in Ancona. I called
Arpinati and other lieutenants of Fascism and ordered them to free
Ancona from social-communist domination. The town, which was known to
be in the hands of the anarchists, was conquered by maneuvres carried
out in perfect military fashion. There were some dead and wounded. Too
bad! But now the remnants of the anti-Fascist forces were destroyed.
Anti-Fascism was now concentrated in Rome; it was driven back to its
barrack on Montecitorio, where parliament sat.
A new sunshine broke over the multitudes of our provinces. We could all
breathe with full lungs. The brave effort of Fascism was now rising
with the flood tide of its full efficiency. Critics of reputation,
historians of wide-world fame, studious people from every part of the
earth were beginning to regard with quickening interest the movement I
had created and dominated and was leading toward victory.
While I was penning some editorials against representatives of the
sceptics, I wrote: “Fascism is to-day in the first stage of its
life: the one of Christ. Don’t be in a hurry; the one of Saint Paul
will come.”
I was preparing then every minute the details of the conquest of Rome
and of power. I was certainly not moved by any mirage of personal
power, nor by any other allurement, nor by a desire for egotistical
political domination.
I have always had a vision of life which was altruistic. I have groped
in the dark of theories, but I groped not to relieve myself, but to
bring something to others. I have fought, but not for my advantage,
indirect or immediate. I have aimed for the supreme advantages of my
nation. I desired finally that Fascism should rule Italy for her glory
and her good fortune.
I cannot, for obvious reasons, discuss all the measures, even some of
the most simple, that I took in this period. Some are of political
and secret character about which reserve is absolutely necessary. The
_Popolo d’Italia_, my paper, without attracting too much attention
from outsiders and from my enemies, had become the headquarters of the
spiritual and material preparation for the March on Rome. It was the
hub of our thought and action. The military and the political forces
both obeyed my command. I weighed all the plans and proposals. Having
made my own plan at last I gave the necessary orders. Then there began
extensive preparatory maneuvres, such as the occupation of Trento, of
Ancona and of Bolzano—places which might threaten our strategy.
I wanted to inform myself about the state of mind of the Fascisti,
about their efficiency and their determination. Accordingly I went to
make four important speeches in different parts of Italy. In those
speeches I set forth the policies of to-morrow. I defined the ultimate
goal of Fascism. It was candidly stated. It was the conquest of power.
I didn’t want to ingratiate myself with the masses. I have always
spoken with naked candor and even with brutality to the multitudes.
That is a distinct contrast to the contemptible courtship made for
their favor by the political parties of every time and every land.
On September 17th, 1922, for instance, one month before the March on
Rome, I wrote that it was necessary to “throw down, from the altars
erected by the ‘Demos,’ His Holiness _the Mass_!”
The Fascisti meetings which I attended were held in Udine, which is
in northern Italy, in Cremona, which lies in the valley of the Po,
in industrial Milan and in Naples, the centre of southern Italy. I
wanted to be personally acquainted with the spirit of those districts,
each with a nobility of its own. I was acclaimed as a conqueror and a
saviour. This flattered me, but be sure that it did not make me proud.
I felt stronger, and yet realized the more that I faced mountains of
responsibility. In those four cities, so different and so far one from
the other, I saw the same light! I had with me the honest, the good,
the pure, the sincere soul of the Italian people!
I assembled the Central Committee of the Fasci Italian! di
Combattimento—the Bundles of Fight—and we came to an accord on
the outlines of the movement, which was to lead the black shirts
triumphantly along the sacred roads to Rome.
Speaking in those days at the Circolo Sciesa of Milan I said to my
trusted men that we finally had come to the “sad sunset of Liberalism,
and to the Fascist-dawn of a new Italy.”
CHAPTER IX
THUS WE TOOK ROME
And now we were on the eve of the historic march on the Eternal City.
Having completed my survey and estimate of conditions in the provinces,
having listened to the reports of the various chiefs of the black
shirts, having selected the plans of action and having determined
in a general way upon the most favorable moment, I called together
in Florence the chiefs of the Fascist movement and of the squads of
action. There were Michele Bianchi, De Bono, Italo Balbo, Giuriati,
and various others. Some one at that quiet conference suggested the
mobilization of the black shirts for November 4th, the anniversary of
the Victory. I rejected that proposal, for it would have spoiled a day
of commemoration by introducing the element of revolutionary activity.
It was necessary to give our movement the full advantage of opportunity
and to make it spark and detonate. It was necessary to weigh, besides
the military aspects, the political effects and values. We had to
consider, finally, the painful possibility of a violent suppression, or
a failure spreading from some slip to all of our plans. We were obliged
to determine beforehand all the hows and whens, the details of the
means, with what men and with what aims the Fascist assault could most
wisely be launched.
The Fascist meeting in Naples, which was advertised as our second great
congress, with its display of discipline and of speech-making, served
to hide the beginnings of the real mobilization. At a fixed moment
the squads of action of all Italy were to be in arms. They would have
to occupy the vital nerve centres—the cities, and the post offices,
the prefectures, police headquarters, railroad stations, and military
barracks.
Detachments of Fascisti were to march along the Tyrrhenian Sea, toward
Rome, led by chiefs, all of them brave former officers. The same
movement was to take place on the Adriatic side, from which direction
was to be launched on Rome the strength of the low Romagna, Marche and
Abruzzi districts. That plan required that we should free Ancona from
the social-communist dominion. This had been done. From middle Italy
the squadrons already mobilized for the meeting at Naples were also to
be directed upon Rome. They were supported by groups of Fascist cavalry
under the command of Caradonna.
The moment the Fascist mobilization and campaign was decided and
actually began operation, martial law, the stern rules and orders of
Fascism both for officers and privates, were to be enforced.
The political powers of our “National Directorate” were turned over
to a military quadrumvirate of action in the persons of Generals De
Bono, De Vecchi, Italo Balbo and Michele Bianchi. I presided over
the quadrumvirate and I was the Duce (the leader) and had the ultimate
responsibility for the work of the four men—a responsibility for which
I was fully pledged not only to the Fascisti but to Italy.
We selected as general concentration headquarters the town of Perugia,
capital of Umbria, where many roads flow to a centre and from which
it is easy to reach Rome. In case of military and political failure
we could, by crossing the Appennine range, retire to the Valley of
the Po. In any revolutionary movement of history that zone has always
been properly considered the keystone of any situation. There our
domination was absolute and undisputed. We selected the watchword; we
fixed the details of the action. Everything had to be reported to me—in
the offices of the _Popolo d’Italia_. Trusted Fascist messengers wove
webs like scurrying spiders. All day long I was issuing the necessary
orders. I wrote the proclamation which was to be addressed to the
country on the eve of action. We knew from very faithful unforgettable
friends that the army, unless exceptional circumstances arose, would
maintain itself on a ground of amiable neutrality.
At the historic congress at Naples, after my opening speech, which
traced the outlines of the Fascist action in the state and assigned to
Naples the title “Queen of the Mediterranean,” the general discussion
continued in academic tone, without a definite aim except that of
gaining time. The leader in that dissembling and sham discussion was
Michele Bianchi, one of the quadrumvirate for the march on Rome.
At that time he had already revealed a notable political mind. De Bono
and Balbo, who had great authority over the squadrons of action, joined
the general headquarters in Perugia.
I went from the adjourned congress back to Milan. During the trip I had
an opportunity to see many friends and to make additional preparations.
I had important conversations regarding that particular drive which had
to be organized in Milan, as in other centres of the Lombardy district.
In order not to arouse the suspicion of the police, for I was always
surrounded by spies, I assumed the attitude of an indifferent person
without a worry or trouble in the world. This was somewhat difficult,
for I had to spend precious time in trying the speed of a new car,
and in other workaday comings and goings. In the evenings I went to
the theatres. I pretended to have a great spirit of activity in my
editorial writing and newspaper management.
But suddenly, when I knew that everything was ready, I issued from
Milan, through the _Popolo d’Italia_, by means of independent
publications, and through the correspondents of all the Italian
newspapers, my proclamation of revolution. It had been signed by the
quadrumvirate. Here is the text of the memorable document:
“Fascisti! Italians!
“The time for determined battle has come! Four years ago at this
season the national army loosed the final offensive which brought it
to Victory. To-day the army of the black shirts again takes possession
of that Victory, which has been mutilated, and, going directly to
Rome, brings Victory again to the glory of that Capitol. From now
on ‘principi’ and ‘triari’ are mobilized. The martial law of Fascism
now becomes a fact. By order of the Duce all the military, political
and administrative functions of the party management are taken over by
a secret Quadrumvirate of Action with dictatorial powers.
“The army, the reserve and safeguard of the Nation, must not take
part in this struggle. Fascism renews its highest homage given to the
Army of Vittorio Veneto. Fascism, furthermore, does not march against
the police, but against a political class both cowardly and imbecile,
which in four long years has not been able to give a Government to the
Nation. Those who form the productive class must know that Fascism
wants to impose nothing more than order and discipline upon the Nation
and to help to raise the strength which will renew progress and
prosperity. The people who work in the fields and in the factories,
those who work in the railroads or in offices, have nothing to fear
from the Fascist Government. Their just rights will be protected. We
will even be generous with unarmed adversaries.
“Fascism draws its sword to cut the multiple Gordian knots which
tie and burden Italian life. We call God and the spirit of our five
hundred thousand dead to witness that only one impulse sends us on,
that only one passion burns within us—the impulse and the passion to
contribute to the safety and greatness of our Country.
“Fascisti of all Italy!
“Stretch forth like Romans your spirits and your sinews! We must win.
We will.
“Long live Italy! Long live Fascism!
“The Quadrumvirate.”
At night there reached me the first news of bloody clashes in Cremona,
Alessandri and Bologna, and of the assaults on munition factories and
upon military barracks. I had composed my proclamation in a very short
and resounding form; it had impressed the whole of the Italian
people. Our life was suddenly brought into an ardent atmosphere of
revolution. News of the struggles that were taking place in the various
cities, sometimes exaggerated by the imaginations of reporters, gave a
dramatic touch to the revolution. Responsible elements of the country
asserted that as a result of this movement there would at last be a
government able to rule and to command respect. The great mass of the
population, however, looked out astonished, as it were, from their
windows.
None of the subversive or liberal chiefs showed himself. All went into
their holes, inspired only by fear. They understood quite thoroughly
that this was the striking of our hour. Every one felt sure that the
struggle of Fascism would have a victorious outcome. I could sense this
even from far away. The air was full of it. The wind spoke of it. The
rain brought it down. The earth drank it in.
I put on the black shirt. I barricaded the _Popolo d’Italia_. In the
livid and gray morning Milan had a new and fantastic appearance. Pauses
and sudden silences gave one the sensation of certain great hours that
come and go in the course of history.
Frowning battalions of Royal Guards scouted the city and the monotonous
rhythm of their feet sounded ominous echoes in the almost deserted
streets.
The public services functioned on a reduced and meagre scale. The
assaults of the Fascisti against the barracks and on the post offices
were cause for fusillades of shots, which gave to the city a
sinister echo of civil war.
I had provided the offices of my newspaper with everything needful
for defense against attack. I knew that if the government authorities
desired to give a proof of their strength they would have directed
their first violent assault at the _Popolo d’Italia_. In fact, in the
early hours of the morning, I saw trained upon the offices and upon me
the ugly muzzles of the mitrailleuses. There was a rapid exchange of
shots. I had my rifle charged and went down to defend the doors. The
neighbors had barricaded entrances and windows and were begging for
protection.
During the firing bullets whistled around my ears.
A major of the Royal Guard finally asked for a truce in order to
talk with me. After a brief initial conversation, we agreed that the
Royal Guard should withdraw as far as two hundred metres and that the
mitrailleuses were to be removed from the middle of the street and
placed at a crossing of the street, about a hundred metres away. With
that sort of armistice began for me the day of October 28th!
At night a group of deputies, senators, and political men of Milan, the
best-known and most responsible figures of the Lombard parliamentary
world—among whom were senators Conti, Crespi and the deputy De
Capitani—came to the offices of the _Popolo d’Italia_ to ask me to
desist from a struggle which they asserted would be the beginning of a
violent, grave and reprehensible civil war. They proposed to me a sort
of armistice and a truce with the central government. Perhaps a
ministerial crisis might save, they said, the situation and the country.
I smiled back at the parliamentarians because of their innocence. I
answered them in words like these:
“Dear sirs, there is not the slightest question of any partial or total
crisis or of substitution of one ministry for another. The game I have
undertaken has a wider and more serious character. For three years we
have lived in a caldron boiling with small battles and devastations.
This time I will not lay down weapons until a full victory is
concluded. It is time to change the direction not only of the
government, but also of the whole of Italian life. There is no question
of a struggle of parties in parliament, but here is a question—we want
to know if we Italians are able to live an autonomous life or are to be
slaves of our own weakness, not only toward foreign nations, but also
in our own affairs? War is declared! We will carry it to the bitter
end. Do you see these communications? Well, the struggle is blazing all
over Italy. Youth is in arms. I am rated as a leader who precedes and
not one who follows. I will not humiliate with arbitration this page of
the marvellous resurrection of Italian youth. I tell you that it is the
last chapter. It will fulfil the traditions of our country. It cannot
die in a compromise.”
I then showed my visitors a letter, which I had received at dawn from
Commander Gabriele d’Annunzio. I had sent a brief message to the
redeemer of Fiume, who had been with us since the first moments of the
darkest struggle. It was brought to him by the Generals Giampietro
and Douhet, and Eugenio Coselschi. D’Annunzio, toward whom some vague
hopes of the politicians had vainly turned, had immediately answered in
these terms:
“Dear Mussolini:
“I received to-night the three messengers, after a hard day of work.
“In this book, so many times interrupted, are gathered the truths that
the one-eyed man discovers in retirement and meditation. I think that
Italian youth must now recognize them and follow them with purified
heart.
“It is necessary to gather together all the sincere forces and start
them toward the great goals that are fixed for Italy by her eternal
destinies.
“From virile patience and not from restless impatience will salvation
come to us.
“The messengers will tell you my thoughts and my intentions, free from
all vague colorings.
“The King knows that I am still the most faithful and eager soldier of
Italy.
“Let him stand against the adverse destinies, which must be faced and
defeated.
“Victory has the light eyes of Pallas.
“Do not blindfold her.
“_Sine strage vincit,_
“_Strepitu sine ullo._
“Gabriele d Annunzio.”
After having read the letter of D’Annunzio to these Lombard politicians
I sent them away with the declaration that if I was left with only
one man, or indeed all alone, I would not abandon the fight until I
had obtained the final decisive ends as I had outlined them to my
associates.
The logical clearness, the stout, rigorous, coherent reasons I had
given impressed those who had come to offer conciliation, compromise,
concessions.
I think that one of them must have immediately sped off to inform the
premier, Facta, that nothing could be done with me.
Poor Facta, instead of being preoccupied with his shortcomings, was
wondering how and to whom he could announce this real crisis among the
sham crises. The chamber was closed at that time. Where could he turn?
Any one can see that in all events, even in solemn events, the
grotesque and the ludicrous are always to be found, and sometimes
prosper under the very shadow of great and tragic happenings.
The last of the Liberal governments of Italy wanted to make its final
gesture. It addressed to the country a declaration phrased in the
following terms:
“Seditious manifestations are appearing in some of the Italian
provinces, brought about in such a way as to hamper the normal
functioning of the powers of the State, and are of such nature as to
throw the Country into serious trouble.
“The Government has tried its utmost to reach an agreement, with the
hope of bringing back peace to all minds and to assure a peaceful
solution of the crisis. Facing, however, a revolutionary attempt,
it has the duty of maintaining public order by any means and at any
price. Even though its resignations have been presented, it will
fulfil this duty for the safety of citizens and the safety of free
constitutional institutions.
“Meanwhile the citizens must maintain their calm and must have
faith in the measures of public security that have been adopted.
“Long live Italy! Long live the King!”
“Signed: Facta, Schanzer, Amendola, Taddei, Alessio, Bertone,
Paratore, Soleri, DeVito, Anile, Riccio, Bertini, Rossi, Dello
Sbarba, Fulci, Luciani.”
At the same time the ministers, considering the situation created in
the country, put their portfolios at the disposition of the president
of the council, Facta. This man sought advice from several friends in
Rome. As a result he offered a decree to proclaim martial law, which
the King, in his profound wisdom, flatly refused to sign.
The Sovereign understood that the revolution of the black shirts
was the conclusion of three years of struggle and of fighting; he
understood that only with the victory of one party could we reach
pacification and that order and progress in civil life which are
essential to the harmony of the Italian people.
Out of respect for the most orthodox constitutional forms, the King
allowed Facta to follow the rules of the Constitution. We had then
resignations, designations, consultations, communications, charges, and
so on and so on. At this moment came a sinister maneuvre that impressed
me as being ominous. The National party of the right, which had a
great similarity of outlook with the Fascisti, although it had not the
same system of campaign, advanced some singular claims by means of
emissaries.
The National right asserted in fact that it was the keystone of
the situation. Salandra, who was the most typical representative of the
group, was disposed to sacrifice himself and to take upon his back the
cross of power. This was to be understood as an aid for the Fascisti.
I protested energetically against such a solution, which would have
perpetuated compromise and error. Fascism was under arms, it was
dominating the centres of national life, it had a very well-defined
aim, it had followed deliberately an extra-parliamentary path and it
could not allow its victory to be mutilated or adulterated in such a
manner. That was my exact answer to the mediators of the union between
the National right and Fascism. No compromise!
The struggle continued with the objectives I had mapped out. It is
impossible in the pages of an autobiography to present the entire
picture of the revolutionary events in those days. I distinctly
remember that with every hour that passed I had more poignantly the
sensation of triumphantly dominating the Italian political situation.
The adversaries were confused, scattered, speechless. The Fascisti in
compact files were already near the gates of Rome and were expecting me
to go to the head of their military formations to march with them into
the Capital.
On the afternoon of the 29th I received a very urgent telephone
call from Rome on behalf of the Quirinal. General Cittadini, first
aide-de-camp of His Majesty the King, asked me very kindly to go to
Rome because the King, having examined the situation, wanted to charge
me with forming a ministry. I thanked General Cittadini for
his kindness, but I asked him to give me the same communication by
telegram. One knows that the telephone may play dirty tricks at times.
General Cittadini, after having first objected that my request was not
usual under the Court regulations, took into consideration the abnormal
and informal situation, and agreed to send me the same invitation by
telegram. In fact after a few hours an urgent message arrived. It was
of a personal character.
This was it:
“On. Mussolini, Milan,
“His Majesty the King asks you to come immediately to Rome for he
wishes to offer you the responsibility of forming a Ministry. With
respect,
“General Cittadini.”
This was not yet victory, but the progress made was considerable.
I communicated directly with the headquarters of the revolution in
Perugia and with the various commands of the black shirts in Milan. I
gave out, by means of an extra edition of the _Popolo d’Italia_, the
news of the command I had received.
I was in a terrible state of nervous tension. Night after night I had
been kept awake, giving orders, following the compact columns of the
Fascisti, restricting the battle to the knightly practices of Fascism.
A period of greater responsibilities was about to begin for me; I must
not fail in my duty or in my aims. I gathered all my strength to my
aid, I invoked the memory of the dead, I asked the assistance of God,
I called upon the faithful living to assist me in the great task
that confronted me.
That night of October 31st, 1922, I left the direction of the _Popolo
d’Italia_ and turned my fighting journal over to my brother, Arnaldo.
In the number of November 1st I published the following declaration:
“From now on the direction of the _Popolo d’Italia_ is intrusted to
Arnaldo Mussolini.
“I thank and salute with brotherly love all the editors,
collaborators, correspondents, employees, workers, all those who have
assiduously and faithfully labored with me for the life of this paper
and for love of our Country.
“Rome, October 30th, 1922.
“Mussolini.”
I parted with regret from the paper that had been the most constant and
potent factor in our victory. I must add that my brother, Arnaldo, has
been able to maintain the editorship with dignity and capacity.
When I had intrusted the paper to my brother I was off for Rome. To
the zealous people who wanted to get me a special train to go to Rome
to confer with the King, I said that for me a compartment in the
usual train was quite enough. Engines and coal should not be wasted.
Economize! That is the first and acid test of a true man of government.
And after all I could only enter Rome at the head of my black shirts,
then camping at Santa Marinella in the atmosphere and the shining rays
of the Capital.
The news of my departure sped all over Italy. In every station where
the train stopped I found a gathering of the Fascisti and of the masses
who wanted to bring me, even through the pouring rain, their
cheers and their good-will.
Leaving Milan was painful. That city had given me a home for ten years;
to me it had been prodigal in the satisfaction it had afforded; it had
supported me in every stress; it had baptized the most wonderful squads
of action of Fascism; it had been the scene of historical political
struggles. Now I was leaving it, called by destiny and by a greater
task. All Milan knew of my going, and I felt that even in the feeling
of joy for a departure that was a symbol of victory, there was also a
shade of sadness.
But this was not the hour for sentimentality. It was the time for
quick, sure decisions. After the kisses and farewells of my family I
said good-by to many prominent Milanese, and then I went away, speeding
into the night, to take counsel with myself, to refresh my soul, to
listen to the echoes of voices of friends and to envisage the wide
horizons of to-morrow’s possibilities.
The minor episodes of that trip and of those days are not important.
The train brought me into the midst of the Fascisti; I was in view of
Rome at Santa Marinella. I reviewed the columns. I established the
formalities for the entrance into Rome. I established connections
between the quadrumvirate and the authorities.
My presence redoubled the great enthusiasm. I read in the eyes of those
young men the divine smile of triumph of an ideal. With such support I
would have felt inspired to challenge, if need be, not only the base
Italian ruling class, but enemies of any sort and race.
In Rome an indescribable welcome awaited me. I did not want
any delay. Even before making contacts with my political friends
I motored to the Quirinal. I wore a black shirt. I was introduced
without formalities into the presence of His Majesty the King. The
Stefani agency and the great newspapers of the world gave stilted
or speculative details about this interview. I will limit myself,
for obvious reasons of reserve, to declare that the conference was
characterized by great cordiality. I concealed no plans, nor did I fail
to make plain my ideas of how to rule Italy. I obtained the Sovereign’s
approbation. I took up lodgings at the Savoy Hotel and began to work.
First I made arrangements with the general command of the army to bring
militia into Rome and to have them defile in proper formation in a
review before the King. I gave detailed and precise orders. One hundred
thousand black shirts paraded in perfect order before the Sovereign.
They brought to him the homage of Fascist Italy!
I was then triumphant and in Rome! I killed at once all unnecessary
demonstrations in my honor. I gave orders that not a single parade
should take place without the permission of the General Fascist
Command. It was necessary to give to everybody from the first moment a
stern and rigid sense of discipline in line with the régime that I had
conceived.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Strazza._
King Victor Emmanuel III and Mussolini.
]
I discouraged every manifestation on the part of army officers who
wanted to bring me their plaudits. I have always considered the army
outside and above every kind of politics. The army must, in my opinion,
be inspired by absolute and conscientious discipline; it must
devote itself, with the deepest will, only to the defense of frontiers
and of historical rights. The army is an institution which must be
preserved inviolate. It must not suffer the slightest loss in its
integrity and in its high dedication.
But other and more complex problems surged about me at that moment. I
was in Rome not only with the duty of composing a new ministry; I had
also firmly decided to renew and rebuild from the very bottom the life
of the Italian people. I vowed to myself that I would impel it toward
higher and more brilliant aims.
Rome sharpened my sense of dedication. The Eternal City, “caput
mundi,” has two Courts and two Diplomacies. It has seen in the
course of centuries imperial armies defeated under its walls. It has
witnessed the decay of the strong, and the rise of universal waves of
civilization and of thought. Rome, the coveted goal of princes and
leaders, the universal city, heir to the old Empire and the power of
Christianity! Rome welcomed me as leader of national legions, as a
representative, not of a party or a group, but of a great faith and of
an entire people.
I had long meditated my action as a man of party and as a man of
government. I had carried these thoughts as I walked by day and even as
I slept by night. I had won and could win more. I could have nailed my
enemies to the wall, not only metaphorically but in very fact if I had
wished—those enemies who had slandered Fascism and those whom I hated
for having betrayed Italy in peace as they had betrayed her in war.
The atmosphere was pregnant with the possibility of tragedy. I had
mobilized three hundred thousand black shirts. They were waiting for my
signal to move. They could be used for one purpose or another. I had
in the Capital sixty thousand armed men ready for action. The March on
Rome could have set tragic fires. It might have spilled much blood if
it had followed the example of ancient and modern revolutions. This was
for me a moment in which it was more necessary than ever to examine the
field with calm serenity and with cold reason to compare the immediate
and the distant results of our daring action when directed toward
definite aims.
I could have proclaimed a dictatorship, I could have formed a
dictatorial ministry composed solely of Fascisti on the type of the
Directory that was formed in France at the time of the Convention. The
Fascist revolution, however, had its unique characteristics; it had
no antecedent in history. It was different from any other revolution
also in its capacity to re-enter, with ♦deliberate intent, legal,
established traditions and forms. For that reason also, I knew that the
mobilization should last the shortest possible time.
♦ “deliberaate” replaced with “deliberate”
I did not forget that I had a parliament on my hands; a chamber
of deputies of sullen mind, ready to lay traps for me, accustomed
to an old tradition of ambiguity and intrigue, full of grudges,
repressed only by fear; a dismayed senate from which I could obtain a
disciplined respect but not an eager and productive collaboration.
The Crown was looking on to see what I would do, following
constitutional rules.
The Pontificate followed the events with anxiety. The other nations
looked at the revolution suspiciously if not with hostility.
Foreign banks were anxious for news. Exchange wavered, credit was
still vacillating, waiting for the situation to be cleared. It was
indispensable first of all to give the impression of stability to the
new régime.
I had to see, oversee and foresee everything. I slept not at all for
some nights, but they were nights fecund in action and ideas. The
measures that immediately followed in the first twenty-four hours of my
government bear witness.
Another problem arose from the character of the revolution. Every
revolution has in it, besides the great mass of human impact and the
conscientious and unselfish leaders, two other types—adventurers
and melancholic intellectuals who might be called, by a synthetic
expression, ascetics of revolution. When the revolution is over,
the mass, which often is moved by the simple intuition of a great
historical and social reality, goes peacefully back to its usual
activities. It forms the laborious and disciplined leaven of the new
régime. The conscientious and unselfish leaders form the necessary
aristocracy of rulers. But the ascetics and the adventurers are a dead
burden. The first would like to see overnight a perfect humanity,
without faults. They do not understand that there is no revolution that
can change the nature of men. Because of their Utopian illusions
the ascetics are never contented; they waste their time and other men’s
energies in sophistry and doubts just when it is necessary to work like
fiends in order to go forward. The adventurers always identify the
fortune of the revolution with their own fortune; they hope to gain
personal advantage from the victory and they harbor resentment when
their wishes are not satisfied, and clamor for extreme and dangerous
measures.
Now I had to defend the Fascist victory from the ascetics and the
adventurers. The adventurers, however, sank rapidly in the Fascist
revolution, because it was different and on a higher plane than any
other revolution.
But I felt it my constant duty to examine and to ponder, in such a
grave moment, every step I made.
First of all in the pressure of events, I desired to assure regularity
to the country and to constitute a new government. Order came quickly.
There were only a few sporadic incidents of violence, inevitable under
such conditions. I felt the necessity of safeguarding Facta, and I
called ten black shirts who had each been much decorated for bravery
for the purpose of accompanying Facta to Pinerolo, his native town,
under their word of honor. They kept their promise. “Nobody”—that was
the order—“should touch a hair, mock or humiliate Facta.” He had given
to the country his only son, who died in an airplane accident during
the war, and Facta deserved respect for that and more.
I forbade reprisals against the leaders of the oppositions. It
was only by my great authority that I averted the destruction, not
only rhetorical but also actual, of my most rabid enemies. I saved
their skins for them. At the same time, in the space of a few hours,
I constituted a new ministry. I discarded, as I said, the idea of a
Fascist dictatorship, because I wanted to give to the country the
impression of a normal life free from the selfish exclusiveness
of a party. That sense of instinct for equilibrium accompanies me
fortunately in the gravest, the most strenuous, and the most critical
moments. I decided then, after having weighed everything, to compose a
ministry of a nationalist character.
I have had the feeling, as I had then, that later there would become
inevitable a process of clarification; but I preferred that it should
come forth spontaneously from the succeeding political events.
But that was the last generous gesture that I ever made toward the old
Italian ring of parties and politicians.
In the new ministry, among ministers and undersecretaries of state,
were fifteen Fascisti, three Nationalists, three Liberals of the right,
six “Popolari” and three Social Democrats. I was generous toward the
Liberals of the right, whose peculiar maneuvre in order, to pick up
for their profit the results of the Fascist revolution had been quite
recent. Among the “Popolari” and Social Democrats I selected those
who gave promise of national spirit and who did not intrigue with
subversive popularism or with socialism.
I kept for myself, with the Presidency of the Council, the office
of the Interior and assumed ad interim that of Foreign Affairs. I gave
to Armando Diaz the Ministry of War and I promised to give him an army
worthy of the country and the victor of Vittorio Veneto. I called
Admiral Thaon de Revel for the Navy and Federzoni for the Colonies.
The complete formation of the ministry was as follows:
Benito Mussolini, Deputy, _Presidency of the Council, Domestic and
“interim” of Foreign Affairs_ (Fascist).
Armando Diaz, General of the Army, _War_.
Paolo Thaon de Revel, Admiral, Senator, _Navy_.
Luigi Federzoni, Deputy, _Colonies_ (Nationalist).
Aldo Oviglio, Deputy, _Justice_ (Fascist).
Alberto De Stefani, Deputy, _Finances_ (Fascist).
Vincenzo Tangorra, Deputy, _Treasury_ (“Popolare”).
Giovanni Gentile, Professor, _Public Instruction_ (Liberal of the
Right).
Gabriello Carnazza, Deputy, _Public Works_ (Democrat).
Giuseppe DeCapitani, Deputy, _Agriculture_ (Liberal of the Right).
Teofilo Rossi, Senator, _Industry and Commerce_ (Democrat).
Stefano Cavazzoni, Deputy, _Work and Social Providence_ (“Popolare”).
Giovanni Colonna di Cesaro’, Deputy, _Posts and Telegraphs_ (Social
Democrat).
Giovanni Giuriati, Deputy, _Liberated Provinces_ (Fascist).
_Under Secretaries of State_
_Presidency_: Giacomo Acerbo, Deputy (Fascist).
_Domestic_: Aldo Finzi, Deputy (Fascist).
_Foreign_: Ernesto Vassallo, Deputy (“Popolare”).
_War_: Carlo Bonardi, Deputy (Social Democrat).
_Navy_: Costanzo Ciano, Deputy (Fascist). _With the Commisariat of
Commercial Marine._
_Treasury_: Alfredo Rocco, Deputy (Nationalist).
_Military Assistance_: Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Deputy (Fascist).
_Finances_: Pietro Lissia, Deputy (Social Democrat).
_Colonies_: Giovanni Marchi, Deputy (Liberal of the Right).
_Liberated Provinces_: Umberto Merlin, Deputy (“Popolare”).
_Justice_: Fulvio Milani, Deputy (“Popolare”).
_Instruction_: Dario Lupi, Deputy (Fascist).
_Fine Arts_: Luigi Siciliani, Deputy (Nationalist).
_Agriculture_: Ottavio Corgini, Deputy (Fascist).
_Public Works_: Alessandro Sardi, Deputy (Fascist).
_Post and Telegraph_: Michele Terzaghi, Deputy (Fascist).
_Industry and Commerce_: Gronchi Giovanni, Deputy
(“Popolare”).
_Labor and Social Providence_: Silvio Gai, Deputy (Fascist).
When the ministry was completed I wrote the following paper of
demobilization, signed by the quadrumvirate:
“Fascisti of all Italy!
“Our movement has been rewarded by Victory. The leader of our party
has assumed the political powers of the State, both for domestic
and for foreign affairs. Our Government, while it consecrates our
triumph with the names of those who were its creators on land and sea,
assembles, with the purpose of national pacification, men from the
other parties, because they are attached to the cause of the Nation.
“The Italian Fascism is too intelligent to desire a greater
victory.
“Fascisti!
“The supreme quadrumvirate of action, turning back its powers to the
direction of the party, salutes you for your marvellous proof of
courage and discipline. You have shown your merit in the future of the
country.
“Disperse in the same perfect order in which you gathered for the
great trial, destined—we firmly believe—to open a new epoch in Italian
history. Go back to your usual work, because Italy now needs to work
peacefully to reach its better day.
“Nothing must trouble the powerful stride of the Victory that we won
in these days of proud passion and sovereign magnitude.
“Long live Italy. Long live Fascism!
“The Quadrumvirate.”
Then I sent a telegram to D’Annunzio and I distributed an energetic
circular to all the Prefects of the Kingdom and to the lesser
authorities. The telegram to D’Annunzio said:
“Assuming the hard task of giving discipline and internal peace to the
Nation, I send to you, Commander, my affectionate greetings for you
and for the destinies of the country. The valiant Fascist youth which
gives back a soul to the Nation will not blindfold Victory. Mussolini.”
The text of the circular sent to office-holders was the following:
“From to-day, intrusted with the confidence of His Majesty the King,
I undertake the direction of the Government of the Country. I demand
that all authorities, from the highest to the least, discharge
their duties with intelligence and with complete regard for the
supreme interests of the Country.
“I will set the example.
“The President of the Council and Ministry of the Interior. Signed:
Mussolini.”
Finally I announced for November the 16th a meeting of the chamber of
deputies, to render an account of what I had done, and to announce my
intentions and programme.
It was an exceptional meeting. The hall was filled to overflowing.
Every deputy was present. My declarations were brief, clear, energetic.
I left no misunderstanding. I stated sharply the rights of revolution.
I called the attention of the audience to the fact that only by the
will of Fascism had the revolution remained within the boundaries of
legality and tolerance.
“I could have made,” I said, “of this dull and gray hall a bivouac
for corpses. I could have nailed up the doors of parliament and have
established an exclusively Fascist government. I could have done those
things, but—at least for a time—I did not do them.”
I then thanked all my collaborators and pointed with sympathy to the
multitude of Italian laborers who had aided the Fascist movement with
their active or passive solidarity.
I did not present one of the usual programmes that the past ministries
used to present; for these solved the problems of the country only
on paper. I asserted my will to act and to act without delaying for
useless oratory. In the field of foreign politics I squarely
declared the intention of following a “policy of dignity and national
utility.”
On every subject I made weighty declarations that showed how Fascism
had already been able to assay and analyze and solve varying and urgent
problems, and to fix the future outlines of government. Finally I
concluded:
“Gentlemen:
“From further communications you will know the Fascist programme
in its details. I do not want, so long as I can avoid it, to rule
against the Chamber; but the Chamber must feel its own position.
That position opens the possibility that it may be dissolved in two
days or in two years. We ask full powers because we want to assume
full responsibility. Without full powers you know very well that we
couldn’t save one lira—I say one lira. We do not want to exclude the
possibility of voluntary co-operation, for we will cordially accept
it, if it comes from deputies, senators, or even from competent
private citizens. Every one of us has a religious sense of our
difficult task. The Country cheers us and waits. We will give it not
words but facts. We formally and solemnly promise to restore the
budget to health. And we will restore it. We want to make a foreign
policy of peace, but at the same time one of dignity and steadiness.
We will do it. We intend to give the Nation a discipline. We will
give it. Let none of our enemies of yesterday, of to-day, of to-morrow
cherish illusions in regard to our permanence in power. Foolish and
childish illusions, like those of yesterday!
“Our Government has a formidable foundation in the conscience of the
Nation. It is supported by the best, the newest Italian generations.
There is no doubt that in these last years a great step toward
the unification of spirit has been made. The Fatherland has again
found itself bound together from north to south, from the continent
to the generous islands, which will never be forgotten, from
the metropolis of the active colonies of the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic Ocean. Do not, Gentlemen, address more vain words to the
Nation. Fifty-two applications to speak upon my message to Parliament
are too many. Let us, instead of talking, work with pure heart and
ready mind to assure the prosperity and the greatness of the Country.
“May God assist me in bringing to a triumphant end my hard labor.”
I do not believe that, since 1870, the hall of Montecitoro had heard
energetic and clear words. They burned with a passion deep in my being.
In that speech there was the essence of my old and my recent wrestling
with my own mind and my own soul. More than one deputy had to repress
the rancour generated by my deserved reproaches; but my exposition
in parliament was rewarded by the approval of the whole of Italy. I
was looking beyond that old hall of parties of petty power and of
politicians. I was speaking to the entire nation. It listened to me and
it understood me!
My political instinct told me that from that moment there would
rise, with increasing truth and with increasing expansion of Fascist
activity, the dawn of new history for Italy.
And perhaps dawn on a new path of civilization....
CHAPTER X
FIVE YEARS OF GOVERNMENT
My revolutionary method and the power of the Black Shirts had brought
me to tremendous responsibility of power. My task, as I have pointed
out, was neither simple nor easy; it required large vision, it gathered
to it continually more and more duties.
An existence wholly new began for me. To speak about it makes it
necessary for me to abandon the usual form of autobiographic style; I
must consider the organic whole of my governmental activity. From now
on my life identifies itself almost exclusively with thousands of acts
of government. Individuality disappears. Instead, my person expresses,
I sometimes feel, only measures and acts of concrete character; these
do not concern a single person; they concern the multitudes, they
concern and permeate an entire people. So one’s entire life is lost in
the whole.
Certainly I know that I took the direction of the government when
the central power of the state was sinking to the bottom. We had a
financial situation that Peano of the Liberal party had summarized
with an astounding figure: six billions of deficit! Individually the
people fed on expedients. Progressive inflation and the printing
presses gave to everybody the old illusion of prosperity. It created
an unstable delusion of well-being; it excited a fictitious game of
interests. All this had to be expiated when faced by the severe Fascist
financial policy.
Abroad our political reputation had diminished progressively. We were
judged as a nation without order and discipline, unable either to
prosper or produce. The chronic infection of disorder had withdrawn
from us the sympathies of countries better equipped than we were. Worse
yet, it had increased the haughtiness and the contempt of many of our
enemies.
The Italian school system, in its complex formation, university, middle
and lower schools, had turned its energies into purely abstract,
theoretical functions; it had withdrawn more and more from a real
world, a modern world, and from the fundamental problems of national
life; it had been inert as a guide to civil duties. Schools and pulpits
should always show the way to ascending peoples.
There still lived, in the national mechanism, strange and hateful
regional political formations; these used to bring our solidarity into
question, if not into peril. The activities of the government in terms
of services, improvements and appropriations were guided and affected,
not by real natural necessities, but by the desire to ingratiate this
or that population, or region. The treasury was tapped by this base
policy of politics—electoral strategy.
A bureaucracy already suffering from elephantiasis increased its
distention, generating that spirit of trouble, those characters of
instability, of intolerance, of slight love of duty, which are typical
of all great accumulations of functionaries, especially when the latter
are not well paid, and do not see their moral prestige supported
and built up by the authority of the state and by precise and clear
definition of individual responsibility.
We still had, as a consequence of our generous struggle, the Fascist
squadron formations. They might become, in the new conditions of life,
a danger threatening public order and legality.
The army and the navy lived apart from the great problems of national
life. As a matter of fact, though this is good in many respects, it is
not good when they are set aside in an almost humiliated formation.
Aviation was in disorder. It was difficult to give it new strength. One
must not forget, when considering aviation, that Nitti had forbidden
flight, not only for military planes, but also for private planes. His
command was to demobilize aviation, and to sell the motors as well as
the airplanes. It was a kind of premeditated murder of a nation which
really did not want to be strangled.
In the meantime there assembled in Rome all the arms and legs of
anti-Fascism, in all its gradations. The political parties, at first
dismayed by the revolution of the Black Shirts and my advent to power,
began to revive. They began to find courage to pursue again the
general trend of political parties in the equivocal atmosphere of the
parliamentary corridors at Montecitorio. The Italian press was,
for the greater part, tied to old groups and to old political customers.
It was necessary to reorganize all civil life, without forgetting the
basic need of a supervisory force. It was necessary to give order
to political economy, to the schools, to our military strength. It
was necessary to abolish double functions, to reduce bureaucracy, to
improve public services. It was necessary to check the corrosion and
erosion of criticism by the remnants of the old political parties. I
had to fight external attacks. I had to refine and improve Fascism. I
had to divide and floor the enemies. I saw the vision that I must in
every respect work to improve and to give tone to all the manners and
customs of Italian political life.
It was also imperative not to neglect the ten millions of Italians
emigrated beyond the frontiers. We had to give faith again to the zones
on our borders. We had to assist in bringing modern improvements and
stimuli to the life of the southern regions, and to get in touch with
all the men of the healthy and strong provinces, wherever they were.
Infinite then were the problems and the worries. I had to decide
everything, and I had a will firm enough to summon up all the political
postulates that I had enunciated and sustained with pen and paper, in
meetings and in my parliamentary speeches. This was not only a problem
of strength to last, to endure, to stand erect in any wind, but also,
above all, a problem of will.
I abandoned everything that kept me tied to the fortunes of my
newspapers; I parted from everything that could have the slightest
personal character. I devoted myself wholly, completely, exclusively,
to the work of reconstruction.
To-day there is no change. I want to be a simple, devoted servant
of the state; chief of a party, but, first, worthy head of a strong
government. I abandoned without regret all the superfluous comforts of
life. I made an exception only of sports which, while making my body
alert and ready, succeed in creating healthy and happy intervals in my
complex life of work. In these six years—with the exception of official
dinners—I have never passed the threshold of an aristocrat’s salon, or
of a cafe. I have also almost entirely abandoned the theatre, which
once took away from me useful hours of evening work.
I love all sports; I drive a motor car with confidence; I have done
tours at great speed, amazing not only to my friends, but also to old
and experienced drivers. I love the airplane; I have flown countless
times.
Even when I was kept busy by the cares of power, I needed only a few
lessons to obtain a pilot’s license. I once fell from a height of fifty
metres, but that did not stop my flying. Motors give me a new and
great sensation of strength. A horseback ride on a magnificent sorrel
is also for me a joyous interruption, and fencing, to which I devote
myself, often with remarkable physical benefit, gives me the greatest
satisfaction. I ask of my violin nothing more than serene hours of
music. Of the great poets, such as Dante, of the supreme philosophers,
such as Plato, I often ask hours of poetry, hours of meditation.
[Illustration:
Mussolini walking along the seashore, May 1, 1928.
From a photograph presented to Mr. Richard Washburn Child.
]
No other amusement interests me. I do not drink, I do not smoke,
and I am not interested in cards or games. I pity those who lose time,
money, and sometimes all of life itself in the frenzy of games.
As for the love of the table; I don’t appreciate it. I do not feel it.
Especially in these last years my meals are as frugal as those of a
pauper. In every hour of my life, it is the spiritual element which
leads me on. Money has no lure for me. The only things at which I aim
are those which identify themselves with the greatest objects of life
and civilization, with the highest interests, and the real and deep
aspirations of my country. I am sure of my strength and my faith; for
that reason I do not indulge in any concession or any compromise. I
leave, without a look over my shoulder, my foes and those who cannot
overtake me. I leave them with their political dreams. I leave them to
their strength for oratorical and demagogic exertion.
Italy needed what? An avenger! Her political and spiritual resurrection
needed a worthy interpreter. It was necessary to cauterize the virulent
wounds, to have strength, and to be able to go against the current. It
was necessary to eliminate evils which threatened to become chronic.
It was necessary to curb political dissolution. I had to bring to the
blood stream of national life a new, serene and powerful lymph of the
Italian people.
Voting was reduced to a childish game; it had already humiliated the
nation for entire decades. It had created a perilous structure far
below the heights of the duties of any new Italy. I faced numberless
enemies. I created new ones—I had few illusions about that! The
struggle, in my opinion, had to have a final character: it had to be
fought as a whole over the most diverse fields of action.
To express this character of completeness of the whole struggle, I must
be able to set it forth in a clear, evident way; it is necessary for
me to set forth in subdivisions the different fields in which action
was demanded of me and out of which evolved the most significant facts
of my governmental life. Deeds and actions, more than any useless
subjective expressions, write my true autobiography—from 1922 till 1927.
I never had any interval of uncertainty; fortunately, I never knew
those discouragements or those exaltations which often are harmful
to the effectiveness of a statesman. I understood that not only my
prestige was at stake, but the prestige, the very name of the country
which I love more than myself, more than anything else.
I was anxious to improve, refine and co-ordinate the character of
the Italians. Let me state what my domestic policies have been,
what was charted and what was achieved. From petty discords and
quarrels of holiday and Sunday frequency, from many-colored political
partisanships, from peasant strifes, from bloody struggles, from the
insincerity and duplicity of the press; from parliamentary battles
and maneuvres, from the vicissitudes of representative lobbies, from
hateful and useless debates and snarling talk, we finally climbed up
to the plane of a unified nation, to a powerful harmony—dominated,
inspired and spiritualised by Fascism. That is not my judgment, but
that of the world.
After my speech of November 16th, 1922, in the chamber of
deputies, I obtained approval for my declaration by 306 votes against
116. I asked and without difficulty obtained full powers.
I issued a decree of amnesty which created an atmosphere of peace. I
had to solve the problem of our armed Fascist squadrons. I always have
had great influence with my soldiers and with the action squads, which
in every part of Italy had given proof of their valor, their gallantry,
and their passionate faith. But now that Fascism had reached power,
these formations were, in such a situation, no longer desirable.
On the other hand, I could not suddenly wipe out or simply direct
toward the fields of sport these groups of men who had for me a deep,
blind, and absolute devotion. In their instinct, in their vibrant
conviction, they were led not only by strength and courage, but by
a sense of political virtue. And as the perils had not entirely
disappeared, it was imperative to guard the citadel of the Black
Shirt’s triumph. I decided then to create a Voluntary Militia for
National Security and Defence. Of course its duties had to be well
defined. It must be commanded by seasoned veterans and chiefs who,
after having fought the war, had known and experienced the struggles of
the Fascist resurrection.
I proclaimed that with Fascism at the wheel everything illegal and
disorderly must disappear. The decision to transform the squads of
action to Voluntary Militia for National Security undoubtedly was one
of political wisdom; it conferred on the régime not only authority, but
also a great reserve strength.
The organization of the Grand Council, a body exquisitely
political, was one of my major aims after my coming to power. I faced
the necessity of creating a political organization typically Fascist,
one which would be outside and above the various old political
mechanisms dominating and misruling our national life. Every day I
needed clear answers to questions arising—I needed a body of reference.
In all my complex work as chief of the government, I could not forget
that I was also chief of the party that for three years had fought in
the squares and streets of Italy—not merely to gain power, but above
all to meet the supreme task and the supreme necessity of infusing a
new spirit into the nation.
The Grand Council had to be the propelling element of Fascism, with
the hard and delicate task of preparing and transforming into legal
enactments the work of the Fascist revolution. There were no—and there
are none now—heterogeneous elements in the Grand Council, but virile
Fascists, ministers, representatives of our deepest currents of public
opinion, men of expert knowledge and of interests. The Grand Council
has always succeeded. I preside over it, and let me add, as a detail,
that all the motions and the official reports which have appeared in
the papers in concise form, have been written by my hand. They are the
product of long meditations in which Italian life and the position of
Italy in the world have been examined and dissected by the Fascist
soul, spirit and faith. The Grand Council, which to-day I want framed
in the legislative institutions of the régime, has rendered in its
first five years a magnificent, unparallelled service.
One of the problems which presented itself first of all was that of
the unification of the police forces. We had the ordinary police, with
the different branches of political and judiciary police; the Royal
Carabinieri, and, finally, the body of the Royal Guards. This last
institution, created by Nitti, was made up of demobilized elements
and was a useless organization finding its place somewhere between
the carabinieri and the usual forces of public security. I decided
immediately to suppress the Royal Guards. That suppression in the
main was not attended by unfortunate incidents. In some cities, such
as Torino and Milano, there were riots and attempts at resistance.
I gave severe orders. I called into my office or telephoned to the
chiefs responsible for certain local situations. I ordered them to
fire, if necessary. In six hours everything was calm again. The instant
dissolving of an armed body of forty thousand men cost only four dead
and some tens of wounded. The officers were incorporated into other
organizations, or took up activities according to their own wishes; the
privates reached their districts and homes without further trouble.
Our Italian form of political Masonry, which at first had seemed to
have adjusted itself to the new conditions, submitting to the advent
of Fascism to power, now began a stupid and deceitful warfare against
me and against Fascism. In a meeting of the Grand Council I proclaimed
the impossibility for Fascisti of membership at the same time in
Masonry. As a leader of the ranks of socialism I had already pursued
the same anti-Masonic policy. We must not forget that this shady
institution with its secret nature has always had in Italy a character
typical of the briber and blackmailer. It has nothing of protection,
humanitarianism, benevolence. Every one, even those who were benefited,
are convinced that Italian Masonry has been nothing more than a society
for mutual aid and for reciprocal adulation of its members. Every one
knows that it has diffused in every way a worship of self-interest, and
methods of privilege and intrigue, neglecting and despising rights and
prerogatives of intelligence and morality. My struggle against Masonry
was bitter; I carry the tangible signs of it still, but it constitutes
for me, for my sincerity, and my probity, one of the most precious
titles of merit.
In 1923, after negotiations carried on with unwavering constancy,
I united Italian Nationalism with Fascism. For a certain time an
identical vision had been shared by these two organizations about
everything concerning the ends and aims of our national life. Political
developments, however, had led them along separate paths. Now that
victory had been concluded and the better elements of Nationalism
were already collaborating with the new régime, the unification was
more than a wise move; it was also an act of political sincerity.
Black Shirt and Blue Shirt—the latter was the uniform of the
Nationalists—united in a perfect accord of chivalry and political
loyalty. This new and deep unity permitted us to enjoy the
prospect of more favorable auspices for a new future, one worthy of
that great Italy which had been prophesied, desired and finally created
by Nationalism and Fascism.
In April, 1923, in Turin, there assembled the national congress of
the “Popular Party.” It was a verbose and academic meeting, not very
different from the other political congresses that for decades had
hypnotized Italian public life. They naturally discussed the policies
of the Fascist régime for a long while and, after various divergencies
of opinion, the majority of those assembled voted in favor of a
middle-ground position with an anti-Fascist leaning.
Among the members of my ministry there were some of the “Popular
Party”; they found themselves, after the meeting, in a difficult and
delicate situation. I naturally put before them the problem of giving
thought to their opportunity of staying in the Fascist government in
the new state of things created by the attitude of their party. There
were some explanations. Differing opinions alternated, but, in order to
initiate that process of political clarification that I had foreseen
as inevitable, I advised the members of the government of the Popular
party to give up their places so that they could avoid dissensions
between their parliamentary group and the Fascist party.
This process of clarification I had foreseen as soon as I went into
power. The climate and altitude of Fascism was not adapted to all minds
of that time. There were still many dissenters. Many people fed on the
illusory hope that they would be able to influence and bend the
methodical and straight courses laid out by Fascism. For this purpose,
I was approached by those who were skilled in twistings, turnings and
slidings. Naturally, they always found me as resistant as flint.
In 1923, for the first time, our Labor Day passed without incident;
the people worked calmly, without regretting that old date which now
in Italy had lost every meaning. Later on I wanted to get in touch
with the public opinion of Italy and to measure how deep Fascism had
penetrated the masses. First I went to Milan and to Romagna. Afterward
I went to Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Sicily and Sardinia; finally I
journeyed to Piacenza and Florence. I found everywhere warm, vibrant
enthusiasm, not only among my lieutenants and the Black Shirts, but
also among all of the Italian people. That people finally was sensing
that it had a government and a leader.
The Black Shirts, the makers of the revolution, hailed me as a leader
with the same changeless enthusiasm they had shown when I was only
the chief of the party and when I was developing that programme of
journalistic attack which had added so much to my popularity. The
Italian temperament at times is much more adapted to faction than to
action. But now my old comrades were just as near to me in their daily
tasks and their regimental discipline. Their attitude not only made me
proud but moved me deeply. I could not ignore this warm youth so full
of ardor, and I was quite decided not to sacrifice it to compromises
with an old world which was destined to disappear. The population
felt that it had recovered a real liberty; they had experienced
liberation from the continuous blackmail of parties which deluded the
masses. They blessed my political work. And I was happy.
It was in this period that the campaign of the opposition opened again.
Not being able to beat me on the field of conciliation and compromise,
the opposing elements, led by the _Corriere della Sera_, began a series
of depressing prophecies and calamity howling. They launched deceitful
attacks and spun their polemic webs. I put into effect, however, a new
electoral law, because I did not want to fall into the pitfalls of our
old proportional representative system. I had alienated the “Populars,”
the Democrats, and some of the Liberals. The reforming of the school,
about which I will have more to say, had invited some hostilities.
Meanwhile, we had anti-Fascist assaults and ambushes. This was a
stormy year. It must be regarded as a period of settling and one
of difficulty. I had to guard Fascism from internal crises, often
provoked by intrigue and trickery. I succeeded in this by being always
inexorably opposed to those who thought they could create disturbances
and frictions in the party itself. Fascism is a unit; it cannot have
varying tendencies and trends, as it cannot have two leaders on any
one level of organization. There is a hierarchy; the foundation is the
Black Shirts and on the summit is the Chief, who is only one.
That is one of the first sources of my strength; all the dissolutions
of our political parties were always born not from ideal motives
but from personal ambitions, from false preconceptions or from
corruption, or from mysterious, oblique and hidden forces which I could
always identify as the work of our Italian Masonry. I took account
of all this. I resolved not to yield a hairbreadth. When the more
urgent legislative problems had been settled by parliament I decided
to dissolve the chamber, and after having obtained extension of full
powers, I announced elections for April 6th, 1924.
This signal for elections was sufficient to calm political agitations
of dubious character. All the parties began their stock-taking and the
revision of their forces. All got ready to muster the greatest number
of votes and to send to the chamber the greatest possible number of
representatives.
An election may be considered a childish play, in which the most
important part is played by the elected. The “Honorables,” to be able
to become so, do not overlook any sort of contortion, of demagogy and
compromise. Fascism did not want to submit to the usual forms of that
silly farce. We decided to create a large National list on which places
had to be found not only for known, tried and faithful custodians and
trustees of Fascism, but also for those who in the active national
life had been able to uphold the dignity of their country. Fascism by
this policy gave full proof of great political wisdom and probity. It
even tolerated men of opposing or doubtful position because they could
serve. In the National list were included ex-presidents of the Council,
such as Orlando, and of the Chamber, such as De Nicola; but the
main body of the list was made up of new elements. It was, in fact,
composed of two hundred veterans, ten gold medals, one hundred and
fourteen silver medals, ninety-eight bronze medals, eighty mutilated
and war invalids, thirty-four volunteers. The majority of the list was
drawn from the aristocracy of the war and the victory.
The Socialists, divided from the Communists, sharpened their weapons,
and so did the Populars. But from the ballot boxes of April 6th there
flowed a full, irrevocable, decisive victory for the National list. It
obtained five million votes against the two millions represented by all
the other lists put together. My policy and our régime was supported by
the people. I then could be indulgent toward our adversaries, instead
of pressing them harder, as I might have done.
I directed that political battle staying in Milan. I attached no great
importance to the results of the electoral struggle, but it interested
me as an expression of the support and the enthusiasm which, in every
Italian city, had already been given to the National Fascist list. This
indorsement by the people encouraged my thesis and my governmental
work. Having gone back to Rome I was received as a returning victor,
and, from the balcony of the Palazzo Chigi, while I saluted the people
and the city of Rome, I congratulated the new and greater Italy, in
which men of good faith were all in harmony.
This was my synthesis: Let Parties die and the Country be saved.
On May 24th, with unusual solemnity, came the opening of
the Twenty-seventh Legislature. His Majesty the King made a very
impressive speech. The hall had the appearance of a great occasion.
For petty political reasons, the elements which denied the country and
belittled Italian life determined to stay away. The inauguration of
the Twenty-seventh Legislature, however, did not lose anything in its
fulness and moral value. Particularly well received were the veterans,
some of whom were very much decorated. Now there stirred, in that old
chamber, so used to mean and petty political intrigues, a breath of
new life; there was present a heroic sense of the new soul of Italy, a
sense of a living aspiration for greatness.
All these things irritated the Socialists. In their hearts they had
hated the war, had debased our victory. The old parliamentary world
could not adjust itself to this magnificent gathering of youth. The
congenital cowardliness of Montecitorio, the seat of parliament, would
certainly refuse homage to the bravery symbolized by these golden
medals!
The deep dissension between the new and the old Italy was revived
again at Montecitorio. This dissension persisted in the atmosphere of
parliament even after it had been beaten and overcome by Fascism in
the squares and streets of Italy and in the hearts of the nation. In
the historic meeting of May 24th, 1924, that sad antipathy was to have
its epilogue. Not by mere chance had I chosen the precise date of our
entrance into the war.
After some days the usual parliamentary discussions began. The
seating of new deputies roused violent diatribes. The Socialists,
who were absent from the ceremony of May 24th, had again taken up
their posts of combat. The atmosphere was red-hot. I knew that it
would be necessary to give a different tone to all our political
life, especially to parliamentary life—there was no use my cherishing
illusions about that. With very great patience I succeeded in appeasing
the first tumultuous meetings. Nothing proved more effective in
elevating the plane of the discussion than a speech delivered on June
6th by the blind veteran, Carlo Delcroix. On June 7th I answered all
the opponents exhaustively. I denounced their maneuvres. I remember
that I admonished every one in the name of Fascist martyrdom and in the
name of the peace of souls, to attend solely to productive activities.
I added: “We feel that we represent the Italian people and we declare
that we have the right to scatter to the winds the ashes of your spites
and of our spites, so that we may feed with powerful lymph, in the
course of years and centuries, the venerable and intangible body of the
country.”
I felt the necessity of making in parliament a high appeal for calm,
for a sense of balance and justice. I was animated by a deep and
sincere desire for peace. But the success of my words was apparent
only; in the ardors of the parliamentary political struggle scenes
unworthy of any assembly took place.
The Socialists had been hit in their most sensitive spots; they had
been slammed against reality. They were outnumbered, amazed by
the rush of Italian youth, dismayed by the new direction events were
taking. All the new political realism was in full antagonism to their
leanings; they were beaten and they felt it. In such a situation, the
Socialists wanted as a last resort to squeeze out some way of avoiding
surrender, at least, in parliament.
Skillful and astute in every political art, they protracted without
end all the annoyances they could devise. It was a game played with
the deliberate aim to destroy and tear down. In this subtle work of
exasperation, Matteotti, the deputy, distinguished himself above all
others. He was a Socialist from the province of Rovigo, whose arrogant
spirit held tenaciously to the principle of political dissolution.
As a Socialist he hated war. In this attitude he reached a degree of
absurdity even beyond that attained by any other Socialist. In the
tragic period after the defeat at Caporetto, he had set himself against
our Venetian refugees. Matteotti denied shelter to those unhappy people
who fled from the lands then invaded by the enemy and in which the
Austrians were committing every sort of violence. He said that they
ought to remain under Austrian domination!
To this parliamentary battle of polemics he now brought his whole bag
of tricks and devices. Being a millionaire, he considered socialism as
a mere parliamentary formula. It is to be remembered, however, that he
was an ardent fighter, well able to irritate his adversaries in the
whirlwind of the struggle, but he was far from being able seriously to
imperil the assembly and to silence such a party as the Fascist.
Matteotti was not a leader. In that same Socialist party there were
individuals who surpassed him in powers of debate, in talent, and in
coherence. In his electoral districts he had had violent fights with
the Fascists, and in the chamber he had at once revealed himself as a
most zealous and pugnacious opponent.
One day Matteotti disappeared from Rome. Immediately it was whispered
about that a political crime had been committed. The Socialists were
looking for a martyr who might be of use for purposes of oratory,
and at once, before anything definite could possibly be known, they
accused Fascism. By my orders, we began a most painstaking and complete
investigation. The government was determined to act with the greatest
energy, not only for the sake of justice, but also to stop, from the
very first moment, the spread of any kind of calumny. I threw the
Prefect and Police Chief of Rome, the Secretary of the Interior, Finzi,
and the Chief of the Press Office, Cesare Rossi, into the task of
clearing up the mystery. Activity on the part of the police for the
discovery of the guilty persons was ordered without stint. Very soon
it was possible to identify the guilty. They were of high station.
They came from the Fascist group, but they were completely outside our
responsible elements.
The sternest proceedings were instituted against them without limit or
reservation. Severe measures were taken—so severe indeed that in some
cases they proved to be excessive.
The suspects were arrested at once. Among the responsible
elements, those who had had relations with the guilty ones, merely
because they were under suspicion retired, though innocent, from public
life. No threat of restraint was laid on the authorities, the police
and the courts.
All this should have stilled the storm.
On the contrary. This dramatic episode was destined to disturb the
austere serenity that I had imposed on myself and on every one, in
the general policy of the country. Though we were still living in
an atmosphere incandescent with passion, with polemics and violent
battles, it seemed hardly possible that only a few days after the
opening of the Twenty-seventh Legislature, a group of men of position
could carry through an enterprise which, begun as a jest, was to
conclude in a tragedy. I always have had harsh and severe words for
what happened. But despite the faithful and energetic behavior of the
central government, there now burst out an unparalleled offensive
against Fascism and against its leader. The opposition in the chamber
gave the first signal of an attack in grand style. I perceived and
foresaw immediately the ignoble game, which grew, not from any love for
the poor victim, but solely from hate for Fascism. I was not surprised.
In the chamber, when weak men already were hesitating, I said:
“If it is a question of lamenting, if it is a question of condemning,
if it is a question of regretting the victim, if it is a question of
pressing our prosecution of all the guilty and those responsible, we
here repeat that this will be done calmly and inexorably. But
if from this very sad happening some one seeks to draw an argument
for anything but a wider reconciliation of all men on the basis of an
accepted and recognised need of national concord—if any one should
try to stage upon this tragedy a show of selfish political character
for the purpose of attacking the government, it must be known that
the government will defend itself at any cost. The government, with
undisturbed conscience, sure of having already fulfilled its duty and
willing to do it in the future, will adopt the necessary means to crush
a trick which, instead of leading to the harmony of Italians, would
trouble them with the deepest dissensions and passions.”
These words did not penetrate minds already hardened. And there
happened exactly what I had foreseen; the opposition threw themselves
on the corpse of Matteotti in order to poison the political life of
Italy and to cast calumnies on Fascism both in Italy and abroad.
The course of Italian public life from June till December, 1924,
offered a spectacle absolutely unparalleled in the political struggle
of any other country. It was a mark of shame and infamy which would
dishonor any political group. The press, the meetings, the subversive
and anti-Fascist parties of every sort, the false intellectuals,
the defeated candidates, the soft-brained cowards, the rabble, the
parasites, threw themselves like ravens on the corpse. The arrest of
the guilty was not enough. The discovery of the corpse and the sworn
statement of surgeons that death had not been due to a crime but
had been produced by trauma was not enough.
Instead, the discovery of the corpse in a hedge near Rome, called the
Quartarella, unstopped an orgiastic research into the details which is
remembered by us under the ignominious name of “Quartarellismo.”
Fortunes were built on the Matteotti tragedy; they speculated on
portraits, on medals, on commemorative dates, on electric signs; a
subscription was opened by subversive newspapers and even now the
accounts are still open.
The opposition parties and their representatives in the chamber
retired from Montecitorio and threatened not to participate further in
legislative work; to this movement and to those who espoused it was
given, by false analogy with the well-known event of Roman history,
the name of Aventino. But the Aventino group was here reduced to a
grotesque parody, in which hate and nakedness of power now reunited men
of the most diverse political complexions. They ranged all the way from
Socialists to Liberals, from Democrat-Masons to Populars, who pretended
to be called Catholics. Clandestine meetings were held. They abused in
every way the liberty of the press and of assembly, in order to destroy
Italian life. Fanatical elements waited hour after hour for Fascism
to be overthrown. In the background of this ignoble dramatic farce,
there stood out the figure of senator Albertini, the happy owner of the
newspaper. This man was willing to scrape in the garbage, to listen to
all the dirty rogues, to collect the most mendacious pamphlets,
trying somehow, sometime, somewhere, to hit at me and at Fascism.
I did not have a moment of doubt or discouragement. I knew the
attitudes, postures and poses of these adversaries. I knew that if they
could they would have ignobly used the corpse of the Socialist deputy
as an anti-Fascist symbol and flag. But their ghoulish politics passed
the bounds of my imagination. Besides these speculators, there were
those on the timid and flabby fringes of Fascism. They let themselves
be led astray by the political atmosphere. They did not perceive that
an episode is not the stuff of which history should be made. In the
name of a sentimental morality, they were willing to kill a great moral
and political probity and knife the welfare of an entire nation.
In this situation there were also many repentant Magdalenes, and many,
impelled by the sad habit of many Italians to consider as pure gold the
acts and the work of any opposition, hid their Fascist insignia and,
trembling, abandoned the Fascist nation, already grown red-hot from a
thousand attacks and counter-attacks of its adversaries.
We were going back into the depths of a revolutionary period, with
all the excesses of such an abnormal time, all its spites, troubles,
and explosions. An atmosphere was formed in which many magistrates,
often under Masonic influence, could certainly not give equitable and
faultless judgments. Various parties beyond the borders were giving
help to the Socialists at home. It was then clear to what extent
anti-Fascism was still abroad in certain international zones where
Democracy, Socialism and Liberalism had consolidated their weight of
patronage, blackmail and parasitism.
All this might have created for a moment, in certain political
atmospheres, the illusion that the government had weakened. In
December, 1924, at the end of that painful three months, some were
calculating the days of life of our ministry. A great hope sprang up in
the hearts of the politically hungry. There was, in fact, a miserable
maneuvre on the part of the three former presidents of the council;
they were able to delude themselves and others. But these professional
political men have so little practical sense that they could not
understand that with one breath I could have given an order to the
Black Shirts which would have overturned once and for all their fancies
and their dreams.
The swelled frogs waited for their triumph. The corrupt press gave the
maximum of publicity to the calumnies, to incitation to commit crimes
and to spread defamation. The Crown, supreme element of equilibrium,
was violently menaced with blackmail and worse. As ever, there were
adventurers who were eager to speculate on any turn in the tide of
events in order to create again for themselves a political rebirth.
This base and pernicious crew I, for my part, have always eliminated
from the sphere of activity and position controlled by me.
As if all this were not enough, in that dark December of 1924, to
complete the picture, Cesare Rossi, the former chief of the press
office, tried a rascally trick. This man, cast out from Fascism
because he was implicated in the Matteotti affair, prepared a
memorial which was a tissue of lies and libels. He aimed to involve
the régime in guilt, and consequently to involve me. Everything that
had happened or was happening in Italy he endeavored to put on my
doorstep. This memorial, written by such a man, pretended to present
a “moral indictment” of me. But in that field I cannot be attacked;
every attempt of this sort is empty. I was informed beforehand of
the plot that Rossi was going to attempt; I knew the contents of his
memorial and the day on which it was to be printed in the papers of the
opposition. I put an end to the miserable maneuvre. I published the
memorial in a friendly paper; in this way I indicated that I gave no
value to it. It was a jest and a delusion. The theatrical stroke fell
on emptiness; the bubble swelled by slanders flattened like a pricked
balloon.
The contemptible game lasted six months. The half-hearted had sunk
beneath the surface; the singers of the doleful tunes felt their
throats becoming parched. The speculators were now disgusted with
themselves. In that period a former minister, decorated with the
Collare dell’Annunziata, the highest order of Italy’s sovereign,
alligned himself with the cult of Republicanism and with the worst
elements of the Socialists!
I held the Fascist party firmly in my hand during this period. I curbed
the impulses of some Fascists who wanted violent reprisals with a
clear order: “Hands in the pockets! I am the only one that must have
his hands free.” In Florence and Bologna, however, there occurred
episodes of extreme violence. I understood then that it was time to
speak and act.
In all that time I credit myself with the fact that I never lost
my calm nor my sense of balance and justice. Because of the serene
judgment that I endeavor to summon to guide my every act, I ordered
the guilty to be arrested. I wanted justice to follow its unwavering
course. Now I had fulfilled my task and my duty as a just man. Now
against my adversaries I could play my own game—in the open.
When the menace of a general strike in the Province of Rome arose, I
ordered the Florentine legions of the Militia to parade in the streets
of the Capital. The armed Militia with its war songs is a great agent
of persuasion. It is an argument. In September, 1924, I had visited
the most intense zones of the Tuscan Fascism; I went among the strong
populations of the Amiata, among the workers and peasants, among the
miners of the province of Siena. On that occasion, while opponents
hourly awaited my fall—and that was also the secret hope of many
enemies beyond the borders—I delivered to the Fascists an audacious
sentence in which I sounded an affirmation of strength and victory:
Of our adversaries, I said, “we will make a litter for the Black
Shirts.”
The opposition press made a great fuss about these words; but their
chattering had no importance. That became clear on January 3rd,
1925. On that day, when Rome was already full of the exiled from the
provinces and of those who tremblingly awaited the conclusion
of the political struggle, I made in parliament this speech, which
certainly was not lacking in reserve:
Gentlemen,
The speech I am going to make before you might not be classed as a
parliamentary speech. It may be possible that, at the end, some of you
will find that this speech is tied, even though a space of time has
elapsed, to the one I pronounced in this same hall on November 16th.
Such a speech can lead somewhere, but it cannot lead to a political
vote. In any case let it be known that I am not looking for this vote.
I do not want it; I have had plenty. Article 47 of the Statute says:
“The Chamber of the Deputies has the right to accuse the Ministers
of the King and to bring them to face the High Court of Justice.” I
formally ask if in this Chamber, or outside it, there is any one who
wants to make use of Article 47. My speech will then be very clear;
it will bring about an absolute clarification. You can understand
this. After having marched for a long time with comrades to whom our
gratitude always will go out for what they have done, it is good sense
to stop to consider whether the same route, with the same companions,
could be followed in the future.
Gentlemen, I am the one who brings forth in this hall the accusations
against me.
It has been said that I would have founded a “Cheka.”
Where? When? In what way? Nobody is able to say. Russia has executed
without trial from one hundred and fifty thousand to one hundred and
sixty thousand people, as shown by statistics almost official. There
has been a Cheka in Russia which has exercised terror systematically
over all the middle classes and over the individual members of those
classes, a Cheka which said it was the red sword of revolution. But an
Italian Cheka never has had a shadow of existence.
Nobody has ever denied that I am possessed of these three
qualities; a discreet intelligence, a lot of courage and an utter
contempt for the lure of money.
If I had founded a Cheka I would have done it following the lines of
reasoning that I have always used in defending one kind of violence
that can never be eliminated from history.
I have always said—and those who have always followed me in these
five years of hard struggle can now remember it—that violence, to
be useful in settling anything, must be surgical, intelligent and
chivalrous. Now, all the exploits of any so-called Cheka have always
been unintelligent, passionate and stupid.
Can you really think that I could order—on the day following the
anniversary of Christ’s birth when all saintly spirits are hovering
near—can you think that I could order an assault at ten o’clock in
the morning in the Via Francesco Crispi, in Rome, after the most
conciliatory speech that I ever made during my Government?
Please do not think me such an idiot. Would I have planned with the
same lack of intelligence the minor assaults against Misuri and Forni?
You certainly remember my speech of June 7th. It should be easy for
you to go back to that week of ardent political passion when, in this
hall, minority and majority clashed every day, so much so that some
persons despaired of ever being able to re-establish those terms of
political and civil cooperation most necessary between the opposite
parties in the Chamber. The shuttles of violent speeches were flying
from one side to the other. Finally on June 6th Delcroix with his
lyric speech, full of life and passion, broke that storm-charged
tension.
The next day I spoke to clear the atmosphere. I said to the
opposition, “I recognize your ideal rights, your contingent rights.
You may surpass Fascism with your experience; you may put under
immediate criticism all the measures of the Fascist Government.”
I remember, and I have still before my eyes the vision of this part
of the Chamber, where all were attentive, where all felt that I had
spoken deep, living words, and that I had established the basis
for that necessary living-together without which it is not possible to
continue even the existence of any political assembly.
How could I, after a success—let me say that without false or
ridiculous modesty—after a success so clamorous that it was admitted
by all the Chamber, opposition included, a success because of which
the Chamber opened again the next Wednesday in a good atmosphere, how
could I think, without being struck with mad extravagance, to order,
I won’t say a murder, but even the slightest, the most petty offense
against that very adversary whom I esteemed because he had a certain
courage which looked like my courage, and an obstinacy which appeared
like my obstinacy in sustaining a thesis?
They have the minds of crickets who pretend that I was making only
cynical gestures on that occasion. Such gestures are the last to
be tolerated by me; they are repugnant to the very depths of my
conscience. And I feel as strongly against the show of strength.
What strength? Against whom? With what aim? When I think about that,
Gentlemen, I remember those strategists who, during the War, while we
were eating in the trenches, made strategy with little pins on the
maps. But when the problem is to get something done at the place of
command and responsibility, things are seen in another light and have
a different appearance. And yet on enough occasions, I have proved my
energy. I have usually not failed to meet events.
I have settled in six hours a revolt of the Royal Guards. In a few
days I have broken an insidious revolt. In forty-eight hours I brought
a division of Infantry and half of the fleet to Corfu. These gestures
of energy—and the last one amazed even one of the greatest generals of
a friendly Nation—are cited here to demonstrate that it is not energy
that fails me.
The death punishment? But that is a joke, Gentlemen! First of all, the
death punishment must be inflicted under the penal code and, in any
case, capital punishment cannot be the reprisal of a Government!
It must be inflicted with restrained, better let us say very
restrained, judgment, when the question is the life of a citizen. It
was at the end of that month which is carved deeply into my life,
that I said, “I want peace for the Italian people and I want to
re-establish normal political life.”
What was the answer to this policy of mine? First of all the secession
of the Aventino—anti-constitutional secession, clearly revolutionary!
Then a campaign of the press which lasted throughout the months of
June, July and August. A dirty, miserable campaign which dishonored us
for three months. The most fantastic, the most terrifying, the most
frightful lies were affirmed extensively in the press.
Investigations of underground happenings were also made; they invented
things, they knew they were lying, but it was done all the same! I
have always been peaceful and calm amid the storm. That storm will be
remembered by those who will come after us with a sense of intimate
shame. On September eleventh, somebody wanted to revenge a killing
and shot one of our best men. He died poor—he had sixty lires in his
pocket. But I continue my effort to normalize. I repress illegalities.
I state the bare truth when I say that even now in our jails there are
hundreds and hundreds of Fascists.
It is the bare truth when I recall to you that I reopened the
Parliament on the fixed date and that the discussion covered, with no
lack of regularity, almost all the budgets.
It is the bare truth that that oath of which you know is taken by the
Militia and that the nomination of all the generals for all the zone
commands is conducted as it is.
Finally a question which raised our passions was presented—the
question of accepting the resignation of Giunta. The Chamber was
excited. I understood the sense of that revolt; however, after
forty-eight hours I used my prestige and my influence. To a riotous
and reluctant assembly I said: “Accept the resignation,” and the
resignation was accepted.
But this was not enough; I made a last effort to create normal
conditions—the plan for electoral reform. How was that answered?
It was answered by an accentuation of the campaign and by the
assertion, “Fascism is a horde of barbarians camped on the Nation, and
a movement of bandits and marauders.” Now they stage, Gentlemen, the
moral question! We know the sad history of moral questions in Italy.
But after all, Sirs, what butterflies are we looking for under the
arch of Titus? Well, I declare here before this assembly, before all
the Italian people, that I assume, I alone, the political, moral,
historical responsibility for everything that has happened. If
sentences, more or less maimed, are enough to hang a man, out with the
noose! If Fascism has only been castor oil or a club, and not a proud
passion of the best Italian youth, the blame is on me!
If Fascism has been a criminal association, if all the violence
has been the result of a determined historical, political, moral
delinquency, the responsibility for this is on me, because I have
created it with my propaganda from the time of our intervention in the
War to this moment.
In these last days not only the Fascists but many citizens ask
themselves: Is there a Government? Have these men dignity as men?
Have they dignity also as a Government? I have wanted to reach this
determined extreme point. My experience of the life of these six
months is rich. I have tried the Fascist Party. Just as to try the
temper of some metals it is necessary to hit them with a hammer, so
have I tested the temper of certain men. I have seen their value;
I have seen for what reasons, at some moment when the wind seems
contrary, they turn around the corner. I have tested myself. And be
sure that I would not have persisted in measures if they had not
been for the interests of the Nation. A people does not respect a
Government which allows itself to be scorned. The people want to see
their own dignity reflected in a Government, and the people, even
before I said it, said, “Enough! The measure is filled.”
And why was it filled? Because the revolt of the Aventino has a
republican background.
This sedition of the Aventino has had consequences, for now
whoever in Italy is a Fascist risks his life! In the two months of
November and December eleven Fascists were killed. One had his head
crushed, and another one, an old man seventy-three years old, was
killed and thrown from a high wall. Three fires happened in one
month, three mysterious fires on the railroads, one in Rome, another
in Parma, and the third in Florence. Then came a subversive movement
everywhere.
A chief of a squad of the Militia severely wounded by subversives.
A fight between Carabinieri and subversives in Genzano.
An attempted attack against the seat of the Fascists in Tarquinia.
A man wounded by subversives in Verona.
A soldier of the Militia wounded in the Province of Cremona.
Fascists wounded by subversives in Forli.
Communist ambush in San Giorgio di Pesaro.
Subversives who sing the “Red Flag” and attack Fascists in Monzambano.
In the three days of this January, 1925, and in a single zone
incidents occurred in Mestre, Pionca, Valombra; fifty subversives
armed with rifles strolled through the country singing the “Red Flag”
and exploding petards. In Venice the Militiaman Pascai Mario was
attacked and wounded. In Cavaso di Treviso another Fascist was hurt.
In Crespano, the headquarters of the Carabinieri were invaded by about
twenty frantic women, a chief of a detachment of Militia was attacked
and thrown into the water. In Favara di Venezia Fascists were attacked
by subversives.
I bring your attention to these matters because they are symptoms. The
Express train No. 192 was stoned by subversives who broke the windows.
In Moduno di Livenza, a chief of the squad was attacked and beaten.
You can see by this situation that the sedition of the Aventino has
had deep repercussions throughout the whole Country. And then comes
the struggle in which one side says: Enough! When two elements are
struggling the solution lies in the test of strength. There never
was any other solution in history, and never will be.
Now I dare to say that the problem will be solved. Fascism, the
Government, the Party, is at its highest efficiency. Gentlemen, you
have deceived yourselves! You thought that Fascism was ended because
I was restraining it, that the Party was dead because I was holding
it back. If I should use a hundredth part of the energy that I used
to compress the Fascists, to loosen them.... Oh! You should see, for
then....
But there will be no need of that, because the Government is strong to
break fully and finally this revolt of the Aventino.
Italy, Gentlemen, wants peace, wants quiet, wants work, wants calm; we
will give it with love, if that be possible, or with strength, if that
be necessary.
You can be sure that in the forty-eight hours following this speech
the situation will be clarified in every corner. We all know that this
is not a personal fancy, not lust for government, not base passion,
but only infinite and powerful love for my Country.
These words, restrained till then, together with my disdain and my
force of expression, suddenly awoke Fascist Italy. The situation, as
I had foreseen, was clarified in forty-eight hours. The papers of the
opposition, which till then had been full of envy, hate and defamatory
attacks, began to slink into their holes again. A new situation, full
of power and responsibility, was developing. Fascism had now all the
attributes—after the long “quartarellista” parenthesis—to enable it to
march onward and to govern by itself.
It was on that occasion that the Liberal ministers Sarrocchi and
Casati, and also the minister Oviglio, a tepid Fascist, asked to
resign from the ministry. I replaced them with three Fascist ministers.
We were coming back by the force of events to the historical origins of
our movement, back to pure irreconcilableness.
Fascism, after my words full of my faith and my willingness to show
audacity, was coming back to its warrior soul. Immediately, all those
who were out of Fascism wanted to participate in our movement, but
in order not to load too much on our party the membership lists were
closed.
Victory was complete. The maneuvre of the former premiers definitely
failed and became ridiculous, just as did other artificial structures
attempted about that time. One was a movement inspired by Benelli,
under the name of the Italian League, to create secessions from
Fascism, and another an underhand maneuvre by some shortweight
grandchildren of Garibaldi.
At the end of January, 1925, the Aventino, with all our opponents,
appeared to have been destroyed, torn to pieces by a thousand internal
discords and differences. I was winner again on the whole front and I
was getting ready to channel the Fascist revolution into institutions
and into constitutional forms.
On October 28th, 1924, the National Militia, which represents the best
of Fascism and which has always been my beloved creation, had sworn
loyalty to the King. Now it was necessary to bring the Constitution of
1848 up to date and to create new representative institutions, worthy
of the new Italy.
With this aim I brought about the nomination of a commission of
eighteen experts on statecraft. I charged them with the preparation of
proposals of reforms to be presented to our legislative organs.
The commission was then called the Commission of the Solons. It
concluded its work, after a certain time, suggesting some improvements
in the old Constitution and the creation of new institutions. I
afterward used the recommendations as a base. The commission at the
time did not lay down definite lines, but it contributed to the reforms
which later on I began to see taking clearer shape and which were
approved by the two branches of the national parliament.
A law against secret societies was voted; so legal sanction was given
to the struggle maintained by Fascism against Masonry. In fact, in
1925, it was ridiculous to think that there could exist societies
constituted for performing a clandestine public act, outside the
control of the person who has the supreme direction of public affairs
and beyond the control of all who fulfill any function of the law.
A secret political society in modern, contemporary life is a thing of
nonsense, when it is not a menace. I settled it that all associations
should be known in their aims, in their formations, membership and
developments.
It was at that time that Federzoni, then Minister of the Interior,
prepared with my full approval the new law on public safety. Then we
intrusted the Communes to the “Podesta,” drawing them away from the
old electoral patronages, which were no longer suited to our time
and our temper. The Governship of Rome was instituted and there began,
because I had made up my mind to it, an inexorable fight against the
Mafia in Sicily, the bandits in Sardinia, and against other less widely
known forms of crime, which had humiliated entire regions.
In February, 1925, I fell desperately ill. For obvious reasons, and
perhaps because of exaggerated apprehension, any exact account of my
condition and of my illness was never given out. I admit that the
situation was in a certain way very grave. For forty days I could
not come out of the house. My enemies now put their great hope in
the illusion, revived by their desire, that my end was near. The
Fascisti, because of my silence and the contradictory reports that
were circulating, were very troubled. Never, so much as then, did I
understand that I was indispensable to my men, to my devoted people,
to all the great masses of Italian people. I had lively, vibrating and
moving manifestations of solidarity, of devotion, of good will. The
Black Shirts roared impatiently to see me.
When finally at the end of March, on the sixth anniversary of the
foundation of Fascism, I appeared healed on the balcony of the Palazzo
Chigi, I had in front of me all of Rome. The sight of me still thin
and pale stirred deep emotion. I saluted the multitude in the name of
Spring, and among other things I said, “Now will come the best!” This
sentence was interpreted in a thousand senses and aroused a wave of
plaudits and approbation.
The wise treatment of very clever doctors, such as Professor
Bastianelli and Professor Marchiafava, healed me completely. Those
miserable persons who had based their hopes upon my illness were
baffled. Nothing is more hateful to me than a hope that an illness may
end one’s adversary. I am more alive and stronger than ever before. I
could repeat what I said one day, after an attempt against my life:
“The bullets pass, Mussolini remains.”
Another train of events which was to mark my complex and difficult
existence was the attempts against my life.
Zaniboni initiated the series. He was a vulgar Socialist, who received
two checks of 150,000 francs each from the Czechoslovakian Socialists
to lead an anti-Fascist struggle. Naturally Zaniboni, a drug addict,
used the 300,000 francs to prepare with devilish ability for his
attempt against me. He chose the sacred day of the commemoration of the
victory. He ambushed himself in a room of the Hotel Dragoni, just in
front of the Palazzo Chigi, from the balcony of which I usually review
the processions which pass on the way to the altar of the Unknown
Soldier to offer their flowers, their vows and their homage.
Having an Austrian rifle with fine sights, the fellow could not miss
his aim. Zaniboni, to avoid being suspected, dressed himself in the
uniform of a major of the army, and got ready in the morning to
accomplish his crime. He was discovered. He had been followed for a
long time. A few days before, General Capello had generously
given him money and advice. Masonry had made of him its ensign. But
by simultaneous action, Zaniboni, General Capello and various less
important personages in the plot were arrested one hour before they
planned the attempt.
So closed the first chapter.
In 1926, in the month of April, when I inaugurated the International
Congress of Medicine, a crazy and megalomaniac woman of English
nationality, exalted by fanaticism, came near my motor car and at
close range fired a shot that perforated my nostrils. A centimeter’s
difference and the shot might have been fatal. It was, as I said, a
mad, hysterical woman, led on by elements and persons never clearly
identified.
I abandoned her to her destiny by putting her beyond the frontier,
where she could meditate on her failure and her folly.
Just after the occurrence, before my nose was out of its dressings, I
was speaking to a meeting of officials from all parts of Italy. I felt
impelled to say, “If I go forward, follow me; if I recoil, kill me; if
I die, avenge me!”
Another attempt which might have had grave results was that of an
anarchist, called Lucetti, who had come back from France with his soul
full of hate and envy against Fascism and against me. He waited for me
in the light and large Via Nomentana, in front of Porta Pia. He was
able to meditate his crime in silence. He had been eight days in Rome
and carried powerful bombs. Lucetti recognized my car, while I was
going to the Palazzo Chigi, and as soon as he saw it he hurled at
me the infernal machine, which hit an angle of the car and bounced back
on the ground, exploding there after I had passed. I was not wounded,
but innocent people were hurt and taken to the hospital.
When arrested, the miserable man could justify his crazy act only by
his anti-Fascist hate. I did not attach a great importance to the
episode. Having to meet the English ambassador, I went directly to the
Palazzo Chigi and the conversation with the foreign diplomat continued
calmly enough until a great popular demonstration in the streets
interrupted us. Only then the English ambassador, somewhat amazed,
learned of the attempt against my life.
The last attempt was made on October 31st, 1926. It was in Bologna,
after I had lived a day full of life, enthusiasm and pride.
A young anarchist, egged on by secret plotters, at a moment when the
whole population was lined up for the salute, came out from the ranks
and fired a gun at my car. I was sitting near the “Podesta” of Bologna,
Arpinati. The shot burned my coat, but again I was quite safe. The
crowd, in the meanwhile, seized by an impulse of exasperated fury,
could not be restrained. It administered summary justice to the man.
Other attempts were baffled. The exasperation was now surpassing
any limit. I understood that it was time to stop the doleful game
of the adversaries. The secret societies, the opposition press, and
deceitful political cults had only one aim: it was to hit the chief of
Fascism, so that all Fascism should be hit. The entire movement
that dominated Italy they believed turned on one pivot, on a name, on
a lone man. All the adversaries, from the most hateful ones to the
most intelligent, from the slyest ones to the most fanatical, thought
that the only way of destroying Fascism was to destroy its chief. The
people themselves perceived this and demanded grave punishments for the
criminals. The exasperated Fascists wanted to admonish all those who
were conspiring in the darkness.
A policy of force was absolutely necessary. I took over the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, and launched the laws for the defense of the régime,
laws which were to constitute the one essential basis for the new
unified national life.
I abolished the subversive press, whose only function was to inflame
men’s minds. Provincial commissions sent to confinement professional
subversives. Not a day goes by that we do not feel in Italian life how
much good has been wrought by these measures against the forces of
disintegration, disorder and disloyalty.
I must then conclude that a strong policy has yielded really tangible
results. Every day the country feels intensely the identification of
Fascism with the vital strength of the nation. Nobody suffers ostracism
in Italy; everybody is allowed to live under the definite régime of
law. Many elements of the old popular subversives understand now to
what extent a well regulated life is a benefit, not only for one class,
but for every class of the Italian people. Few are those who are still
confined, and few are those who intend to disobey. As Minister
of the Interior, I distributed a circular on January 6th, 1927, to
the Prefects, in which I pointed out what their duty in regard to the
population must be.
A new sense of justice, of serious purpose, of harmony and concord
guides now the destinies of all the peoples and classes of Italy. There
are neither vexations nor violence, but there is exaltation of what is
good and exaltation of the virtue of heroism. In every class, among all
citizens, nothing is done against the state, nothing is done outside
the state.
Many have finally opened their eyes to this serene and severe truth;
the Italians feel themselves of one fraternity in a great work of
justice. The sense of duty, the necessity of action, the manner of
civil life mark now an intense reawakening. The old parties are forever
dead. In Fascism politics is fused into a living moral reality; it is a
faith. It is one of those spiritual forces which renovates the history
of great and enduring peoples.
CHAPTER XI
NEW PATHS
When one watches the building of new structures, when hammers and
concrete mixers flash and turn, the occasion is not one for asking
the superintendent his opinion about the plays of Bernard Shaw or
for expecting the architect to babble discursively on the subject
of his preferences between the mountains and the seashore as summer
playgrounds.
It is absurd to suppose that I and my life can be separated from that
which I have been doing and am doing. The creation of the Fascist
state and the passing of the hungry moments from sunrise to the deep
profundity of night with its promise of another dawn eager for new
labors, cannot be picked apart. I am lock-stitched into this fabric.
It and myself are woven into one. Other men may find romance in the
fluttering of the leaves on a bough; as for me, whatever I might have
been, destiny and my own self have made me one whose eyes, ears, whose
every sense, every thought, whose entire time, entire energy must be
directed at the trunk of the tree of public life.
The poetry of my life has become the poetry of construction. The
romance in my existence has become the romance of measures,
policies, and the future of a state. These to me are redolent with
drama.
So it is that as I look back over nearly six years of leadership I see
the solution of problems, each of which is a chapter in my life and a
chapter in the life of my country. A chapter, long or short, simple
or complex, in the history of the advance and experimentation and
pioneering of mankind.
I am not deeply concerned at being misunderstood. It is more or less
trivial that conspiracies go on to misinterpret and, indeed, entirely
to misrepresent what I have sought and why I have sought it. After all,
I have been too busy to hear the murmurs of liars.
He who looks back over his shoulder toward those who lag and those who
lie is a waster; it is because I cannot write my life—my daily life,
my active life, my thinking life and even my own peculiar, emotional
life—without recording the steps I have taken to renew Italy and find a
new place for her in the general march of civilization, that I call up
one after another the recollection of my recent battles over measures
which submerge men, over policies which bury, under their simplicity
and weight, everything else I might have lived.
Two fields of my will and action, of my thoughts and my conclusions,
stand out as I write and as I record my life itself.
I think of all of them in terms of utter simplicity, stripped of
complex phrases. I have seen the futility of those who endlessly speak
streams of words. These words are like armies enlisted to go away
forever into the night, never to return from a campaign in which
the enemies are compromise of principle, and cowardice, inaction, and
idealism without realism.
There are those, no doubt, who regard me or have once regarded me as an
enemy to the peace of the world. To them there is nothing to say unless
it be to recommend my autobiography to them for careful reading. The
record of facts is worth more than the accusation of fools.
From the first, I wanted to renovate from bottom to top the foreign
policy of Italy. Let it be remembered that I was fully conscious
always of the history and the economic and spiritual possibilities
of my country in its relation to the world. Such a renovation, such
a remaking of policy, was absolutely new for us. It was destined to
meet serious preconceptions and misconceptions before it would be
clearly understood and appreciated, not only by Italians, but by those
responsible for the foreign policies of various nations.
I was fully aware that a new spirit, one of new austerity and dignity,
imposed by me to govern every large and small action of my ministry,
might create the impression that I wanted to fight to a finish old
international political tradition, organization, and existing alliances
and the status quo.
What an error! To inaugurate a firm stand does not mean to
revolutionize the course of international dealings. To demand a
better appraisal of Italy, in accordance with a correct audit of
our possibilities as a powerful and prolific nation, was only to
re-establish our rightful position.
My problem was to open the eyes of the responsible elements in the
various European governments and chanceries. They had gone on rather
blindly considering Italy to be in its unstable position after the war.
To open these eyes, sometimes with vigorous calls for attention,
was not always easy. I spent months and years in bringing about a
realization abroad that Italy’s foreign policy had no tricks in it. It
was always straightforward, and swerved not. It was always vigilant.
It was based on an accurate appraisal of facts, squarely faced, and it
demanded equally that others should face facts. This understanding has
contributed, naturally, to bringing Italy higher on the horizon of the
world’s eternal dawn of new events.
A speech on foreign policy delivered by me in the Italian senate in
the spring of 1928 reviewed our entire national and international
situation, and the part that Italy has played in the many little or
great events of world life. It set forth a clear review of my work. It
summarized the concrete success won by my ministry. It brought out that
we had correctly insisted upon new appraisals of Italy’s part in the
world.
But, before this concrete and tangible result was reached, let no one
believe that the steps were light and easy. I knew well enough how many
would look toward Rome with suspicion, as if it were an irresponsible
centre of disturbance. Enemies of our country and of Fascism tried
in every way in their power to strengthen, by bad faith, by twisted
interpretations, and by false news, all the errors in foreign judgments
of what I was trying to do.
But truth usually comes along behind any simple, clear policy and
overcomes the obliquity, the conventional mentality, the spirit of
opportunism, and the lie-barking of the yesterdays.
There is no country in the world in which foreign policy, though
carefully carved out and approved by the nation, is not subject to
internal attack based on ignorance or bad faith. Therefore it was
no surprise to me to find that even when I had calmed the internal
political situation and had established for us the main points of the
general policy of Italy within and without, there were those who began
an offensive of criticism.
One of them was Count Sforza, who in October, 1922, was in Paris as
Italian ambassador.
This man, loquacious and irresponsible as a minister in the past
governments, had been a nuisance to the country. He had linked his name
with the Adriatic situation, humiliating for our nation. This former
minister, an amateur in everything that concerned any perplexity of
foreign policy, showed himself so vain that he could not sense the
delicacy of his position in Paris. While in Italy events of historic
character were maturing, homesickness for lost power made him a bad
servant of his own country. He even went to the point of trying to
create difficulties for the Fascist government in the French capital.
Already political groups there were unfavorable to if not envious of,
any new solidarity in Italy. Count Sforza at once began to criticise
openly my declaration on foreign and internal policy, my political
method and my concept of Fascist Italy. I sent him a telegram, and this
is what I said:
“I must interpret as a not quite amiable and rather an awkward
gesture, your decision to hand in your resignation before having
officially known my orders as to foreign policy, which I will disclose
in the Chamber of Parliament; orders that will not be merely a sum
of sentiments and resentments, as you wrongly think. I bid you now
formally to keep your place and not create difficulties for the
Government. In this moment, the Government represents the highest
expression of the national conscience. I am waiting for a telegraphic
answer and I reserve my later decision as to you.
Mussolini.”
To this telegram Count Sforza made an elusive answer. So I called him
to Rome and after some explanations which revealed our two minds to be
in complete antithesis, I relieved him of office and dismissed him from
his place. It was time that the central authority should no longer be
debated by those who occupied inferior positions. Italian political
life needs command and organization and discipline. Our representatives
abroad were sometimes shown to have a cold, isolated, autonomous life,
far removed from their primary duties toward their country.
This first strong gesture of mine was a clear signal; it undoubtedly
served as an example and admonition for many others of our diplomatic
representatives, who tried to withdraw themselves, with subjective
attitudes, beyond the supreme authority of the state.
Having closed this breach in our diplomacy I dedicated all my energies
to the solution of those political problems which would determine
our future. I found facing me a situation already distorted and
prejudiced by the crass errors of preceding governments. I found
a series of peace treaties which, though in some respects full of
defects, nevertheless constituted as a whole an unavoidable state of
fact squarely to be met.
Still palpitating and open in Italy was the wound of the Rapallo
treaty with Jugoslavia. I wanted to medicate that and heal it. On the
delicate ground of treaties I explained my position and suggestions
in a speech about foreign policy delivered in the chamber, November
16th, 1922. I said then, as I always say, that “treaties, whether bad
or good, must be carried out. A respectable nation can have no other
programme. But treaties are neither eternal nor irreparable. They are
chapters of history, not epilogues of history.” Speaking of foreign
policy in relation to the different groups of powers, I summarized my
thoughts with this definition: “We cannot allow ourselves either a plan
of insane altruism or one of complete subservience to the plans of the
other peoples. Ours is then a policy of autonomy. It shall be firm and
severe.”
In November, 1922, I met, at Lausanne, Poincaré of France and Curzon
of Great Britain. Let it be said that I re-established then and there,
on my first personal contact with the Allies, our equality. There were
some clear and precise interviews; some went on to a rather vivacious
tune!
For the time had come for Italy, with its record of sacrifice and with
the weight of its history, to enter into an equality of standing
in discussions of an international nature side by side with England and
France.
During my brief stay at Lausanne I held conferences also with the
Foreign Minister of Rumania and with Mr. Richard Washburn Child,
Ambassador of the United States in Rome, and chief of the United States
delegation at the Conference. I eliminated also the question of the
Dodecannes.
To sum up my trip to Switzerland; these were the results:
First, we made clear to foreign diplomats the new prestige of Italy.
Second, we gave examples of our new style in foreign policy at the
moment of initiating a direct contact between myself and responsible
diplomats of the world.
In December of that year, I made other important declarations to the
council of the ministers about our foreign affairs. I examined again
the Treaty of Rapallo. I began a solution of the problems of Fiume and
Dalmatia, making that solution fit in with the situation created by
the preceding treaties to which I had fallen heir. For the second time
I met Lord Curzon, and then I went on to London, where I stayed for
several days. On that occasion I was received with the most generous
hospitality and found that I was listened to with respect by the
English political world.
Already the question of the Allies’ debts was on the table. I had
discussed this with Mr. Child and with the British ambassador in Rome.
I had a plan that I do not hesitate to claim was one of the most
efficacious for the solution of that problem. My plan aroused a
certain interest among the Allies, but some divergencies of a secondary
character, and particularly the design of France to occupy the Ruhr,
killed that which in my opinion was the most logical solution of the
debt question, combined with the problem of the German reparations.
It was a solution which might have permitted a quick and powerful
restoration of world economy.
Always before me in my foreign policy is the economic aspect of
international problems. That was why in 1923 I concluded a series of
commercial treaties, with a political background, with a number of
nations. It amuses me to be called an anti-pacifist, in the light
of our record of treaty-making for peace and for fair international
dealings.
These commercial treaties were very helpful in settling our economic
position. In February of 1923 I signed the Italian-Swiss treaty,
concluded in Zurich; I ratified the Washington treaty for the
limitation of naval armaments. Other commercial treaties were concluded
with Czechoslovakia, with Poland, with Spain, and, finally, with
France. I took the first steps to renew commercial relations with
Soviet Russia.
Our record in international affairs discloses a sleepless vigilance
to build peace and make friends. More peace, more friends. We yield
nothing of our autonomy, nor do we allow our power to be used as a pawn
by others. We are idealists in the sense that we endeavor to make and
keep peace by building and maintaining, brick by brick, stone by stone,
a structure of peace founded on realities rather than on dreams
and visionary plans. I have insisted upon being strong, but I have
labored to be generous.
For an efficient foreign service, the world requires some housecleaning
in its diplomatic machinery, which has grown stale, over-manned, and
bureaucratic, and filled with feeble, petty conspiracies to gain place
and promotion.
I then began, in the reorganization of our consulates, an elimination
of foreign functionaries. That work was long and wide-spread, because
it was necessary to rebuild our old consular organization. The
renovation, complex as were its problems, was completed with unswerving
insistence.
In the midst of this complex task of foreign policy and machinery,
and while I was studying the solution of the Adriatic problem, there
came the news that the Italian military mission in Albania had been
treacherously ambushed on a road and massacred in its entirety by
bandits from the border. In this tragic happening there were wiped out
brave General Enrico Tellini, Surgeon-Major Luigi Corte, Artillery
Lieutenant Mario Bonacini, and a soldier, Farneti. The Italian military
mission was in Albania, together with other foreign missions, with a
well-defined task, laid out by definite international agreements. The
offense to Italy and to the Italian name hit the sensibilities of Italy
squarely in the face. History furnishes other examples of such outrages
and points to accepted standards. I made myself the interpreter of
the righteous wrath of Italians everywhere. I at once sent an
ultimatum to Greece.
I demanded an apology. I demanded payment of fifty million lire as
indemnity.
Greece turned to us a deaf ear. Pretexts and excuses met my request.
There was an attempt by Greece to find allies to aid her to slide away
from my demands. I would not play that base game. Without hesitation I
sent units of our naval squadron to the Greek island of Corfu. There
the Italian marines landed. At the same time I sent a note to the
powers. The League of Nations declared itself incompetent to judge and
solve the incident. I continued the occupation of Corfu, declaring
clearly that Italy would withdraw from the League if we could not
obtain there a satisfactory attitude. This was not a mere matter
of insult by words; it concerned the lives of Italian officers and
soldiers. It was impossible to believe that I could allow this tragic
page to be turned over with nothing more than some bureaucratic gesture.
There has been so much misrepresentation and nonsense as to this
outrage and the settlement of our demands that I may do well to state
the simple facts, which any school child can understand and digest.
The case, when brought for judgment to the Conference of the
Ambassadors, received, as was to be expected, a verdict favorable to
the Italian position.
Greece gave me all the satisfaction that I had asked. The indemnity was
paid. I offered ten millions of this indemnity to the Greek refugees.
Thereafter, having obtained full satisfaction, I recalled the
squadron from Corfu. The book was closed.
But that month was indeed one of tragic happenings. The new Fascist
style of foreign policy had satisfied the sensibility of all the
Italians, but I admit that it had hurt the feelings of many foreign
elements which saw in my foreign policy something out of the ordinary,
disturbing to many and preventing plans opposed to the rights of Italy.
I allowed nothing to deflect me. I made important declarations to the
senate, both as to the Greek incident and on the question of Fiume. I
said then that the most painful inheritance of our foreign policy was
Fiume, but that nevertheless I was treating with Jugoslavia to solve,
with the slightest possible damage, the very grave Adriatic situation
inherited as a consequence of the Treaty of Rapallo.
The senate approved my policies and my acts.
In January, 1924, I was able at last to conclude with Pasic, the great
Serb statesman, and with Nincic, the Jugoslav minister, a new treaty
between Italy and our neighbor. As a consequence of this treaty Fiume
became Italian. Other moves, continued in 1925, brought to signature
the Nettuno Conventions, which regulated all the relations of good
neighborliness between the two states. It remains for Jugoslavia to
ratify.
At the end of all this diplomatic work on a wide field we definitely
lost Dalmatia, we lost cities sacred to Italy by the history and the
very soul of the populations which live in them. These had been assured
us by the pact of London. No better settlement was possible than
the one that I, with the good-will and the eagerness that I and
Pasic and Nincic put into the negotiations, was able to draw up.
Though there is yet no Jugoslavian ratification of the Nettuno
Conventions, our borders are well guarded and sure. Jugoslavia may show
its good will; in any case we now can look calmly into the eyes of our
troubled neighbor.
The foreign programme in 1924 obtained in the senate three hundred
and fifteen favorable votes against six, with twenty-six absent.
In December of that same year I had an interview with Chamberlain,
new Foreign Minister of the British Empire. In the many events of
international character I have always found him a friend of Italy and
of Italians.
In 1925 I had to undergo a lively struggle with the government of
Afghanistan. In the capital of that distant country one of our
countrymen, an engineer, Piperno, who had gone there to work and study,
had been slain, as a consequence of some events of internal character.
The Afghan government refused to pay an indemnity to the family of
Piperno. I had to send something of a demand. Though it was a definite
claim for satisfaction, I did not close the door on the resumption
of good friendship with the distant state, and indeed, the King of
Afghanistan later had in Rome the warmest and most sympathetic of
receptions.
The clouds come and pass away, and new clouds come into our skies. A
new cloud showed in the anti-Italian propaganda, laid down by Germans
in the region of our eastern border. In February, 1926, when the
Fascist policy had made its justice, its weight and strength felt in
the mixed-population zone of the High Adige, I had to speak clearly
as to the problem of our relations with those Germans behind the
Brenner Pass. I made two straight-from-the-shoulder speeches that
shook many a timid and selfconscious plotter or sentimentalist. These
are not practised in the habits of a school of courage and strength.
I dismissed on that occasion another ambassador, Bosdari, who, at the
centre of an event as significant as was this, one concerning deeply
the relations between the Italian and the German people, was not able
to behave as we might expect an ambassador of a power like Italy to
behave.
The frank speech that I made on that occasion—it was cut from the same
cloth as that I used in similar circumstances against the policy of
Seipel, Premier of Austria—undoubtedly cleared our relations with the
German population behind the borders.
This question of the High Adige, however, was framed in a wide vision
of our relations with all other states. It was just at that time that I
had a series of important interviews with the Bulgarian, Polish, Greek,
Turkish and Rumanian foreign ministers.
Thanks then to this intense political rhythm, Rome became every
day more and more a centre of attraction for important political
activities and political exchange. The loyal character of my foreign
policy, followed and appreciated by all Italians, has given Italy more
consideration from other nations. A loyal policy is the one which
scores the greatest success. Ambiguities and vagueness are not in my
temperament, and consequently they are strangers to any policy of mine.
I feel that I can speak with firmness and dignity, because I have
behind me a people who, having fulfilled their duties, now have sacred
rights to defend and for which to demand respect.
I have sent forth messages of brotherhood and faith to the Italians who
live beyond our borders; I did not give them the name of emigrants,
because in the past this word has had a humiliating meaning, and it
seemed in some way to imply an inferior category of men and women. I
have been able, I am glad to say, to protect my countrymen without
wounding the susceptibilities of other peoples. This protection is
founded on international law and on good sense in all exchanges between
nations.
Italy on its part has accorded the greatest hospitality to all those
who for business, for religious faith, for pleasure, or even for
curiosity have wanted to visit our soil. I have taught Italians to
show appropriate respect for foreign representatives in our country;
it is never admissible, in fact, for diplomatic controversies to be
twisted or troubled by angry popular demonstrations against embassies
or consulates. Such disorders belong to an old democratic habit which
Fascism has clearly outgrown. There have been delicate moments in
Italian affairs during which resentment and protest might easily have
been exhibited. I have always held these protests within the limits
of Fascist dignity, though often they have been exaggerated in
the foreign press. This is no slight undertaking, even for one who has
imposed upon himself the task of giving order and discipline to the
Italian people.
The foreign policy of Italy as directed by me has been simple,
understandable, and rests on these main points:
First, mine is a policy of peace. It is founded not upon words,
gestures, and mere paper transactions, but comes from an elevated
national prestige and from a whole network of agreements and treaties
which cement harmony between peoples.
Second, I have not made any specific alliances with the great powers.
Instead, I have negotiated a series of treaties which show a clear and
decisive will to assure to Italy a prosperity in its relations with all
nations, especially with those of great historical importance, such as
England.
Nor have I failed to work out a whole series of treaties with minor
powers, so that Italian influence could have its part in general
progress. Albania is one case. Hungary and Turkey are others. To assure
harmony on the Mediterranean, I have established accord with Spain;
to make possible a greater development of our industries and of our
foreign trade, I resumed independent commercial relations with Russia.
Stupid indeed are those who fail to see that I have taken a serene,
respectful attitude, but not a humble one. The League of Nations and
some of the diplomacy inspired by the Locarno treaty are witnesses of
that. I made reservations, after meditated discussions, and because
of my well-grounded beliefs regarding the disarmament pacts, I
noticed some absurdities in them.
I have bettered and completed the consular organization and I have put
in it a series of new men born with and grown out of Fascism. They have
suffered the passion of the war and the passion of our rebirth. In the
meantime I did not fail to bring Fascism also to our colonies, I wanted
to extend the standards which demanded discipline and insured full
harmony for all Italian initiatives. These must be concentrated from
now on in the representatives of our policies.
A sense of new life and pride fills not only the Italians in Italy,
but all our countrymen scattered about the world. Italy now enjoys the
respect of those nations which evolve and put into effect world policy.
My colonial policy has simple affinity with my foreign policy. Even
taking into consideration the virtues of our colonizing peoples,
even remembering all the fine human material we have given for the
development of entire regions of the African and American worlds,
before the war and after, we had failed to realize the potential
possibilities of our colonial programme. We had failed to bring it to
vigor and fruitfulness.
We missed then that legitimate satisfaction which should have come to
us as of right and from duty fulfilled during and after the war.
Colonial development would not have been for us merely a logical
consequence of our population problem, but would have provided a
formula for the solution of our economic situation. Even now, at this
distance of ten years from the war, this problem has still to
find its full solution. Our colonies are few, and not all open to
extensive improvement. Eritrea, which is the first of our colonies,
has not undergone any change. Somaliland has been augmented by British
Giubaland, following a diplomatic accord.
Lately, thanks to the wise policies of Governor De Vecchi, we have
pacified all Somaliland, and considerable Italian capital is moving
toward that colony of ours, to be used for definite objects and to
provide work for Italian labor. The Libian colony—which includes
Cirenaica and Tripolitania—was reduced during the war to the occupation
of the coast and some of the principal cities. Fascism, on assuming
power, found grave conditions. These also have been cleared up. Our
policy of military occupation, and of course of economic penetration,
has assured us the full and uncontested domination of Cirenaica as far
as Giarabub, and of Tripolitania as far as the border recognized by
treaties of international character.
There is a great fervor of rebirth in both colonies. Tripoli has become
one of the most beautiful Mediterranean cities. A congress of medical
men has adjudged it a health resort. We have found water for the city
and water in the hills for irrigation. I made a visit to the zone of
Tripoli, and that gave me a conviction as to all the possibilities for
improvements that can be extended to the entire colony. There are zones
in Garian which can compete in production and fertility with the better
zones of southern Italy. The same can be said about the high
plain of Cirenaica. In this last region I have abolished a curious
form of parliament created by the weakness of our former governments.
Now the governors enjoy complete influence and complete responsibility
for the welfare of nations and Italians. These regions are pacified.
Immigration continues to go there. Capital goes; laborers go.
These two colonies alone cannot solve our population problem. Mark this
well. But with good-will and with the help of the typical colonizing
qualities of Italians, we can give value to two regions which once
were owned by Rome and which must grow to the greatness of their past
and contribute to the new and greatly expanding possibilities of our
general economic progress.
Into these labors to rebuild Italy’s peaceful position before the
world, and to develop as duty dictates every colonial possibility which
may help to solve our population problems, I have put my days and some
of my sleepless nights. But it would be absurd to suppose that life
was quite so easy for me as to allow me to stop with international and
colonial questions.
Let us turn to the amazing and dramatic financial situation.
A leader of the Liberal party in parliament, Peano, six months before
the March on Rome, had defined the deficit of our budget by a figure of
more than six billions!
The financial situation was then, according even to the declaration of
our opponents, desperately serious. I knew what a difficult inheritance
I had received. It had come down to me as a legacy from the
errors and weaknesses of those who had preceded me. In fact, I fully
understood that with such an important leak in the hull of the Ship of
State, any great voyage of progress would be impossible. Finance, then,
was one of the most delicate and urgent problems to be solved, if I
wanted to rebuild and elevate our credit abroad and at home.
There were many demands due and waiting; necessity had turned the
printing presses to the production of new paper-money, driving down
and down the value of Italian currency. An irresponsible and demagogic
policy had been followed, which had brought about complex makeshifts.
These not only affected the soundness of the budget, but also were
undermining all our economic life and the whole efficiency of the state.
I had to deal a smashing blow to useless expenditures, and to those who
sought tribute from the treasury. I had to rake up tax-slackers. I had
to establish severest economy in every branch of state administration.
I had to put a brake on the endless increase of employees. Furthermore,
the obligation of settling our debts to foreign powers was staring me
in the face. Even if our resources were limited, this supreme act of
wisdom and honesty had to be performed.
It goes without discussion that for states as for individual citizens,
when a debt has been signed and acknowledged it must be paid, and faith
must be kept as to obligations undertaken.
For this work I picked a capable man; I appointed as Minister of
Finance the Honorable De Stefani, a Fascist and a Doctor of
Political Economy. He was able to curtail expenses, repress abuses, and
create new sources of revenue and taxes; in this way the budget was
almost balanced within two years.
I demobolized all the economic organization left over from war time; I
eliminated the useless bureaucracy of the new provinces, still burdened
by the debts and indemnities of war. I settled all these with an issue
of bonds, quickly subscribed.
Before launching a policy of severe economy, I wanted to do full
justice to the invalids of the war. I fixed, with special privileges
and without regard to economy, the obligations that the state was to
assume in their favor and in favor of the orphans and widows of those
who had died in battle. After having repaired in this way a cruel
wrong, and fulfilled a duty toward those who had given their life and
their blood to the country, it was easy for me to strike at certain
forms of exaggerated and sudden wealth derived from war profits. There
is no doubt that I have been very harsh in this matter. But why not?
These unjust pocketbook privileges represented an offense against those
who had suffered for the war, suffered not only in misery or death, but
also in loss of money and property.
While striving to eliminate all that burdened the economy and finance
of the state, I tried to promote individual production to the greatest
degree. I had to respect honestly accumulated wealth, and make
everybody understand the value, not only economic but also moral, of
inheritance transmittable in families. Because of this, though I
had approved a tax reform of great importance, I restored many basic
rights, such as the right of succession.
It was made clear that I would never approve subjecting inheritance
to a taxation which had almost assumed a socialistic character of
expropriation. Interference with succession strikes a blow at the
institution of the family. I aroused controversies, but at last my
decision was understood and accepted by the people.
Who knows better than I that the discipline displayed by the Italian
people has been worthy of my admiration and of the respect of the
world. We have no great natural resources. Nevertheless our citizens
subjected themselves to the pressure of taxation so thoroughly that
toward the end of 1924 minister De Stefani was able not only to
announce to the chamber the balancing of our budget, but also to
foresee a surplus of one hundred and seventy millions for the fiscal
year 1925–26.
I consider that the corner-stone of all governmental policies is a wise
and strong financial policy. And now, supported by the soundness of the
budget, this policy was an accomplished fact. The state, through able
administration and the disciplined patience of Italian taxpayers, was
able to face all its obligations, to liquidate its liabilities and,
in 1925 and 1926, to discuss with Washington and London the complex
problems of war debts.
We were out of the hole.
We did not stop with the central government. The state, now
self-assured, with its finances reordered, was able, by the
strength of its example, to give precise rules for the restoration of
the finances of the self-governing units in communes and provinces.
But even that was not enough; we had to review the financial situation
of many a corporation and industry. Generally, this included all those
industries which were quoted on the stock exchange.
By one of those phenomena of national and international speculations,
which are not infrequent in modern life, many of our industrial stocks
and even government bonds had risen to figures which were hyperbolical
and inconceivable, if one considered the relation that should exist
between the value of our lira and its purchasing power in regard to
gold.
Even in Italy, a wise and honest country, in which excessive
speculation was never rampant, and in which the stock exchange was
never the object of excessive and unchecked interest from any class
of citizens, there arose a madness for stock exchange gambling. Many
people, naturally, lost their heads. They shattered patrimonies, caused
scandals, provoked bankruptcies; but this was not sufficient to stop
the sudden craze for speculation. The Minister of Finance then decided
to take steps to watch and to limit the activities of the exchanges.
It was necessary to take really serious measures, which of course
would run counter to old and rooted business traditions. Perhaps
they were too sudden and too unexpected. They provoked in the middle
and financial class an opposition which created a disturbance in all
markets.
I was following the course of these events. This sudden opposition
created by economic and not by political causes might, as was shown
afterward, become a real danger, but it gave me a very important field
for experience and observations. I brought a counter offensive and
tamed those who made the attacks. A more rational policy was instituted
but we conceded nothing to the speculators. After a while De Stefani
resigned. Volpi succeeded him. In the meantime, after this first
difficulty had been dealt with, I concentrated my attention on the war
debts.
After settling the state budget and balancing it, I knew that I had
come to the task of making an agreement with the United States of
America and with England on the reduction of our war debt. I sent
a delegation to Washington. The leaders were Count Volpi and the
Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Grandi. I feel that the negotiations
were carried on with great ability. We arrived, I believe, at an
agreement that satisfied the American public and safeguarded the
interests of Italy.
On January 27th, 1926, by an analogous agreement, with slight
modifications due to the different relations that existed between us
and England, we were able to settle also our English debts. America and
England ratified the agreements; and so did we, with pride, because it
is our constant, firm rule, in all our private or public affairs, to
keep faith with our given word and to pay to our full ability the last
cent we owe, without wailing or complaint.
Then came a gesture of spontaneous national patriotism: our people
by public subscription and without the help of the state paid the first
installment due the government of the United States!
I believed then that the security of the budget and the agreements of
Washington and London would be sufficient evidence to reassure our
industrial, commercial and banking classes as to the soundness of the
financial policy of the government. I hoped that it would lead to a
gradual revaluation of all our currency and credit in national and
international markets.
Unfortunately, all which appeared to me to grow out of convincing
logic did not follow. In the first six months of 1926, we were losing
an average of ten points in relation to the pound. The pound sterling
naturally was towing all the other privileged currencies in such a way
that, at a time when our credit should have been on the upgrade, we
were witnessing an opposite phenomenon. Our private economic life was
getting thinner and less stable; it was becoming fickle and inconstant,
through a gradual inflation which might delude many industrial centres
of northern Italy, but was certainly not satisfying to the middle class
and to the Italians who saved money.
It was necessary to give a point of support to this gay finance. It was
inconceivable that an orderly, quiet, disciplined state, which had no
public agitation as a liability and which worked with tenacity, faith
and pride, should abandon these wholesome forces and assets to the
mercy of shark speculators and parasites, eager to enrich themselves on
the depreciation of the lira, ready to accept willingly or even to
quicken a general bankruptcy so as not to be obliged to settle their
private debts, or to face their obligations toward depositors in their
banks. A betrayal of the Italian people was being plotted by a class
of unworthy citizens. It was a serious betrayal and an injury to moral
character, because a ruined people cannot readily be born again in the
credit of the world.
I studied for a long time the complex phenomenon of state, private, and
individual finance. I was making a comparison between our own economic
phase and the situation of analogous countries. I was watching closely
the statistical data of our commercial balance. I had in my hand all
the evidence for a sure and positive judgment, and was ready to say the
word which would influence, in a clear and decisive way, the economic
life of Italy.
Thus it happened that in August, 1926, in a square of a beautiful town
of central Italy at Pesaro, I made a speech which was to become famous
and which was destined to mark the beginning of the revaluation of the
lira and our starting-point toward a gold basis.
I had decided for some time to speak out with candor to the Italian
people. Foreign exchange had revealed a weakness in our credit abroad.
Instability every day, under a régime of giddy and disastrous finance,
was a sign of underground work. I had to put speculation back to the
wall with a slam. I had to face and defeat that part of a certain class
who would have pushed the nation toward bankruptcy. The government
could not ignore them or their machinations. It was not only a
matter touching the financial future of the country; the very flag
of the Italian people was being jeopardized. In fact, in certain
situations, even the soundness of a currency can assume the dignity of
a flag and must be defended by every open means. One cannot entrench
oneself behind ignorance when the patrimony and the dignity of an
entire people is being threatened.
Fascism, which had put discipline into the nation, had to put its firm
hand on that class of short-sighted speculators who wanted to bring
to nothing the value of our currency. Fascism, which had won on the
political line, now faced, as I could well see, a defeat if it did not
intervene energetically in the financial field.
In this plot against us were joined all the strength of the
international anti-Fascists spurred and aroused by our eternal foes,
inside Italy and out. I understood that combined with this problem of
honesty and rectitude, there was also a problem of will. So I spoke.
Here is the essence of my speech:
You must not be surprised if I make a political declaration of
definite importance. It is not the first time that I have addressed to
the people directly, without any official apparatus, my convictions
and my decisions. I must always be trusted, but especially when I
am speaking to the people, looking into its eyes and listening to
the beating of its heart. I am speaking to you, but in this moment
I am speaking to all Italians and my voice for obvious reasons will
certainly have an echo behind the Alps, and overseas. Let me tell
you that I will defend the Italian lira to the last gasp! I will
never subject the marvellous Italian people, which for four
years has worked with ascetic discipline, and is ready for other and
harder sacrifices, to the moral shame and economic catastrophe of the
bankruptcy of the lira.
The Fascist régime will resist with all its strength the attempts
to suffocate Italy being made by inimical financial forces. We will
squash them as soon as they are identified at home. The lira, which
is the sign of our economic life, the symbol of our long sacrifices
and of our tenacious work, will be defended and it will be firmly
defended—and at any cost! When I go among a people that really works,
I feel that in speaking this way I interpret sincerely its sentiment,
its hopes, and its will.
Citizens and Black Shirts! I have already pronounced the most
important part of my speech, destined to dissipate the fogs of
uncertainty and to weaken the eventual attempts of troublesome
defeatism.
My sentences were like whip-lashes for all the speculators hidden in
the bourses. The great financial institutions understood that it was
not possible to adopt independent policies without having to reckon
with the government. Speculators perceived that they had fallen into a
trap.
On the other hand, I did not want to confine myself to words. In the
council of the ministers on September first, I adopted measures which
were to guarantee my financial policies. These measures can be summed
up: transfer of the Morgan loan of ninety millions of dollars to the
Bank of Italy; regularization of the accounts between the state and the
Bank of Italy; reduction of two billion, five hundred millions of the
circulation on account of the state; liquidation of the autonomistic
section of the Consorzio Valori.
To all this was to be added a broad simplification of taxation
with abolition of certain taxes and a new form of protection for thrift
and for banking activities.
In November I floated a loan that I called “The Littorio.” It was
intended to facilitate cash operations and to give some elasticity to
the budget. Since there was a very heavy floating debt, represented
by treasury bonds, I decided upon redemption of these bonds and their
inscription in the great book of the public debt. These provisions
had without doubt a harsh character; they were full of sacrifice. But
when the moment and its discomfort had passed, we were able to start
on a policy of wise severity; our lira began to climb gradually on the
markets of London and Washington and our credit rose again in every
part of the world.
To be sure, the passage from a giddy to an austere finance which I had
inaugurated with the Pesaro speech was not without its difficulties.
Failures and heavy losses were brought about. Business deals begun
while the lira was at one hundred and thirty to the pound were closed
with the lira at ninety. All this brought with it unavoidable losses
which hit hardest those who were the least strong and resistant
financially.
The difficulties in returning to a position of financial dignity and
austerity were notable; reconstruction was as difficult as inflation
had been easy. We had to reduce the budget and state bonds to their
simplest expression; we had to start a policy of demobilization of our
debts to be able to know our complex financial burden and to determine
exactly the interest that had to be paid every year.
But the situation has been cleared and bettered. In order to have
a sounder, readier, more agile organization, I had decided on the
unification of all the institutions issuing paper money. Only the Bank
of Italy has the power to issue paper money; the Bank of Naples and the
Bank of Sicily returned to their original functions of guardians and
stimulators of the agricultural economic life of southern Italy.
When, after a year of notable difficulties, the financial situation
of the budget and of Italian economy had been cleared, I was able
to address myself, in 1927, to the new gold basis of the lira, on
concrete foundations. In December, 1927, at a meeting of the council of
ministers, I was able to announce to the Italian people that the lira
was back on a gold basis, on a ratio which technicians and profound
experts in financial questions have judged sound.
I felt the pride of a victor. I had not only led the Black Shirts and
political forces, but I had solved a complex and difficult problem of
national finance, such a problem as sometimes withdraws itself beyond
the will and the influence of any political man, and becomes subjected
to the tyranny and mechanism of mere material relations under the
influence of various and infinite factors. Only a profound knowledge
of the economic life and structure of a people can reach, in such an
insidious field, conclusions which will be able to satisfy the great
majority.
To-day we have a balanced budget. Self-ruling units, the provinces
and the communes, have balanced their budgets too. Exports and
imports and their relationship are carried in a precise and definite
rhythm—that of our stabilized lira. Through solidity and certainty,
Fascist Italy is creating a new Italian régime, while the necessary
complement of our general policy and the essence of our state
organization is being supplied by a new corporative system.
CHAPTER XII
THE FASCIST STATE AND THE FUTURE
Amid the innovations and experiments of the new Fascist civilization,
there is one which is of interest to the whole world; it is the
corporative organization of the state.
Let me assert at once that before we reached this form of state
organization, one which I now consider rounded out, the steps we
took were long, and our research, analysis and discussion have been
exhaustive. Both the experience and the tests have been full of lessons.
Practical reality itself has been the navigator. First of all, we
must remember that the corporative organization was not born from a
desire to create mere juridical institutions; in my opinion, it grew
out of the special necessities of the Italian situation in particular,
and out of those necessities which would be general in any situation
where there is economic restriction, and where traditions of work and
production have not yet been developed by experience and time. Italy,
in its first half-century of united political renaissance, has seen
classes armed one against the other, not only because of the desire
of one to master the other in political control but also because of
the struggle for the limited resources that our surface soil and what
was beneath it might be put at the disposition of those who were
interested in work and production.
Opposed to the directing middle class, there was another class which I
will call, for more easy reference, proletarian. It was influenced by
Socialists and anarchists, in an eternal and never-ending struggle with
the directing class.
Every year there was a general strike; every year the fertile Po
Valley, for instance, was subjected to recurring agitations which
imperiled crops and all production. Opposed to that humane sense of
harmony which should be a duty upon citizens of the same Fatherland,
there was a chronic struggle of interests, egged on by the professional
Socialists, the syndicalist organizers, a struggle against a middle
class which, in turn, persisted in its position of negation and of
expectation of a messiah. Civil life did not move a decisive step
forward on the way toward betterment.
A country like ours, which has no rich resources in the earth, which
has mountains for half of its area, cannot have great economic
possibilities. If, then, the citizens become naturally quarrelsome,
if classes have a tendency to strive to annihilate each other, civil
life can have none of that rhythm necessary for developing a modern
people. The Liberal and Democratic state, in spite of upheavals,
recurrent every year, and even at every season, held to a noncommital
stand, selecting a characteristic slogan: “Neither reaction, nor
revolution,”—as if that phrase had a precise or, indeed, any meaning
whatsoever!
It was necessary to emerge from the base, clannish habit of
class competition and to put aside hates and enmities. After the war,
especially following the subversive propaganda of Lenin, ill-will had
reached perilous proportions. Agitations and strikes usually were
accompanied by fights, with dead and wounded men as the result. The
people went back to work with souls full of hate against the class of
the masters, which, rightly or wrongly, was considered so idiotically
lacking in vision as to surpass in this regard any other middle class
in the world. Between the peasants and the rising industry of the urban
centres there were also the phenomena of unmistakable misunderstanding.
All of our life was dominated by demagogy. Every one was disposed to
tolerate, to pretend to understand, to make concessions to the violence
of the crowd. But after every incident of disorder, some new situation
promised another and even more difficult problem of conflict.
It was necessary, in my opinion, to create a political atmosphere which
would allow men in government to have some degree of courage, to speak
harsh truths, to affirm rights, only after having exacted duties, and,
if necessary, imposing these duties. Liberalism and Democracy were
only attempted remedies of milk-and-water character; they exhausted
their energies in the halls of parliament. Leading that agitation
were employees of the state, railroad men and postmen and troublesome
elements. The authority of the state was a kitten handled to death. In
such a situation, mere pity and tolerance would have been criminal.
Liberalism and Democracy, which had abdicated their duty at every
turn, failed utterly to appraise and adjust the rights and duties of
the various classes in Italian life. Fascism has done it!
The fact is that five years of harmonious work have transformed in its
very essentials the economic life and, in consequence, the political
and moral life of Italy. Let me add that the discipline that I have
imposed is not a forced discipline; it is not born from preconceived
ideas, does not obey the selfish interests of groups and of classes.
Our discipline has one vision and one end—the welfare and the good name
of the Italian nation.
The discipline that I have imposed is enlightened discipline. The
humble classes, because they are more numerous and perhaps more
deserving of solicitude, are nearest to my heart as a responsible
leader. I have seen the men from the countryside in the trenches,
and I have understood how much the nation owes to the healthy people
of calloused hands. On the other hand, our industrial workers have
qualities of sobriety, geniality, stamina, which feed the pride of
one who must rule and lead a people. The middle Italian class, too,
including the rural class, is much better than its reputation. Our
problems arise from a variety and diversity among the various economic
interests, which makes difficult the formation of great national groups
of producers. None of the Italian producing groups, however, can be
rated as “vampires,” as they were rated in the superficial terminology
of the old Socialist demagogy. The state is no longer ignorant when it
confronts facts and the interests of the various classes. Not only
does it obviate strife—it tries to find out the origins of clashes and
conflicts. By statistics and the help of studious men, we now are able
to define what will be the great issues of to-morrow. In the meantime,
with the aid not only of the government, but of the bodies locally
organized for consultation, we can know precisely what are to be the
outlines of the productive programmes of to-morrow.
I have wanted the Fascist government, above all, to give great care
to the social legislation needed to carry out our part of agreed
international programmes for industry and for those who bear the future
of industry. I think that Italy is advanced beyond all the European
nations; in fact, it has ratified the laws for the eight-hour day, for
obligatory insurance, for regulation of the work of women and children,
for assistance and benefit, for after-work diversion and adult
education, and finally for obligatory insurance against tuberculosis.
All this shows how, in every detail in the field of labor, I stand by
the Italian working classes. All that it was possible to do without
working an injury to the principle of solidity in our economy I have
set out to do, from the minimum wage to the continuity of employment,
from insurance against accidents to indemnity against illness, from
old age pensions to the proper regulation of military service. There
is little which social welfare research has adjudged practical to
national economy or wise for social happiness which has not already
been advanced by me. I want to give to every man and woman so generous
an opportunity that work will be not a painful necessity but a joy
of life. But even such a complex programme cannot be said to equal the
creation of the corporative system. Nor can the latter equal something
even larger. Beyond the corporative system, beyond the state’s labors,
is Fascism, harmonizer and dominator of Italian life, standing ever as
its inspiration.
In 1923, some months after the march on Rome, I insisted on the
ratification of the law for an eight-hour day. All the masses which had
seen a friend in the legislative policy of Fascism gave their approval
to national syndicalism. Instead of the old professional syndicates we
substituted Fascist corporations. In a meeting of December 19, 1923,
I had occasion to affirm that: “Peace within is primarily a task of
government. The government has a clear outline of conduct. Public
order must never be troubled for any reason whatsoever. That is the
political side. But there is also the economic side; it is one of
collaboration. There are other problems, such as that of exportation. I
remind Italian industry of these principles. Until now it has been too
individualistic. The old system and old ways must be abandoned.”
A little further on I said: “Over all conflicts of human and legitimate
interests, there is the authority of the government; the government
alone is in the right position to see things from the point of view
of the general welfare. This government is not at the disposition of
this man or that man; it is over everybody, because it takes to itself
not only the juridical conscience of the nation in the present,
but also all that the nation represents for the future. The government
has shown that it values at the highest the productive strength of the
nation. A government which follows these principles has the right to
be listened to by every one. It has a task to fulfill. It will do it.
It will do it inexorably for the defense of the moral and material
interests of the nation.”
Little by little, the old labor structure and associations were
abandoned. We were directed more and more toward the corporative
conception of the state. I did not want to take away from labor one of
its holidays, and so, instead of the first of May, which had foreign
origins and the imprint of Socialist internationalism, I fixed on a gay
and glorious date in Italian life, April 21st, the birthday of Rome.
Rome is the city which has given legislation to the world. The Roman
law is still the text which governs the relations of civil life. To
celebrate a Labor Day, I could not have selected a more suggestive and
worthy date.
To bring into being, in a precise co-ordination, all the measures that
I had undertaken and that Fascism and the Corporations had brought
about, in all their complexity, I had the Grand Council approve
a document. I do not hesitate to declare it to be of historical
character: it is the Labor Charter.
It is composed of thirty paragraphs, each of which contains a
fundamental truth. From the paramount necessity for production arises
the need of an equitable sharing of products, the need of the judgment
of tribunals in case of discord, and, finally, the need of
protective legislation.
That document has been welcomed by all the classes of Italy. The labor
magistracy represents, in its consecration to duty, something worthy
of a strong state, in contrast to the cloudy aspirations in the misty
realms of high-sounding Liberalism, Democracy and communistic fantasy.
The framing and realization were the tasks of Fascism. Old men of the
socialist and syndicalist poses and postures were amazed and perplexed
at the daring new reform. Another legend fell: Fascism was not the
protector of any one class, but a supreme regulator of the relations
between all citizens of a state. The Labor Charter found interpreters
and attracted the attention of the studious in every part of the world.
It became a formidable pillar of the new constitution of the Fascist
State.
As a logical consequence of the Charter of Labor and of all the social
legislation and of the magistracy of labor, came the necessity of
instituting the Corporations. In this institution are concentrated
all the branches of national production. Work in all its complex
manifestations and in all its breadth, whether of manual or of
intellectual nature, requires equally protection and nourishment. The
citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has
the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.
The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their
possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties
they have to fulfil.
In this new conception, which has found its logical expression
in our representative forms, the citizen is valuable because of his
productivity, his work and his thought, and not merely because he is
twenty-one years old and has the right to vote!
In the corporative state all national activities are reflected. It was
logical that syndicalistic organizations should become a part also of
the new representative institutions. From this need, imposed by a new
political and social reality, arose the reform of national political
representation. Not only does the new political directorate select its
candidates with regard for their capabilities and for the number of
citizens represented, but it is complemented by the work of selection
and valuation devoted by the Grand Fascist Council to the task of
creating the best, the most stable, the most truly representative and
the most expert national board of directors.
We have solved a series of problems of no little extent and importance;
we have abolished all those perennial troubles and disorders and
doubts that poisoned our national soul. We have given rhythm, law, and
protection to Work: we have found in the co-operation of classes the
evidence of our possibilities, of our future power. We do not waste
time in brawls and strikes, which, while they vex the spirit, imperil
our strength and the solidity of our economy. We regard strife as a
luxury for the rich. We must conserve our strength. We have exalted
work as productive strength; therefore we have the majority of these
elements represented in the legislative body, and this body is a
more worthy and a stronger helmsman for Italian life.
And Capital is not exiled, as in the Russian communistic dream; we
consider it an increasingly important actor in the drama of production.
* * * * *
In this, my Autobiography, I have emphasized more than once the fact
that I have always tried to weave an organic and coherent character
into all the fabric of my political work. I have not confined myself to
giving merely an outward veneer or contour to Italian life; I wished
to influence the very depths of its spirit. I founded my work on facts
and on the real conditions of the Italian people; from such realistic
activity I drew valuable lessons. I have been able to bring about
useful, immediate results looking toward a new future for our country.
One of the reforms which I have promoted and have closely followed in
all its successive developments is the reorganization of the schools.
This has been called the Gentile Reform, after the name of the Minister
of Public Instruction, whom I appointed immediately following the March
on Rome. The gravity and importance of school problems cannot escape
the attention of any modern statesman mindful of the destiny of his
people. The School must be considered in all its complete expression.
Public schools, Intermediate schools, University institutions, all
exercise a profound influence on the trend—both moral and economic—of
the life of any nation. From the beginning this has been ever in my
mind. Perhaps my early experience as a school teacher increased
an unvarying interest in youth and its development. In Italy there
were traditions of higher culture, but the public schools had become
degraded because of lack of means and, above all, because of lack of
spiritual vision.
Although the percentage of illiteracy tended to diminish and even to
disappear in certain regions, particularly in Piedmont, the citizens
nevertheless were not getting from the school world those broad
educational foundations—physical, intellectual and moral—that are
possible and humane. The intermediate schools were too crowded because
everybody was admitted, even those without merit, through endless
sessions of examinations which were reduced often to a spiritless
formality. We lacked intelligent systems of selection and vocational
and educational valuation of individuals. The mill ground on and on,
turning out stock patterns of human beings who ended for the most part
by taking tasks in bureaucracy. They lowered the function of the public
service by dead and not living personnel. Universities created other
puppets in the so-called “free arts,” such as law and medicine.
I t was time that the delicate machinery which was of such consequence
in the spiritual life of the nation be renewed in a precise, definite,
organic form. We had to crowd out from the intermediate schools the
negative and supercilious elements. We were determined to infuse into
the public schools those broad humanistic currents in which our history
and our traditions are so rich. Finally, it was indispensable to
impose a new discipline in education—a discipline to which every one
must submit, the teachers themselves first of all!
To be sure, teachers draw a very modest wage in Italy, and this is a
problem that I am resolved to face and solve as soon as the condition
of the budget will allow. Nevertheless, I cannot permit a limited,
pinch-penny treatment of education. The niggardly policy is of old
and typically Liberal and Democratic origin. It furnished teachers
with a good pretext for performing their duties indifferently and for
abandoning themselves to subversive thought, even against the state
itself. This condition reached its climax in the humiliating fact that
many teachers deserted their posts. We had had clamorous examples of
such a tendency, not only in the elementary schools, but also in some
of the universities.
Fascism put a stop to all this by making discipline supreme, discipline
both for the high and for the low, particularly for those who had the
high duty of teaching order and discipline and of maintaining the
highest concepts of human service in the various schools of the régime.
We had an old school law which took its name from Minister Casati, a
law that had been enacted in 1859 and had remained the fundamental law
even after the successive retouching of Ministers Coppino, Daneo, and
Credaro. We had to renew and refashion it, through the ardent will of
our Party; we had to give it a broad didactic and moral vision; we
had to infuse into it a spirit of vital rebirth which would appeal to
the new Italy. Great ideas and great revolutions always create
the right hour for the solution of many problems. The school problem,
which had dragged on for many decades, has finally found its solution
in the Gentile Reform. This is not the place to explain the reform in
detail. I want to indicate, however, those fundamental principles which
I myself discussed and settled in a few compact discussions with the
Minister of Public Instruction. They can be summarized by the following
points:
1st—The state provides schooling only for those who deserve it because
of their merits and leaves to other initiatives students who are not
entitled to a place in the state’s schools.
This throws on the scrap heap the democratic concept which considered
a state school as an institution for every one—a basket into which
treasure and waste were piled together. The middle class had regarded
the school as at its service and therefore did not respect it. They
demanded only the greatest possible indulgence in order to achieve as
quickly as they could their purely utilitarian aims, such as a degree
or a perfunctory passing to promotions.
2nd—The students of the state schools and of the independent schools
find themselves under equal conditions when taking the state
examinations, before committees appointed by the government.
Thus is encouraged the régime of independent schools analogous to those
of England. This régime is advantageous for the Catholics, owners of
many schools, but displeases the anti-clericals of the old style.
It allows me a free development of scholastic initiative outside of the
conventional lines.
3rd—The state watches over the independent schools and promotes a
rivalry between independent and state schools which raises the cultural
level and the general atmosphere of all schools.
The state does not see its jurisdiction diminished because of the
independent schools; on the contrary, it extends its watchfulness over
all schools.
4th—Admission to the intermediate schools is now possible only through
examinations. The schools are directed toward a broad humanistic
culture, but with a standard of scholarship which has eliminated
forever the disorder and the easy-going ways of the old democratic
schools.
By means of these and other reforms the elementary school comes to have
two distinct but co-ordinated purposes. One is that of preparation for
the intermediate schools, and the other is a high type of broad popular
education complete in itself.
The intermediate schools were broadened by means of the following
institutions:
(a) _Complementary schools._ The abolished technical school, complete
in itself, was revived along new lines.
(b) _Technical institutes_ of higher specialization.
(c) _Scientific Lyceum_, still higher, taking the place of the
abolished “Modern Lyceum” and of the Physico-Mathematical departments
of the Technical Institute, and preparing the students for the
scientific branches of the University.
(d) _Teachers’ Institute_, a purely humanistic and philosophical
school taking the place of the abolished complementary and normal
schools.
(e) _Women’s Lyceum_, a general culture school, complete in itself.
(f) _Classical Lyceum_, unchanged in its essential lines, but
augmented by the humanistic character of the studies; to it the task
of preparing for most university branches has been assigned. To enter
the universities, entrance examinations have been instituted. The
final examinations of the intermediate schools, of the Classical and
the Scientific Lyceum, have been termed Maturity Examinations; all the
curricula have been renewed, fitting them for a more modern culture.
Latin has been restored in all schools except in the Complementary and
Religious Departments of the elementary and intermediate schools.
For all these different types of institutions, one essential
rule has been put into practice, that is, every school must be a
_unit organism_, with a set number of classes and students; the
candidates may enter through a graduated classification, based on the
examinations; those who are not admitted must go to independent schools.
The application of this reform, which overthrew the old interests, the
old ideas and especially the utilitarian spirit of the population,
aroused an unavoidable spirit of ill-feeling. It was used by the
opposition press, especially by the _Corriere della Sera_, for
controversial purposes; but the reform has been put through with energy
under my direction and has marked the beginning of a real rebirth
of the Italian schools and of the Italian culture.
The reform of the universities has been co-ordinated with the reforms
in the primary and intermediate schools. Its purpose is to divide
the university students into different organic institutions, without
useless overlapping. The rule of state examinations is imposed also
for the universities, to which both the students of the state and
independent schools can be admitted. The Institute of “Libera Docenza,”
authorities independently attached to certain faculties of the
universities, has also been reformed, appointment no longer being made
by the individual departments but by central committees in Rome.
On the occasion of a visit by the delegations of the Fascist university
groups, I had the opportunity of declaring that the Gentile Reform
“is the most revolutionary of all the reforms which we have voted on,
because it has completely transformed a state of affairs which had
lasted since 1859.”
I was the son of a school-mistress; I myself was taught in the
elementary and secondary schools. I knew, therefore, the school
problem. Because of that, I had wanted to bring it to a concrete
conclusion. The Italian school again will take its deserved place in
the world. From our university chairs, true scientists and poets will
again illuminate Italian thought, while the secondary schools will
provide technical and executive elements for our population, and the
public schools will create a background of civic education and
collective virtue in the masses.
I have willed that, in collaboration with the universities, departments
of Fascist economics, of corporative law, and a whole series of
fruitful institutes of Fascist culture, should be created. Thus a
purely scholastic and academic world is being permeated by Fascism,
which is creating a new culture through the fervid and complex activity
of real, of theoretical and of spiritual experiences.
But, even closer to my heart than the Institutes of Fascist
universities, is a new institution which has all the original marks of
the Fascist revolution. It is the National Organization of Balilla.
Under the name of a legendary little Genoese hero the new generation
of children and of youth was organized. These no longer depend, as in
the past, upon various playground associations, scattered political
schools and accessory institutions, but are trained through rigid but
gay discipline in gymnastic exercises and in the general rules of a
well-ordered national life. They are accustomed to obedience and they
are made to see a sure vision of the future.
To show the importance that educational revival has in my mind, I
myself gave a lecture at the University of Perugia. It has been
pronounced by scholars as a broadening of the world’s concept of its
duty to youth.
Finally, to pay a tribute to culture and to higher culture, and to
every one who, in the field of science, art, and letters, has held
high the name of Italy, I have created an Italian Academy, with a
membership of “immortals.”
* * * * *
The armed forces of the state had fallen into degradation in the
years 1919, 1920, 1921. The flower of our race had been spurned and
humiliated.
Conditions even reached a point where the Minister of War in those
“liberal” days had a circular distributed advising officers not to
appear in uniform in public, and to refrain from carrying arms, in
order not to be subjected to the challenges of gangsters and hoodlums.
This aberration, which it is better to pass over quickly for the sake
of one’s country, was destined to find its avenger in Fascism. It was
one of the factors which created an atmosphere passionately eager for
change. To-day, the spirit of the country is much different; to-day the
armed forces of the state are justly considered the secure and worthy
and honored defense of the nation.
I had a very clear and decisive programme, when, in 1922, at the moment
of the March on Rome, I selected as my collaborators the best leaders
of the Victory of 1918. General Armando Diaz, who after Vittorio Veneto
had remained aloof in silence, overwhelmed by the difficulty of the
moment, and who had issued and had been able to voice an indignant
protest in the Senate against the policies of Nitti’s Cabinet, had been
selected by me as Minister of War. I ♦appointed Admiral Thaon de Revel,
the greatest leader of our war on the sea, as Minister of the Navy. On
January 5, 1923, General Diaz presented a complete programme of
reform for the army to the Council of Ministers. That was an historic
meeting; fundamental decisions for the renewal of the armed forces
were taken; and we were able to announce to the country in solemn and
explicit fashion that, with that meeting, the army had been given new
life, to “accomplish the high mission that had been intrusted to it, in
the supreme interests of the nation.”
♦ “appoined” replaced with “appointed”
I had fulfilled the first promise I had made to myself and to the
Italian people. Immediately after that I dedicated myself to a
reorganization of aviation, which had been abandoned to utter decay
by the former administrations. The task was not easy; everything
had to be done again. The landing fields, the machines, the pilots,
the organizers and the technicians all were restored. A feeling of
abandonment, of dejection and mistrust had been diffused in Italy by
the enemies of aviation; this new type of armed force, many people
thought, should be developed only as a sport. Into this situation I
put my energy—I gave it personal attention, personal devotion. I have
succeeded in my purpose: the successes of De Pinedo, of Maddalena,
the flights in squadrons, the great manœuvers, have demonstrated that
Italian aviation has recently acquired great expertness and prestige,
not only in Italy, but wherever there is air to fly in.
The same can be said of the navy, which has reordered its formation,
bettered its units, completed its fleet, and made its discipline
efficient. Fourth, but not least, because of its spirit of emulation
and daring, comes the Voluntary Militia for the Safety of the Nation,
divided into 160 Legions, commanded by distinguished officers and by
enthusiastic Fascists. These are magnificent shock troops.
Finally our barracks and our ships can be said to be, in the true sense
of the word, refuges of peace and strength; the officers devote their
activities to the physical and educational betterment of the men; the
training conforms to the modern technic of war. The army is no longer
distracted from its functions, as happened too often under the old
governments, in order to assume ordinary duties of public order which
were exhausting and humiliating, and to which entire Divisions were
assigned. I changed all this. For the last five years, the army has
left its barracks for its tactical manœuvers and for no other reason.
After some time, General Diaz had been obliged to resign on account of
the condition of his health. General Di Giorgio commanded _ad interim_.
But later I saw clearly the necessity of gathering all the armed
forces of the state under one direction. I assumed the portfolios of
War, Navy and Aeronautics. Thanks to this programme, I have created a
commander-in-chief of all general staffs, who has the task of shaping,
with a complete vision of ensemble, all the plans of the various
branches of our forces toward one end: Victory. Our military spirit is
lively; it is not aggressive, but it will not be taken by surprise. It
is a peaceful spirit, but it is watchful.
* * * * *
To complete the Fascist revival, it was necessary to keep in mind
also several lesser problems which, for the sake of the dignity
and strength of the life of the nation, were in need of an immediate
solution.
The retired employees of the government, who received very small
pensions before the war, had seen with alarm the value of their already
meager resources diminish because of the successive depreciations of
the currency. I had to make a provision of some exceptional nature
for their protection, by making their pensions adequate to the
necessities of the day and to the current value of money. I made a
provision favoring the clergy also; it was a question of a just and
necessary disposition. This would have been inconceivable in the days
of the Masonic demagogy and social democracy, which was dominated by
a superficial and wrathful anti-clericalism. Our clergy number about
60,000 in Italy. They are extraneous to the controversy, which I may
call historical, between State and Church. They accomplish a wise
task and assist the Italian people in all their religious practices,
without meddling with political questions, especially since the rise of
Fascism. They are reluctant to debase the spiritual character of their
mission. The intriguing priest, of course, has to be fought. Instead,
the priest who accomplishes his task according to the wise rules of the
Gospel and shows the people the great humane and divine truths, will be
helped and assisted. Because many of them were living in poverty, we
took general measures to better the conditions of their existence.
* * * * *
The policy in regard to public works in Italy had always had an
electoral tinge; public works to be done were decided upon
here and there, not according to an organic plan or to any plain
necessity, but to give sporadic satisfaction to this or that group
of voters. I stopped this legalized favoritism. I instituted Bureaus
of Public Works, intrusting them to persons in whom I have complete
confidence, who obey only the central power of the state, and are
immune from pressure by local interests. In this way I was able to
better appreciably the conditions of the roads of the South; I mapped
out a programme for aqueducts, railroads and ports. All that is just
finds in the Italian bureaucracy an immediate comprehension. All the
offices of governmental character have received a new impulse and new
prestige. The great public utilities of the state, railroads, mails,
telegraph, telephone, the monopolies, function again. Certain persons
are even sarcastic about the new regularity. And this is easily
explained: we should not forget that the Italian people has been for
many years rebellious against any discipline; it was accustomed to
use its easy-to-hand and clamorous complaints against the work and
activity of the government. Some vestiges of the mental attitudes of
bygone days still come to the surface. There is even whining because
there is efficiency and order in the world. Certain individualistic
ambitions would like to slap at our strong achievements of discipline
and regularity. But to-day the state is not an abstract and unknowing
entity; the government is present everywhere, every day. He who lives
in the ambit of the state or outside the state feels in every way the
majesty of law. It is not a thing of small moment that all public
utilities are conducted with an efficiency which I might call American,
and that the Italian bureaucracy, proverbially slow, has become eager
and agile.
I have given particular attention to the Capital. Rome is a universal
city, dear to the heart of Italians and of the whole world. It was
great in the time of the Roman Empire and has conserved a universal
light. It was the historical seat and the centre of diffusion of
Christianity. Rome is first of all a city with the aura of destiny
and history. It is the Capital of the New Italy. It is the seat of
Christianity. It has taught and will continue to teach law and art to
the whole world.
I could not refuse the resources necessary to make this magnificent
capital a city æsthetically beautiful, politically ordered, and
disciplined by a governor. With its natural port of Ostia, with its
new roads, it will become one of the most orderly and clean cities
of Europe. By isolating the monuments of ancient Rome, the relation
between the ancient Romans and the Italians is made more beautiful and
suggestive. This work of revaluation—almost recreation—of the capital
was not carried on to the detriment of other Italian cities. Each one
of them has the typical character of an ancient capital. They are
cities like Perugia, Milan, Naples, Florence, Palermo, Bologna, Turin,
Genoa, which have had a sovereign history worthy of high respect; but
none of them thinks now to contest with Rome and its eternal glory.
* * * * *
Some writers who, as keen observers, have followed point by point
the vicissitudes of our political life at a certain moment raised an
interesting question. Why did not the National Fascist Party decree its
own disbandment or slip into disorganization after the revolutionary
victory of October, 1922?
In order to answer this question it is necessary to bring into relief
certain essential points. History teaches us that, normally, a
revolutionary movement can be channelled into legality only by means of
forceful provisions, directed, if necessary, against even the personnel
of the movement. Every revolution assumes unforeseen and complex
aspects; in certain historical hours, the sacrifice of those who were
the well-deserving lieutenants of yesterday might become indispensable
for the supreme interest of to-morrow. Nevertheless, in my own life I
have never deliberately desired the sacrifice of any one; therefore
I have made use of the high influence which I have always had over
my followers to stop stagnation or heresies, personal interests and
contentions; I have preferred to prevent rather than to repress.
But, when it has been necessary, I have shown myself to be inexorable.
In fact, I had to keep in mind that, when one party has shouldered
the responsibility of entire power, it has to know how to perform
surgery—and major operations, too—against secession. Because of my
personal situation, having created the Party, I have always dominated
it. The sporadic cases of secession, due not to differences of method
but to personal temperament, usually withered under the general
loss of esteem and interest, and after the disclosure of selfish
ends.
This consciousness of my incontestable domination has given me the
ability to make the Party live on. But other considerations also were
opposed to the disbandment of the Party. First of all, a sentimental
motif had stamped itself upon my soul and upon the grateful spirit of
the nation. The Fascisti, particularly the young, had followed me with
blind, absolute, and profound devotion. I had led them through the most
dramatic vicissitudes, taking them away from universities, from jobs,
from factories. The young men had not hesitated when confronted by
danger. They had known how to risk their future positions together with
their lives and fortunes. I owed and still owe to the militiamen of
previous days my strongest gratitude; to disband the Party and retire
would have been first of all an act of utter ingratitude.
There was in the end a much more important reason. I considered
the formulation of a new Italian method of government as one of
the principal duties of Fascism. It was to be created by the vigor
of labor, through a well-tested process of selection, without the
risky creation of too many improvised military leaders. It was the
Party’s right to offer me men of our own régime to assume positions
of responsibility. In that sense the Party was side by side with the
government in the ruling of the new régime. It had to abandon the
programme of violent struggle and yet preserve intact its character
of proud political intransigentism. Many obvious signs made me
understand that it was not possible to patch the old with the new
world. I had therefore need of reserves of men for the future. The
Chief of the government could very well be the Chief of the Party, just
as in every country of the world a representative chief is always the
exponent of an aristocracy of wills.
In the meantime, to mark a point fundamental for the public order, my
government, in December, 1922, issued an admonition to the Fascists
themselves. It was in the following terms:
“Every Fascist must be a guardian of order. Every disturber is an enemy
even if he carries in his pocket the identification card of the Party.”
Thus, in a few words, were the position and the duty of the Party in
the life of the Fascist régime indicated.
We encountered plenty of pitfalls and snares in 1922. The Party had
reached a peculiar sensitiveness, through its intense experience. In
the moment of its hardest test, it had shown itself to be equipped to
guide the interests of the country as a whole. The revolution had not
had long, bloody consequences, as in other revolutions, except for the
moment of battle. Violence, as I have said before, had been controlled
by my will.
Nevertheless, the position of some opposing newspapers was strange
indeed. Those of the _Corriere della Sera_, of Liberal-Democratic
coloring, and that of the _Avanti_, Socialist, agreed—strange
bed-fellows!—in harshly criticising the simultaneous and violent
action of Fascism, while they were wishing in their hearts and
writing that the Fascist experiment would soon be finished.
According to these political diagnosticians, it was a matter of an
experiment of short duration, in which Fascism would be destroyed
either on the parliamentary rocks or by an obvious inadequacy to direct
the complexities of Italian life. We saw later the wretched end of
these prophets; but to attain results it had been necessary for me,
particularly in the first year, continually to watch the Party. It had
always to remain in perfect efficiency, superior to opposing critics
and to snares, ready for orders and commands.
One grave danger was threatening the Party: it was the too free
admission of new elements. Our small handfuls in the warlike beginnings
were now growing to excess, so much so that it was necessary to put a
padlock on the door to prevent the influx of further membership. Once
the solidity of Fascism had been proved, all the old world wanted to
rush into its ranks. If this had happened, we would have come back
to the old mentality, the old defects, by overhasty adulteration
instead of keeping our growth selective through education and
devotion. Otherwise the Party, augmented by all the opportunists of
the eleventh hour, would have lost its vibrating and original soul. A
check had to be placed upon the old world. It could go and wait with
its bed-slippers on, without spoiling a movement of young people for
Italian rebirth.
After I had closed, in 1926, the registration in the Party, I used
all my force, care and means for the selection and the education
of Youth. The Avanguardia was then created, together with the
Opera Nazionale Balilla, the organization for boys and girls which,
because of its numerous merits and the high value of its educational
activities, I have chosen even recently to term “The invaluable pupil
of the Fascist Régime.”
This programme brought forth unparalleled results; as a result of it
the Party has never encountered a really serious crisis. I believe that
I can count among my qualities the ability to act in good season and
to strike at the right moment without false sentimentality where the
shadow of a weakness or of a trap is hidden.
In this watchful work of prevention, I have always had at my side good
secretaries of the Party who have helped me immeasurably. Michele
Bianchi had already ably led the Party until the March on Rome. He had
been able to balance the particularly violent character of the movement
against the demands of political situations which had reality and which
must be handled with wisdom. Michele Bianchi has been an excellent
political secretary because of this very reason, and to-day he is still
with the government, as my greatly appreciated collaborator in internal
politics. He has a political mind of the first order, a reflective
mind; he is faithful at every hour. The régime can count on him every
time.
The Honorable Sansanelli, a courageous participant in the late war,
and to-day president of the International Federation of World War
Veterans, took his place. The Hon. Sansanelli has been able to face
vague secessionist movements, which revealed an origin undoubtedly in
the peculiar, pre-Fascist, Italian political Masonry.
There was in that period a reprisal by anti-Fascist forces. The
old Liberal world, defeated, but tolerated by the generosity of the
régime, was not exactly aware of the new order of things. It regained
its wonted haughtiness; Italian Masonry was still developing, with its
infinite and uncontrollable tentacles, its practices of corruption
and of dissolution. These forces of negation even armed the Communist
remnants in the obscurity of ambushes and cellars. A new “direttorio,”
presided over by the Secretary Hon. Giunta until September, 1924,
was formed after the elections. I have already spoken of the Fascist
activity of the Hon. Giunta. In the second half of that year, the
anti-Fascist movement, aroused by obscure national and international
forces, showed itself in growing intensity on all fronts. I threw it
down on its nose with my speech of January 3, 1925. But also, following
that, I determined that a line of more combatively intransigent nature
should be imposed by our party: and with this duty in mind, on February
12, 1925, I appointed the Hon. Roberto Farinacci General Secretary of
the Party.
Farinacci knew how to show himself worthy of the task with which I had
intrusted him. His accomplishments, considered in their entirety and
in the light of the results attained, were those of a well-deserving
Secretary. He broke up the residues of the “aventinismo” which had
remained here and there in the country; he gave a tone of high and
cutting intransigentism, not only political but also moral, to the
whole Party, invoked against offenders and plotters those exceptional
laws which I had promulgated after four attempted assassinations
had demonstrated the criminality of anti-Fascism. I was closely
following this movement of vigorous reprisal by the Party and had
prepared in time the necessary provisions. The Hon. Farinacci is one of
the founders of Italian Fascism. He has followed me faithfully since
1914.
After his task had been accomplished, the Hon. Farinacci left the
position of General Secretary to the Hon. Augusto Turati, a courageous
veteran of the World War, a man of clear mind and aristocratic
temperament, who has been able to give the Party the style of the new
times and the consciousness of the new needs. The Hon. Turati has
accomplished a great and indispensable work of educational improvement
with the Fascist masses. Besides these precious elements in the high
positions of the Party of to-day, I must mention the Hon. Renato Ricci
for the organization of the “Balilla,” Melchiorri for the Militia,
Marinelli, a courageous administrative secretary, Starrace, a valorous
veteran, and Arpinati, a faithful Black Shirt since March, 1919, and a
founder of Fascism in Bologna.
The Party has yielded me new prefects for Fascist Italy, elements for
syndicalist organization, and consuls, while various deputies have been
appointed Ministers and Under-Secretaries. Little by little, proceeding
by degrees, I have given an ever more integral and intransigent line
to the whole world of government. Almost all positions of command have
to-day been intrusted to Fascist elements. Thus after four years of the
régime we have given actuality to the formula: “All the Power to
all-Fascism” which I enunciated in June, 1925, at a Fascist meeting in
Rome.
I have controlled my impatience. I have avoided leaps into darkness.
I do not sleep my way to conclusions, I have blended the pre-existing
needs with the formation of a future. Naturally, giving to the state a
completely Fascist character and filling all the ganglia of national
life with the vitality and newer force of faithful Black Shirts, I not
only did not detract from, but constantly added to the importance of
the National Fascist Party as the force of the régime. This transfer
from political organization to the permanent organization of a state
guarantees in the most solid manner the future of the régime. I have
laid, with my own hands, the corner-stone of representative reform,
based on the interests of Italian unity and the Italian cosmos, and
I have arranged that the Grand Fascist Council became a definite
constitutional organ for the constancy of the state. Thus the Fascist
Party, while remaining independent, is bound by ties of steel to the
very essence of the new Fascist state.
* * * * *
A subject that is always interesting and is often misunderstood both
by Italians and foreigners is that of the relations between State
and Church in Italy. The Law of the Guarantees in 1870, by which the
question was believed to be solved, remains a form of relationship
which since the rise of Fascism has not caused friction of any great
significance. To be sure, the Holy See renews, once in a while,
protestations for the supposed rights usurped in Rome by the
Italian state, but there are no substantial reasons for apprehension,
nor profound differences.
This serenity of relations is a tribute to the Fascist régime. In the
past a legend had blossomed around dissensions of historical character
tending to foment partisan hatreds; an anti-clerical activity had been
developed for a long time in various forms, and it served, through
many sections of the so-called “Free thought” groups, to augment the
nefarious political influence of our form of Masonry. The idea was
diffused that religion was a “private affair,” and religion was not
admitted in any sort of public act.
If, however, anti-clericalism was superficial and coarse, on the other
hand, the Church, with its lack of comprehension of the new Italy, with
its tenacity in its intransigent position, had only exasperated its
opponents. Anti-Church forces even went so far as to ban every Catholic
symbol and even Christian doctrine from the schools. These were periods
of Socialist-Masonic audacity. It was necessary that ideas should be
clarified. We had to differentiate and separate the principles of
political clericalism from the vital essence of the Catholic faith.
The situation as it had stood caused, in Italy, dangerous deviations,
which ranged from the policy of “abstention” between 1870 and 1900, to
the Popular party of baleful memory which was destined to degenerate
little by little until in 1925 it took a form of clerical bolshevism
which I resolutely liquidated and put into political and intellectual
bankruptcy.
This troubled atmosphere, so infested by misunderstandings and
superficialities, has been relieved by Fascism. I did not deceive
myself as to the seriousness of the crisis which is always opening
between State and Church; I had not fooled myself into thinking that
I would be able to cure a dissension which involves the highest
interests and principles, but I had made a deep study of those lines
of set directions and inflexible temperaments which, if softened,
were destined to make the principles of religious faith, religious
observance, and respect for the forms of worship bloom again,
independent of political controversies. They are, in fact, the
essential factors of the moral and civic development of a country which
is renewing itself.
To be sincere, I must add that high circles of the Vatican have not
always been known to appreciate my work, possibly for political
reasons, and have not helped me in the steps which appeared wise for
all. My labor had not been easy nor light; our Masonry had spun a most
intricate net of anti-religious activity; it dominated the currents
of thought; it exercised its influence over publishing houses, over
teaching, over the administration of justice and even over certain
dominant sections of the armed forces.
To give an idea of how far things had gone, this significant example
is sufficient. When, in parliament, I delivered my first speech
of November 16, 1922, after the Fascist revolution, I concluded
by invoking the assistance of God in my difficult task. Well,
this sentence of mine seemed to be out of place! In the Italian
parliament, a field of action for Italian Masonry, the name of
God had been banned for a long time. Not even the Popular party—the
so-called Catholic party—had ever thought of speaking of God. In
Italy, a political man did not even turn his thoughts to the Divinity.
And, even if he had ever thought of doing so, political opportunism
and cowardice would have deterred him, particularly in a legislative
assembly. It remained for me to make this bold innovation! And in an
intense period of revolution! What is the truth? It is that a faith
openly professed is a sign of strength.
I have seen the religious spirit bloom again; churches once more are
crowded, the ministers of God are themselves invested with new respect.
Fascism has done and is doing its duty.
Some ecclesiastical circles have not shown, as I have said, ability to
evaluate and understand in all its importance the political and moral
rebirth of new Italy.
One of the first symptoms of such lack of comprehension was exhibited
at the beginning of Fascist rule: at first the so-called Catholic party
wanted to collaborate by having some members in the government, in the
new régime. This collaboration, however, began to lead us through a
series of reticences and misunderstandings, and after six months I was
forced to show the door to the ministers belonging to that party.
I have seen the Popular party allied with Masonry. But when parties
have not clashed on the Italian political scene, the troubles between
State and Church have been reflected in international politics.
The Roman Question has been once more under discussion. Both
historical forces have strengthened their concepts. Journalistic
controversies and objective discussions have demonstrated that the
problem is not ripe and may be insoluble. Perhaps two mentalities and
two worlds are confronting each other in a century-old historic and
impracticable opposition. One has its roots in the religion of the
fathers and lives by the ethical forces of the Civis Romanus; the other
has the universal character of equality of brothers in God.
To-day, with the highest loyalty, Fascism understands and values
the Church and its strength: such is the duty of every Catholic
citizen. But politics, the defense of national interests, the battles
over ourselves and others, must be the work of the modern Fascist
Italians who want to see the immortal and irreplaceable Church of
Saint Peter respected, and do not wish ever to confound themselves
with any political force which has no disclosed outline and knows no
patriotism. Whatever the errors of its representatives may be, nobody
thinks of taking away from the Church its universal character, but
everybody is right in complaining about certain disavowals of some
Italian Catholics, and may justly resent political approval of certain
middle-European currents, upon which Italy places even now her most
ample reservations. Faith in Italy has been strengthened. Fascism gives
impulse and vigor to the religion of the country. But it will never be
able for any reason to renounce the sovereign rights of the state and
of the functions of the state.
CHAPTER XIII
EN ROUTE
Some readers of my autobiographic record may attribute to these pages
of mine the character of a completed life story. If they have believed
that story completed they are mistaken. It is absurd to believe that
one can conclude a life of battles at the age of forty-five.
Detailed memoirs of intimate and personal character are the attributes
of old age and the chimney-corner. I have no intention of writing
any “memoirs.” They only represent the consciousness of a definitely
completed cycle. They do not appear of much importance to a man who is
in the most vigorous ardor of his activities!
I was the leader of the revolution and chief of the government at
thirty-nine. Not only have I not finished my job, but I often feel that
I have not even begun it.
The better part comes toward me. I go toward it at this moment. But
I take pride in affirming that I have laid solid foundations for the
building of Fascism. Many ask me what my policy in the future will be,
and where my final objective lies.
My answers are here. I ask nothing for myself, nor for mine; no
material goods, no honors, no testimonials, no resolutions of approval
which presume to consecrate me to History. My objective is simple:
I want to make Italy great, respected, and feared; I want to
render my nation worthy of her noble and ancient traditions. I want
to accelerate her evolution toward the highest forms of national
co-operation; I want to make a greater prosperity forever possible for
the whole people. I want to create a political organization to express,
to guarantee, and to safeguard our development. I am tireless in my
wish to see newly born and newly reborn Italians. With all my strength,
with all my energies, without pause, without interruption, I want to
bring to them their fullest opportunities. I do not lose sight of the
experience of other peoples, but I build with elements of our own and
in harmony with our own possibilities, with our traditions, and with
the energy of the Italian people. I have made a profound study of the
interests, the aspirations and the tendencies of our masses. I push
on toward better forces of life and progress. I weigh them, I launch
them, I guide them. I desire our nation to conquer again, with Fascist
vigor, some decades or perhaps a century of lost history. Our garrison
is the party, which has demonstrated its irreplaceable strength. I have
trust in young people. Their spiritual and material life is guided by
attentive, quick minds and by ardent hearts. I do not reject advice
even from opponents whenever they are honest. I cover with my contempt
dishonest and lying opponents, slanderers, deniers of the country
and every one who drowns every sense of dignity, every sentiment of
national and human solidarity in the filthy cesspool of low grudges.
Defeated ones who cluck to the wind, survivors of a building which
has toppled forever, accomplices in the ruin and shame into which
the country was to have been dragged, sometimes do not even have the
dignity of silence.
I am strict with my most faithful followers. I always intervene where
excesses and intemperance are revealed. I am near to the heart of the
masses and listen to its beats. I read its aspiration and interests. I
know the virtue of the race. I probe it in its purity and soundness. I
will fight vice and degeneracy and will put them down. The so-called
“Liberal institutions” created at other times because of a fallacious
appearance of protection are destroyed and divested of their phrases
and false idealisms by the new force of Fascism with its idealism
planted on realities.
Air and light, strength and energy, shine and vibrate in the infinite
sky of Italy! The loftiest civic and national vision to-day leads
this people to its goal, this people which is living in its great new
springtime. It animates my long labors. I am forty-five and I feel
the vigor of my work and my thought. I have annihilated in myself
all self-interest: I, like the most devoted of citizens, place upon
myself and on every beat of my heart, service to the Italian people.
I proclaim myself their servant. I feel that all Italians understand
and love me; I know that only he is loved who leads without weakness,
without deviation, and with disinterestedness and full faith.
Therefore, going over what I have already done I know that Fascism,
being a creation of the Italian race, has met and will meet
historical necessities, and so, unconquerable, is destined to make an
indelible impression on the twentieth century of history.
INDEX
Abruzzi, 174.
Acerbo, Giacomo, 194.
Adrianople, siege of, 29.
Adriatic, the, 7, 72; the Upper, 92.
Adriatic problem, the, 251.
Afghanistan, 254.
_Against the Return of the Beast_, quoted, 65, 66.
Aiello, 92.
Ala, 17.
Albania, 109, 111, 257; Italian military mission in, 250.
Albertini, Senator, 103, 222.
Alessandri, 177.
Alessio, 183.
Alighieri, 132.
Alliance of Labor, the, 163.
Allies, the, 248; Italians among the, 62.
Alps, the, 44, 46, 47, 72.
Amendola, 183.
Amiata, 226.
Amilcare, 3.
Ancona, 169, 170, 174; Socialist congress of, 157.
Anglo-Saxons, the, 25.
Anile, 183.
Apennines, the, 1.
Arditi Association, the, 52, 70.
Argelato, 2.
Armistice, the, 60, 63.
Army of Iron, the, 50.
Arno River, the, 132.
Arpinati, Leandro, 93, 117, 169, 239, 302.
Asiago, the Alps of, 50.
Augusteo, the congress at, 144.
Augustus, the tomb of, 144.
Austria, 32, 131.
Austria-Hungary, 30, 34, 36, 54.
Austria, 17; Mussolini expelled from, 18.
Austrian navy, the, 62.
Austrian spies, 60.
Avanguardia, the, 299, 300.
_Avanti_, 18, 20, 32, 35, 37, 38, 77, 83, 103, 115, 134, 167, 298.
Aventino, the, 222, 232, 233; secession of the, 230.
Aviation, decline of, 77, 112, 113; success of Italian, 291.
Balbo, Italo, 173, 174, 176.
Balducci, 3.
Balkan Wars, 28.
“Balilla,” the, 289, 300, 302.
Banca Italiana di Sconto, crash of the, 145, 147, 155.
Bank of Italy, the, 269, 271.
Bank of Naples, the, 271.
Bank of Sicily, the, 271.
Bari, 109.
Baseggio, Major, 143.
Bastianelli, Professor, 237.
Battisti, Cesare, 17, 36.
Belgium, 41; invasion of, 34.
Belgrade, 32.
Belluno, 50.
Bergonzoni, 110.
Bersaglieri, 14, 15, 47, 42.
Berta, 132.
Bertini, 183.
Bertone, 183.
Biagi, 118.
Bianchi, Michele, 173, 175, 300.
Benda, Dr. Ambrogio, 136.
Black Shirts, 207, 210, 212, 213, 226, 236, 269, 271, 302, 303; the
power of, 200, 202.
Blue Shirt, 210.
Bologna, 93, 139, 177, 226, 295; Fascism in, 81, 117, 307; Mussolini
family prominent in, 2, 4; Palace d’Accursio in, 116; City Hall Palace
of, 117; the “Podesta” of, 239.
Bolshevik ideas, 73.
Bolshevism, 93, 112; Russian, 82; Utopian spirit of, 69.
Bolzano, 170.
Bonacini, Artillery Lieutenant Mario, 251.
Bonardi, Carlo, 195.
Bonomi ministry, the, 142, 145, 158, 159, 165.
Bainsizza, 50.
Bosdari, Ambassador, 255.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, annexation of, 30.
Brenner, 36, 153.
Brenner Pass, the, 141, 153, 255.
Brescia, 43.
Briand, 149.
British Empire, Foreign Minister of the; 254.
British Giubaland, 259.
Bruno, Giordano, quoted, 65, 66.
Budapest, 53.
Bulgaria, 131.
Bulgarian foreign ministers, 255.
Bundles of Fight, 90, 121, 130, 144, 171; Central Committee of, 125.
Cabinet, the, 168.
Cagoia, 101, 102.
Calliva, 118.
Caminate, parish of, 1.
Candiano canal, the, 8.
Cannes, Inter-Allied Conference at, 148, 149.
Capello, General, 237, 238.
Caporetto, 50, 52, 77, 102, 218.
Carabinieri, 65, 232.
Caradonna, 174.
Carducci, Giosue, 11.
Carducci, Valfredo, 11.
Carima, Abbe, 102.
Carnaro, 124.
Carnazza, Gabriello, 194.
Carso, 27, 44, 47, 48.
Carte, Surgeon-Major Luigi, 251.
_Carthage_, 41.
Casati, Minister, 233, 284.
Catholic Church, the, 154.
Catholic Party, the, 306.
Cavazzoni, Stefano, 194.
Central Post Office, 86.
Chamber of Parliament, the, 247.
Chamber of Deputies, the, 149.
Chamberlain, 254.
Charles of Hapsburg, death of, 162.
“Cheka,” 227, 228.
Child, Richard Washburn 249.
Church of Saint Peter, 307.
Church, the, 73, 90, 306, 307.
Ciano, Costanzo, 195.
Cipriani, 3.
Circolo Sciesa, the, 172.
Cirenaica, 259, 260.
Cittadini, General, 184, 185.
Cividale, 44.
Civis Romanus, the, 307.
Classical Lyceum, 287.
Clemenceau, 33.
Collectivity, the, 280.
_Combattenti_, the, 76, 77.
Commission of Inquiry, the, 77.
Commission of the Solons, 235.
Communes, the, 235.
Communists, the, 132, 133, 134, 215; in Rome, 162.
Complementary Schools, 286.
Conclave, the, 155.
Conference of the Ambassadors, 252.
Congress of Reggio Emilia in 1912, 18.
Consorzio Valori, the, 269.
Constitution of 1848, the, 234.
Conti, 179.
Coppino, Minister, 284.
Corfu, 229, 252, 253.
Corgini, Ottavio, 195.
_Corriere della Sera_, the, 72, 102, 167, 213, 287, 298.
Corridoni, Filippo, 37.
Coselschi, Eugenio, 181.
Costa, Andrea, 3.
Council of Ministers, 291.
Credaro, Minister, 152, 153, 284.
Credaro policy, 141.
Cremona, 110, 171, 177, 232.
Crespano, 232.
Crespi, 179.
Crown, the, 191, 224.
Curzon, Lord, 248, 249.
Czarism, fall of, 154.
Czechoslovakia, Commercial treaties concluded with, 250.
Dalmatia, 36, 56, 62, 72, 76, 96, 103, 106, 112, 130, 141, 249; loss
of, 253.
D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 41, 77 ff., 86, 96, 101, 113, 122 ff., 151, 180,
181, 196.
Daneo, Minister, 284.
Dante, 8, 36, 56, 204.
Dardanelles, the, 46.
De Bono, General, 173, 174, 176.
De Capitani, Giuseppe, 179, 194.
Delcroix, Carlo, 217, 228.
dell’ Annunziata, Collare, 225.
Democracy, 275, 276, 280, 284.
Democrat-Masons, 222.
Democratic groups, 166.
Democrats, the, 85, 213.
De Nicola, 158, 159, 215.
De Pinedo, 291.
Deputies, Chamber of, 149.
de Revel, Admiral Paolo Thaon, 107, 194, 290.
De Stefani, Alberto; 194, 261, 265.
de Vecchi, Cesare Maria, 133, 174, 195, 259.
De Vito, 183.
Diana Theatre, the, 133, 134, 138.
Diaz, General Armando, 105, 107, 194, 290, 291, 292.
di Cesaro, Giovanni Colonna, 194.
Di Giorgio, General, 292.
Dodecannes, question of the, 249.
♦Douhet, General, 181.
Dovia, 1.
Duce, the, 124, 175.
Duncan, Isadora, 46.
♦ “Doubet” replaced with “Douhet”
England, 34, 285; Italy’s war debt agreement with, 265.
English ambassador, the, 239.
Eritrea, 259.
Estensi, castle of the, 119.
Eternal City, the, 189.
Facta, 163, 164, 168, 182, 183, 192.
Facta ministry, the, 160, 161.
Faenza, 7, 93.
Farinacci, Hon. Roberto, 301, 302.
Farneti, 251.
Fasci di Combattimento, the, 67, 72, 90, 91; Central Committee of the,
171.
Fascism, 24, 68, 103, 141, 142, 184, 185, 189, 197, 203, 207, 211,
219, 220, 222, 228, 233, 234, 241, 256, 258, 268, 278, 279, 298; a
symbol of, 7; effect of, on religion, 307; future of, 308–311;
reorganization of ranks of, 90.
Fascist government, 277.
Fascist National party, the, 144.
Fascist revolution, the, 63.
Fascisti, the, 73, 77, 165, 183–193, 236; creation of the, 37;
reassembling ranks of, 86; devotion of, 297.
Fascists, 117, 232; Lombardians, 132.
Favara di Venezia, 232.
Federzoni, Deputy Luigi, 142, 194, 235.
Ferdinand, Archduke Francis, murder of, 30, 31.
Ferrara, 44, 119, 139; Palace Estense in, 116.
Festival of Labor, 162.
Finance, Minister of, 261, 264.
Finzi, Aldo, 194, 219.
Fiume 36, 56, 62, 72, 89, 90, 96, 100–103, 112, 129, 141, 151, 180,
249, 253; contested, 76; French sailors and Italian soldiers clash at,
74; Fascists in, 79 ff.; occupation of, 78, 79; Bloody Christmas in,
116; Italian resistance in, 122.
Florence, 91 ff., 212, 232, 266, 295.
Florio, Lieutenant Federico, 151.
Forces of Order, the, 81.
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 34, 109, 142.
Forli, 1, 7, 18, 113, 232.
Forni, 228.
Foro Bonaparte, 137.
Foscari, Count Nicolo, 127.
France, 34, 41, 46; German invasion of, 34; commercial treaties
concluded with, 250.
Frassati, Senator, 102.
Freemasons, 126.
French Army, the, 34.
Fulci, 183.
Fulcieri, Paolucci de Calboli 2.
Gai, Silvio, 195.
Gaini, 140.
Galileo, the, 97.
Galvani, Gastone, 93.
Garian, 259.
Garibaldi, Bruno, 40, 70, 124.
Garibaldi, Costante, 40.
Garibaldi, Ricciotti, 40; in Sicily, 41.
Gasei, the Sicilian, 59.
_Gazetta del Popolo_, the, 79.
General Fascist Command, the, 188.
Genoa, 41, 295; conference at, 148, 149, 162.
Gentile, Giovanni, 194.
Gentile Reform, the, 282, 285, 288.
Genzano, 232.
German spies, 60.
Germans, 254, 255.
Germany, 32, 131; as ally of Austria-Hungary, 34.
Giampietro, General, 181.
Giarabub, 259.
Giolitti, Giovanni, 21, 37, 41, 90, 108, 111, 129, 138, 141, 160, 165.
Giolittinians, liberal, 60.
Giordani, Lieutenant, 118; death of, 119.
Giulian Alps, the, 36.
Giuliani, 140.
Giunta, Secretary, Hon, 129, 137, 138, 230, 301.
Giuriati, Giovanni, 173, 194.
Gordian knot, the, 18.
Gorizia, 50.
Grand Fascist Council, 279, 281; organization of the, 208, 209.
Grandi, 265.
Grappa, Mount, 50, 52.
Graziadei, 141.
Greece, 46, 252.
Greek foreign ministers, 255.
Gualtieri, 12.
Guardia Medica, of Porta Venezia, 136.
Guardia Regia, 125.
Hall of Parliament, the, 89.
High Adige, question of the, 255.
Hortis, Senator Attilio, 107.
Hotel Dragoni, 237.
Hungary, 131, 257.
Hymn of Workers, the, 89.
Illyrian Alps, the, 36.
Independents, the, 89.
Inter-Allied Conference, 148.
Interior, Minister of the, 235; Secretary of the, 219.
International Congress of Medicine, inauguration of the, 238.
Internationale, the, 89.
_Interventisti_, 73.
Isonzo, 50; the Battle of, 46.
Italian Academy, creation of an, 290.
Italian Army, the, 47.
Italian Fighting Fascisti, 68, 70.
Italian Fascisti of Combat, the, 71.
Italian Liberal Party, the, 72, 96.
Italian Nationalism, united with Fascism, 210.
Italian Masonry, 214, 300, 305, 306.
Italian school system, 201.
Italian-Swiss treaty, 250.
Italy, 240, 248, 255; Premier of, 14, public opinion in, 34; difficult
international situation in, 96; voting in, 205; foreign policy of, 257;
southern, 259; discipline in, 276, 284; clergy in, 293.
Jesuits, anti-Masomc spirit of the, 157.
Jaurès, murder of, 32.
Judrio, 36.
Jugo-Slavia, 101, 102, 105, 253, 254.
Jugoslavia, the Rapallo treaty with, 248.
Julian the Apostate, 97.
Kaiser, the, 32, 41.
King Victor Emmanuel III, 41, 183, 184, 188, 196.
Königsberg, invasion of, 51.
Kremlin, the Mongol Galileo of, 97.
Labor Charter, the, 279, 280.
Labor Confederation, the, 166.
Labor Day in Rome, 279.
La Fontaine, quoted, 100.
Latinity, 25.
Lausanne, 248, 249; the conference of, 14.
League of Nations, the, 72, 101, 257.
Lebon, Gustave, 25.
Left, the, 89.
Legion of Ronchi, the, 124.
Legislature, opening of the Twenty-seventh, 216.
Legislature, the Twenty-seventh, 220.
Lenin, 96, 112; propaganda of, 275.
Libera Docenza, the Institute of, 288.
Liberal Democratic pacifist group, the, 37.
Liberal Party, the, 121, 200, 260.
Liberalism, 275, 280, 284.
Liberals, the, 85, 126, 213, 223.
Libian colony, the, 259.
Libya, 40.
Libyan war, the, 28.
Lissia, Pietro, 195.
Littorio, the, 270.
Locarno treaty, the, 257.
Lombardian, Fascists, 132.
Lombardian journalists, convention of the, 94.
Lombardy, 36, 43; the Fascists of, 134.
London, 263; a Mussolini in, 3.
London pact, the, 105, 253.
Lucchesi, Cafiero, 151.
Lucetti, 238.
Luciani, 183.
Lule-Burgas, 29.
Lupi, Dario, 195.
Maddalena, 291.
Mafia, the, 236.
Manaresi, 119.
_Manouba_, 41.
Mantua, 113.
Marche, 174.
Marchese of San Guiliano, the, 33, 34.
Marchi, Giovanni, 195.
Marchiafava, Professor, 237.
Marco Polo, 7.
Marinelli, 302.
Marinetti, F. T., 91.
Marini, 6.
Mario, Pascal, 232.
Marsala, 117.
Martire, Egilberto, 106.
Marx, Karl, 40.
Masi, 136.
Masonry, 156; Italian political, 143, 209, 210, 214; Fascism against,
235; Popular party allied with, 306.
Masurian Lakes, Battle of the, 51.
Matteotti, 218, 219, 221, 222, 225.
Maturity Examinations, 287.
Mazzini, 82.
Meda, 116, 165.
Mediterranean, the, 40, 257.
Melchiorri, 302.
Mendola, 6.
Merlin, Umberto, 195.
Milan, 18, 20, 39, 41, 49, 59, 60, 63, 77, 81, 86, 100, 104, 113, 115,
132, 165, 168, 171, 179, 187, 212, 215, 295; Procession of the Defeat
of, 65; population of, 110; the Fascisti of, 166; the Circolo Sciesa
of, 172.
Milan Association of Merchants and Shopkeepers, 68.
Milani, Fulvio, 195, 209.
Militia, the, 230, 302.
Minister of the Interior, 241.
Minister of the Navy, 290.
Minister of War, the, 290.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the, 34.
Ministry of International Affairs, the, 240.
Ministry of Public Works, the, 110.
Ministry of War, the, 194.
Misuri, 228.
Modena, 143.
Modigliani, the Minister of, 102.
Moduno di Livenza, 232.
Monastie of Treviso, 53.
Monfalcone, 102, 115.
Monferrato, Casale, the massacre of, 133.
Mongol Galileo, the, 97.
Montecitorio, 140, 163, 169, 199, 202, 216, 222.
Monzambo, 232.
Morgagni, 140.
Morgan loan, the, 269.
Moscow, 96, 129.
Mount Stelvio, 57.
Mussolini, Alessandro, 3, 9.
Mussolini, Arnaldo, 5, 8, 20, 148, 186; death of, 18.
Mussolini, Benito, 87, 194, 237, 247; birthplace of, 1; childhood of, 4
ff.; as Premier of Italy, 14; as a private Bersagliere, 43.
Mussolini, Edda, 21, 136.
Mussolini, Edvige, 20.
Mussolini, Giovanni, 2.
Mussolini, Rachele, 20.
Mussolini, Rosa, 5; death of, 17.
Mussolini family, the, 2, 4.
Naples, 41, 169, 171, 295; historic congress at, 175.
Naples, the Fascisti of, 82.
National Fascist Party, the, 296.
National Guard, 3.
National Militia, the, 234.
National Organization of Balilla, 289.
National party, the, 183.
Nationalism, 211.
Nationalists, the, 81, 82.
Naviglio River, the, 110.
Navy, success of Italian, 291.
Nettuno Conventions, the, 253, 254.
Nevosso, 153.
Nincic, 254.
Nitti, 63, 74, 75, 76, 80, 89, 90, 99, 101, 103, 105, 202, 209; Cabinet
of, 29.
Northern Italy, 141.
Noske, 102.
Opeglia, 17.
Opera Nazionale Balilla, the, 300.
Orlando, 73, 158, 159, 165, 168, 214.
Orpheum Coffee Shop, the, 93.
Ostia, 295.
Oviglio, Aldo, 118, 119, 194, 233.
Padua, 41, 212.
Palace d’Accursio, 116, 139.
Palace Estense, 116.
Palazzo Chigi, 215, 236, 237, 239.
Palermo, 295.
Pallieri, Dr. Leonardo, 136.
Pancáni, Guido, 93.
Paolo da Cannobio, 39.
Paratore, 183.
Pareto, 14.
Paris, 96, 99.
Parma, 232.
Partito Popolare, creation of the, 73.
Pascoli, Giovanni, 3.
Pasella, 91.
Pasic, 254.
Peano, 163, 200, 260.
Perugia, 175, 176, 185, 295.
Pesaro, 267; speech of, 270.
Piacenza, 110, 212.
Piave, the, 50, 52, 53.
Piazza Beligioioso, the, 81.
Piazza del Duomo, 39.
Piazza S. Sepolero, in Milan, 68.
Piccagnoni, Doctor, 48.
Piedmont, 283.
Piedmont newspaper, 90.
Piombino, 136, 138.
Pipemo, 254.
Piræus, the, 46.
Pisacane, Carlo, 82.
Pistoia, 151.
Pittoni, the socialist, at Triest, 60.
Pius X, 153.
Place Borromeo, the, 139.
Plato, 204.
Po Valley, 21, 128, 139, 171, 175; representatives of the, 119;
agitations in the, 274.
“Podesta,” the, 235, 239.
Poincaré, 248.
Poland, commercial treaties concluded with, 250.
Police chief of Rome, 219.
Polish foreign ministers, 255.
Political Economy, the Honorable De Stefani as a Doctor of, 262, 263.
Pontiff Benedict XV, Giacomo della Chiesa, 153, 154, 155.
Pontificate, the, 191.
Pope, the, 31, 33.
“Popolari,” 193.
_Popolo d’Italia_, the, 5, 17, 39, 40, 45, 47, 65, 68, 72, 77, 85, 93,
94, 100, 106, 112, 113, 135, 136, 137, 148, 170, 175, 176, 178, 179,
185, 186.
Popular Party, the, 95, 138, 211, 306.
_Populari_, the, 64.
“Populars,” the, 213, 215, 222.
Porta Pia, 238.
Porta Venezia, Guardia Medica of, 136.
Predappio, 1, 2, 6, 12.
Predappio Nuovo, 6.
Prefect, the, of Rome, 219.
Prefetura, the, 84.
Premilcuore, 20.
Press Office, Chief of the, 219.
Prince von Bülow, 35.
_Priori_, _a_, 82.
Prussia the King of, 35.
“Psychology of the Crowd,” 25.
Public Instruction, the Minister of, 282, 285.
Public Works, the Ministry of, 110.
Puglie, 169.
Quadrumvirate of Action, 177.
Quarnero, Italian infants of, 101.
Quartarella, 222.
“Quartarellismo,” 222.
Quarto dei Mille, 41.
Quirinal, the, 184, 188.
Rabbi River, the, 6.
Radaelli, Giuseppe, 135.
Railway Syndicate, the, 110.
Rapallo, 116; treaty of, 112, 122, 129, 248, 249, 253.
Ravaldino, 1.
Ravenna, plain of, 7.
Reason of State, 124.
Reason of the Ideal, 124.
“Red Flag,” the, 232.
Red Week, the, 21.
Reggio Emilia, 12, 18.
Renaissance, the, 2, 25.
Republicans, the, 89, 116.
Republicanism, 225.
Ricci, Hon. Renato, 302.
Riccio, 183.
Ridolfi, Lieutenant, 113.
_Risorgimento_, 25.
Rocco, Alfredo, 140, 195.
Romagna, 18, 93, 174, 212.
Roman Littorio, the, 134.
Rome, 31, 41, 62, 73, 77, 96, 105, 131, 183, 184, 189, 215, 222, 229,
247; the Fascisti of, 81, 143; the Communists in, 162; the march on,
166, 260, 278, 282, 290, 300; Anti-Fascism in, 202, the Governorship
of, 236; Ambassador of the United States in, 249; Labor Day in, 279.
Ronchi, 48, 78, 79; the Legion of, 124.
Rossetti Theatre, the, 129.
Rossi, Cesare, 183, 219, 224, 225.
Rossi, Teofilo, 194.
Rovigo, the province of, 218.
Royal Carabinieri, the, 209.
Royal Guards, the, 106, 143, 178, 179, 209, 229.
Ruhr, the, 250.
Rumania, 46.
Rumanian foreign ministers, 249, 255.
Russia, 34, 227, 257; bankruptcy in, 56.
Russian agitators, 60.
Russian revolution, the, 154.
Salandra, 41, 184.
Salata, 152, 153; policy of, 141.
Salesiani priests, the, 7.
Salvemini, Albertine, 63, 103.
San Apollinare, the basilica of, 8.
San Giorgio di Pesaro, 232.
San Giuliano, the Marchese of, 33, 34.
Sansanelli, the Honorable, 300.
Sant’ Elia, 137.
Santa Marinella, 186, 187.
Sardi, Alessandro, 195.
Sardinia, 212, 236.
Sarrocchi, 233.
Sarzana, massacre of, 142.
Savoy Hotel, Rome, 188.
Sbarba, Dello, 183.
Schanzer, 183.
School system, the Italian, 201.
Scialoia, Senator, 112.
Scientific Lyceum, 286.
Senedrium, the Socialist, 37.
Serajevo, murder of, 21, 30.
Serbia, 30, 32, 34.
Sernaglia, 55.
Sesana, 62.
Sèvres, treaty of with Turkey, 111.
Sforza, Count, 109, 111, 116, 123, 129, 142, 247; as Italian ambassador
to France, 246.
Shaw, Bernard, 242.
Ship of State, the, 261.
Sicilian Gasei, the, 59.
Siciliani, Luigi, 106, 195.
Sicily, 212; Garibaldi in, 41; the Mafia in, 236.
Siena, the province of, 226.
Social Democrats, 193.
Socialist parliamentary groups, the, 166.
Socialist Party, the, in Italy, 35.
Socialists, the, 88, 89, 90, 95, 96, 99, 110, 111, 117, 121, 132, 134,
215, 217, 222, 225, 274; victory of, 85; Czechoslavakian, 237.
Soleri, 183.
Solons, Commission of the, 235.
Somaliland, 259.
Sonnino, 74.
♦Sonzini, Mario, 115.
Southern Russia, republics of, 86.
Sovereign, the, 183.
Soviet Russia, commercial relations with, 250.
Spa, 111.
Spain, 257; commercial treaties concluded with, 250.
_Stampa_, the, 90.
Starrace, 302.
Switzerland, Mussolini in, 12, 13, 249.
♦ “Souzini” replaced with “Sonzini”
Taddei, 183.
Tagliamenti, 102.
Tangorra, Vincenzo, 194.
Teachers Institute, 287.
Technical institute, 286.
Tellini, General Enrico, 251.
Terzaghi, Michele, 195.
Third Army, the, 50.
Tirana, the ♦protocol of, 111.
Torino, 209.
Toti, Enrico, 162.
Treaty of Versailles, 57, 75, 76.
Trentino, 36.
Trento, 17, 55, 56, 102, 170.
Triest, 56, 62, 102, 129, 137, 153; the socialist Pittoni at, 60.
Triest, Gulf of, 31.
Triple Alliance Treaty, the, 33.
Tripoli, 259.
Tripolitania, 21, 259.
Trumbic, 80.
Turati, Hon. Augusto, 302.
Turati, Filippo, 84, 100, 168.
Turatians, the, 100.
Turin, 77, 295; the Fascisti of, 81; “Popular Party” assembled in, 211.
Turkey, 111, 131, 257.
Turkish foreign ministers, 255.
Turks, the, 41, 46.
Tuscan Fascism, the, 226.
Twenty-seventh Legislature, opening of the, 216, 220.
Tyrrhenian Sea, the, 174.
♦ “procotol” replaced with “protocol”
Udine, 51, 55, 92.
Umbria, 175.
United States, the, 26; Italy’s war debt agreement with the, 265.
Unknown Soldier, altar of the, 237.
Upper Adige, Credaro policy in the, 141; Salata policy in the, 141.
Utopian illusions, 192.
Valona, 102, 109, 111.
Varano di Costa, 1.
Vassallo, Ernesto, 195.
Vatican, the, 305.
Venetian provinces, the, 36.
Venetian refugees, 218.
Veneto, Vittorio, 107, 194, 290.
Venice, 62, 113, 153, 212.
Vernezzo, 44.
Verona, 14, 15, 112, 232.
Versailles, 74, 80; Treaty of, 57, 75, 76.
Via Paolo da Conuobio, the street of, 65.
Victory of 1918, leaders of, 290.
Vienna, 32, 54, 60; Imperial and Royal Government of, 18; the children
of, 100.
Volpi, Count, 265.
Via Nomentana, 238.
Vicenza, 212.
Victor Emmanuel III, His Majesty, 41, 183, 184, 188, 196.
Voluntary Militia, 207, 291, 292.
_War Bulletin_, the, 55.
Washington, 263.
Wilson, Woodrow, 62, 74, 101, 103.
Women’s Lyceum, 287.
Workers’ Chambers, 135.
World War, 102; beginning of the, 22, 29; end of, 56; Italy’s fall in
the, 57.
♦Zagabria, 130.
♠Zaniboni, 237, 238.
Zar 76, 101, 102.
Zenzon, 53.
Zurich, commercial treaties concluded in, 250.
♦ “Zababria” replaced with “Zagabria”
♦ “Zanibour” replaced with “Zaniboni”
Transcriber’s Notes
1. Misspelled words have been corrected. Obsolete and alternative
spellings have been left unchanged. Spelling and hyphenation have
otherwise not been standardised. Grammar has not been altered.
2. The spelling of some names in the index do not match the spelling
in the text. This is only corrected if the proper spelling can be
definitely determined.
3. Punctuation has been silently corrected.
4. Italics font is enclosed in _underscores_.
5. “* * * * *” indicates a larger gap between paragraphs at that point.
6. Illustrations are indicated by: [Illustration: caption and/or
descriptive text]. They have been moved to be outside of text
paragraphs.
7. Block quotations are indented by one space.
8. “Edit Distance” in Corrections table below refers to the
Levenshtein Distance.
Corrections
pg(s) Source Correction Edit
Distance
TOC v ix 2
190 deliberaate deliberate 1
290 I appoined I appointed 1
313 Benda Binda 1
314 Doubet Douhet 1
317 Souzini Sonzini 1
317 Tirana, the procotol Tirana, the protocol 2
318 Zababria Zagabria 1
318 Zanibour Zaniboni 2
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