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.