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!”