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.