THE DEATH STRUGGLE OF A WORN-OUT DEMOCRACY
I have little doubt that all inefficient party and parliamentary
governments die from the same causes and with the same, typical
mannerisms of decay.
I have watched one die and have been present to hear the raucous
drawings of its last breaths. But these were times which tried the
souls of us. We saw passing before our eyes the dreadful panorama of
chaos and of evil forces which had broken into a gallop, ridiculous to
behold, tragic beyond words to one who loved his country. Above all,
these forces were trivial and insincere.
The political elections of November 16, 1919, had painted and glossed
over Italian political life with a mere veneer of quiet. Not one of
the weighty problems of domestic or foreign policy for which a quick,
brave solution was needed had yet even been put under the microscope
for study. Everything was boiled up in the joust of political parties.
There was the usual seething of inconsequential prophecy about the new
ministerial combinations.
The Socialists dominated the scene. They continually harassed the
government, while it was concerned on account of the attitude of the
extreme left—communists.
The occasion of the crown speech, at the beginning of the twenty-first
legislature, was upon us. For this ceremony there had been some worry
on the part of Nitti. He tried to hold the Socialists in check. But
they could not help showing their cold hostility to the king. I was
told in advance that they would refuse to be present in the hall during
the king’s speech.
On the day of the opening of the chamber, when the king was solemnly
entering the Hall of Parliament, what was the demonstration? The
Socialists made a parade of their pinks in their buttonholes and went
out in groups, singing the Hymn of Workers and the Internationale.
With them, making a clumsy show of doubtful political taste, filed the
Republicans, the Independents, and members of the Left.
The speech of the crown did not take a clear position against the
subversive forces which were menacing nothing less than our whole
national unity. It forgot the question of Fiume—a torch which held
out a flame for our national spirit. The speech even renounced
some sovereign prerogatives. It conceded a good share of the crown
patrimony, in behalf of the war veterans, combatants and wounded, for
they also were full of evident signs of restlessness. Furthermore, in
a period when foreign policies were in a snarl and the economic crisis
serious indeed, I could see little else besides the petty shifts and
maneuvers of parliamentary cloakrooms and corridors in the same old
disgusting struggle to grab places in the Ministry.
During the first three months the Ministry of Nitti fell three times at
the chamber. It outlived itself and then succeeded itself.
The _Stampa_ an old Piedmont newspaper, liberal in character, began to
be willing to indict the war. It began an attempt to carry in triumph
the very man who was the breeder and teacher of neutrality—Giovanni
Giolitti. The Church, together with the Popular party, wanted to draw
the utmost profit from the abnormal situation. The Socialists revealed
themselves very badly prepared for their victory. Victory had only set
them down in a marsh of trouble; I knew that they could not create an
equilibrium between the communists and the extreme right. On one side
it was the nation; on the other politics—inefficient, empty politics.
Meanwhile Gabriele d’Annunzio, in Fiume, was resisting with his
legionaries the flatteries of political secret agents who, we all knew,
were pouring into Fiume, and was resisting also the blockade. Fascism
was again setting in order its disunited ranks, after the electoral
defeat of November 16, 1919, and the light was everywhere dim and the
atmosphere murky with selfish, small, cowardly breathings.
Nevertheless, we began to see our way through.
To reorganize the ranks of Fascism was not a matter of impossible
difficulty, because the Fasci di Combattimento—Bundles of Fight—had
learned discipline and enthusiasm; we could stand our shocks from mere
electoral vicissitudes. And on the other hand, some strategic
leadership began to show itself at Florence, where, in October,
1919, there was held the first international meeting of the Italian
Fasci di Combattimento. What a characteristic meeting! The adherents
were obliged to defend the liberty of assembling by the voice of
the revolver. Florence, a city with a tradition of kindness and
hospitality, received the Fascists with violent hostility. Ambushes!
Provocations! Nevertheless, the meeting was held. Our friends were able
to control the place. By great energy they broke down resistance and
suppressed the unprovoked violence of our opponents.
The meeting of Florence wrote the real problem of government across the
sky. On October ninth, by way of starting that sky writing, I made an
unadorned speech. I made clear appeal to the subversive forces of the
nation. On the next day, after a sharp, needle-pointed speech by the
poet F. T. Marinetti, the secretary, Pasella, presented a resolution
in which the Fasci di Combattimento claimed the right to formulate
for Italy a fundamental transformation of the state. It was a clearly
defined programme of political convenience and expediency, aiming to
create an absolutely new social and economic state.
I have interpreted and carried out that purpose. If the end I now seek
is to disclose the paths which have led to the development of the self
I am, then surely it was during this period of training and test, of
trial and error, that the most significant guideposts may be found.
The programme of the Fasci was approved to a man. There,
indeed, was the disclosed warning of the Fascist régime to come.
To the régime’s problem, however, there was being added—and sharp
it was—the problem of the syndicates. For that reason, during the
afternoon sitting of October tenth, I myself proposed a resolution
which declared “adhesion to the movement of economic deliverance and
autonomy of the worker.” We sent a greeting “to all those numerous
groups of proletarians and employes who are not willing to submit to
the leadership of political parties composed and controlled chiefly by
little and big mediocrity which is now trying, by impoverishing and
mystifying the masses, to gain applause and salaries.” I often wonder
if other nations do not feel the same.
The whole spirit of that meeting, which closed with a greeting for
Fiume, was such as to rivet the old conception of the irreconcilable
character of the fight.
I arrived at Florence, coming from Fiume, where I had gone by airplane.
There had been a long, affectionate and definite heart-to-heart talk
with Gabriele d’Annunzio about all that needed to be done in Italy. On
my journey back, the plane, on account of the _bora_—a violent wind of
the Upper Adriatic—was obliged to come down on the aviation field of
Aiello, in the province of Udine. Chafing under the delay, I continued
my journey to Florence by train, where I came just in time to preside
at the meeting and to take what may be called a lively part in our
resistance against the violence of our opponents. At bottom, I was the
most harassed in spirit of all who were there. But to the eyes of
the glowing crowd I was a patriot, a preacher of resistance, he who
succeeded, through the violent articles written from day to day in the
_Popolo d’Italia_, in beginning the smashing of Bolshevism. The meeting
was ended in Fascist style; we swore to see one another again; we
promised ourselves victory at any price.
I set out from Florence by auto, to go to Romagna. The machine was
driven by Guido Pancáni, well known in Florence in his capacity of war
volunteer and airplane pilot—a great athlete. In the same machine there
were also the brother-in-law of Pancáni, Gastone Galvani, and Leandro
Arpinati, of the railway workshops of Bologna, since then well known in
the political clubs. When we came to Faenza the auto stopped before the
Orpheum Coffee Shop, where I met and greeted some old friends of mine.
On continuing the trip, the auto, driven at full speed, crashed into a
railway crossing with closed gates. Under our terrible impact the first
iron railing was broken to bits and the auto was hurled over the rails
onto the second barrier. We were all, with the exception of the driver,
Pancáni, flung yards away, like toy men. I, who came out unhurt, and
Arpinati, who had been lightly bruised, went shouting for help for our
two friends, who were groaning in agony. People arrived, the injured
men were laid down in our auto, which, dragged by oxen, conveyed the
two wounded to the hospital of Faenza. During the surgical treatments
I also helped the two patients. I did what I could to comfort them.
Finally I departed again by train to Bologna. The incident might have
had greater consequences, but fortune assisted me; I felt that the
hatred of our adversaries had been my talisman.
Already I have told how, after the electoral defeat of November 16,
1919, some of my friends were terrified and others asserted how useless
it was to go against the stream. They said—for there are always minds
of this type—that it was much better to come to an agreement with the
opposition, which in those days held all strategic political positions
and dominated the parliament. Compromise, negotiation and agreements
were offered me.
I rejected flatly any agreement whatever. I did not admit even one
moment’s thought of coming to a covenant with those who had repudiated
our Italy in war and now were betraying her in peace. Not many
understood me—not even those close to me. Two of my editors on the
_Popolo d’Italia_, my newspaper, asked permission to leave. They made
their excuses on the grounds that they had moved from their political
streets and house numbers. They even accused me of having helped
myself—during the electoral fight—with funds gathered by the _Popolo
d’Italia_ in the cause of smarting Fiume. So I have seen myself—a
bitter experience—obliged to defend myself from those who had been my
friends.
I appeared before the convention of the Lombardian journalists,
demanding opportunity to hear and be heard as to the charges made. My
justification was ample and precise. The board was forced by the facts
to do me justice. And afterward, without waiting for the hour of my
triumphs, the self-same slanderers, it is fair to say, made honorable
amends for their errors.
But meanwhile, taking a pretext from this episode, there was
launched against me the furious wrath of the Socialists and of the
members of the Popular party, led by the priests. Ferrets were sent to
smell into my life. Soldiers and police were bribed. Secret inquiries
were made into my every-day routine, into all my acts, all my beliefs.
The deluded, the rejected, the unmindful—all whom my upright and
fierce soul had fired at in some way or another—gathered against me.
They could do nothing. In spite of the length and breadth of the
investigation, up high and down low, no dragon was dredged out of my
pool. As for the disposition of the funds for the Fiume campaign, and
other unworthy calumnies, I published in my newspaper documents and
testimony which could never be refuted.
The conclusion arrived at then has been and always will be the same
until I cease to exist: on the score of integrity there is no assault
to be made upon me. My political work may be valued more or less, this
way or that, and people may shout me up or howl me down, but in the
moral field it is another matter. Men must live in harmony with the
faith by which they are pushed on; they must be inspired by the most
absolute disinterestedness. True men, in politics, must be animated by
the humane and devout sense; they must have a regard, a love toward
and a deep vision regarding their own fellow creatures. And all
these qualities must not be defiled by dissimulations or rhetoric or
flatteries or compromises or servile concessions. On this ground, at
least, I am proud to know myself as one not to be suspected—even by
myself—and feeling that my inmost moral fiber is invincible.
I believe that this, above all else, has been the stuff and fabric of
my strength and of my success.
The beginning of 1920 found Italy engaged with a most difficult
international situation. While in Paris the diplomats were sordidly
debating, the bleeding wound of Dalmatia was yet open, and in it
was D’Annunzio at Fiume. The Socialists, to be sure, had obtained a
boisterous electoral victory, but they proved from day to day more
and more impotent and incapable of maintaining their positions in
government with dignity. The most temperate were overturned by the
extremists. There was the gorgeous myth of Lenin! The Italian Liberal
party had resigned all its prerogatives. The ministry was living from
day to day, at the mercy of political extortions, of blackmail, of
those who wanted special favors. There was turbulence in parliament and
uproars of political nature on the streets.
Under such conditions it was necessary to struggle, even though
sometimes victory seemed very difficult and almost unattainable. I
started the year by an article entitled “Let’s Navigate.” I said: “Two
religions are to-day contending with each other for the sway over the
world—the black and the red. From two vaticans depart to-day encyclical
letters—from that of Rome and from that of Moscow. We declare ourselves
the heretics of these two expressions. We are exempt from contagion.
The issue of the battle is of secondary importance to us. To us
the fight has the prize in itself, though it be not crowned by
victory. The world now has some strange analogy with that of Julian the
Apostate. The Galileo with the red hair! Will he be a winner again? Or
will the winner be the Mongol Galileo of the Kremlin? Will there be
realized the upsetting of all valiant and virile thought?
“These questions weigh upon the uneasy spirits of our contemporaries.
“But in the meantime it is necessary to steer the ship! Even against
the stream. Even against the flow. Even if shipwreck is waiting for the
solitary and haughty bearers of heresy.”
There was little time to spare for dwelling upon these highbrow
controversies. Events were tumbling over themselves in a most troubled
way. In the month of January, after harsh discussion, it appeared
impossible to avoid a threatened railway strike. Soon after, the
general strike of the post and telephone employees burst out and lasted
six days. It disorganized not only the private interests of citizens
but also state communications. It cut off the shuttle of thoughts in
a moment made even more delicate by the international situation. The
_Avanti_, the official newspaper of the Socialist party, of which I
had once been editor, wrote on that occasion that the post, telegraph
and telephone offices were a luxury of modern times; that the ancient
peoples had been great even without telegraphic apparatus. Who knows
whether this gibberish came from a mocking spirit or from the kind of
confirmed idiocy with which extremists are afflicted?
The stated cause of the agitations was always economic, but in
truth the end was wholly political; the real intention was to strike
a blow full in the face of the state’s authority, against the middle
classes and against disciplined order, with a view to establishing
the soviets in Italy. That was the plain purpose behind all the
ornaments and masks. It is little realized how easily a combination of
disorders can put a whole nation—by control of its exchanges and its
communications and cities—in the hands of a tyrannous minority.
In the midst of general hardships and of cowardice, of grumbling of
impotents, of the vaporings of dull critics, I, almost alone, had the
courage to write that the state’s employees, if they were right in
view of the feebleness of the government, were wrong, in any case,
toward the nation. To inflict upon a people the mortification of an
ill-advised strike, to trample upon the rights of the whole, meant to
lead men from modern civil life back again to tribal conflict.
“These dissensions,” I wrote in my paper on January 15, 1920, “are
between function and government. The sufferer who suffers after having
paid, the sufferer, with the inevitable prospect of paying more,
is the Italian nation—the word ‘nation’ understood in the sense of
human collectivity.” And further on I added: “The material damages
of a strike of this kind are enormous, incalculable. But the moral
damages at home and abroad are still greater. The moment chosen for
the strike gives to the strike itself the true and proper character
of a support to Allied imperialism. This is the culminating moment of
the negotiations in Paris. This is the moment in which there is
the one question—to get, finally, a peace. Why didn’t the postal, the
telegraph and telephone operators wait two weeks more, until the return
of Nitti from Paris? Was it just ‘written,’ was it just ‘fatal,’ that
the ultimatum to the government should fall due on the thirteenth? All
this confirms the sinister political character of the act.”
As God pleased, on January twenty-first, the post and telegraph strike
was ended, but already there had begun, on the nineteenth of January, a
railway strike. It was a useless strike. The leaders of red syndicalism
had been willing to proclaim it at any price, even when it was against
both the sentiment and the interest of the workmen themselves. I
defined this strike as “an enormous crime against the nation.” The
country was in desolation. Italy was in the claws of disorder and
violence; the foreigners left our charming resorts and byways; the
withholding of credit grew general among bankers, while catastrophic
rumors held sway over the international world, entangling more and more
our diplomatic negotiations.
In the midst of the most unbridled egoism, the Fascists firmly held
their places during the strikes of the public services. I will not
forget that some groups of our men, inspired by faith, thoroughly did
their duty during these agitations. They faced with firm boldness the
insults and threats of their striking fellow countrymen.
Meanwhile, in the face of the righteous indignation of public opinion,
some Socialists began to feel timid. They tried to separate their
responsibility from that of the leaders who had proclaimed
the strike. On that occasion, in the _Popolo d’Italia_ of January
twenty-first, I published an article entitled “Too Late!” I thrust into
the light—with words that later on revealed themselves prophetic—the
real situation of socialism.
“The Turatians,” I wrote—“and by this word we intend all those who in
Filippo Turati, the leader of the Right, recognize their chief—should
have been awakened before. Now the car is thrown upon the steep slope
and the reformist’s brake is creaking, but it does not hold; nay, it
exhausts the strength of those who are dragging on the lever. At the
bottom there is the impregnable massive wall against which the car will
break to pieces. Out of the ruin will come wisdom. This was said also
by the French fabulist, La Fontaine:
_À quelque chose malheur est bon: à mettre un sot à la raison._
“It would be preferable, nevertheless, that the blockheads might
restore their reason without plunging the nation into destruction and
misery.”
The railway strike was protracted up to January twenty-ninth, and
all the time diplomatic discussions were bringing us to disastrous
compromises in our foreign policy. About this time, into the aridity
of the disputes of classes there was thrust an event colored with
highest idealism. It was arranged that the suffering children of Fiume
should be brought to Milan. They had been enduring the hardships of
a blockaded town, without economic resources; they were at the mercy
of their own distress. Already the children of Vienna, the sons of
our enemies, had obtained in Milan kind treatment. Was it not
admissible that there should be found love and pity for the Italian
infants of Quarnero? The episode of kindness, brought about by the
Fascists with the consent of the Fiume command, resounded throughout
Italy. Great manifestations of joy greeted these children at every
junction or way station of their journey. The censors of the press,
however, prevented us from writing of the triumphal journey of these
children. It was all part and parcel of a programme systematically to
slander our spirit, which always stamped the political handicraft of
Nitti, like an ugly hall-mark on a leaden spoon.
This man, in order to justify his vile and inept diplomacy, dared to
deliver in the chamber a speech on the Fiume question with a friendly
intonation toward the Slavians, at the very time that Wilson was
pressing his even stranger project to create of Fiume and Zara two
isolated, detached, aborted free cities under the control and the
authority of the League of Nations!
On the next day, February eighth, my newspaper bore on the first page
the following head-line: “The Abominable Speech of H. E. Cagoia—The
Snail.” By this surname Gabriele d’Annunzio had stamped F. S. Nitti
and the term had become popular. Following the head-line was a short
editorial of mine, entitled “Miserable.” In it, after having set forth
again in a few words the painful history of the negotiations in Paris,
I concluded:
The truth is that Nitti is preparing to go back again. He goes
to Paris in order to give away his shirt. Before the stubborn
Juglo-Slavian irreconcilableness our Cagoia knows nothing better
than to wail, weep and—yield. The whole tone of his speech is vile,
dreadfully vile. Not in vanquished Germany, nor in Austria, has there
been so vile a Minister as Nitti. If there had been one, he could not
have lasted. This one is the Minister of runaways, of autolesionists;
he is the Minister of Modigliani, the man of peace at any price. By
trying to remember continually that the objectives of Italy were
Trento and Triest, Cagoia offers arms to the Jugoslavian resistance.
The peace of 1866, in comparison, is a masterpiece with that offered
by His Indecency. On his next journey to Paris, Cagoia will make
another renunciation. Zara? Valona? Who knows? Quite likely. It is not
impossible that he will yield Gorizia too. Perhaps also Monfalcone.
And why not the line of Tagliamento? Maybe only by this price can we
hope for the friendship of Jugo-Slavia!
Before such infamy we feel that it would be preferable to be citizens
of the Germany of Noske than subjects of the Italy of Cagoia.
We have before us days of dolor and shame; worse than those of
Caporetto, worse than those of Abba Carima!
We will recover our strength, but first there is some one who will be
forced to pay.
The domestic policies and the foreign policies pursued by the
government of that time did not fail to provoke some stiff discussions
among those newspapers that were reflecting the varied tendencies of
national life. The _Stampa_, at the head of which was Senator Frassati,
who some time later was to be selected as ambassador to Berlin, was
one of my targets. I violently attacked it because of the programme
it adopted. It gave itself airs as if it would be the redeemer of our
fatherland. It is necessary to remember that Senator Frassati had been
against the entrance of Italy into the World War. He always stood
apart during the most bleeding and tragic periods of Italian life.
Consequently, he was the least capable of taking a pose as redeemer
of our fatherland at the time when peace was to be concluded with the
enemies after the victorious end of our war.
The _Corriere della Sera_, representing and interpreting the thought
of a great flow of so-called liberal public opinion, was defending
arbitration for Fiume and Dalmatia, proposed by Wilson and supported by
the prose of Albertini, who followed a pernicious policy inspired by
Salvemini and Nitti. The _Avanti_, the red publication, availed itself
of all these polemics and of the slanders against me to libel me in
general before the whole of public opinion. And all this campaign, vain
and ineffectual, was even supported by the press of the Popular party.
But more important, it was employed against the raising of Fascism and
against the war victory.
Strikes were characterized by violent, disgraceful clashes between
police and soldiers and the citizens; the interminable parliamentary
discussions were marked by fist fights on the floor of the chamber.
These were pitiful spectacles, humiliating not only to citizenship and
to government itself but to the whole fabric of our political life.
In the short cycle of a few months there had been three ministerial
crises, but Nitti always came back to power. The question, as always
in a democracy gone drunk with compromise of principles, was one of
mutual concessions, and very heavy ones. Miserable. Useless. Nobody was
thinking of the rebuilding of social order in a nation which had
won a bloody war and which had to face the fact that it was living in
the presence of a world of moving realities.
Fascism, unique lighthouse in a sea of cowardice, of compromise and
of foggy, plum-colored idealism, had engaged itself in battles; it
was overpowered by mere blind multitudes. I was the bull’s-eye of the
target of the government of Nitti. He unloosed against me all his
hounds, while his journalists tired themselves in vain to note down
my contradictions in political matters. The Socialists, mindful of my
moral and physical strength, covered me with their vengeance and their
ostracism. At least, they roamed at a distance. They were cautious and
far off the trail of real things.
During one of the many evenings when Milan was at the mercy of these
scoundrels, I found myself surrounded and isolated in a café of the
Piazza del Duomo, the central hub of the Lombardian metropolis.
While I was sipping a drink, waiting for Michele Bianchi, a hundred
Socialists and loafers hemmed in the café and began hurling abuses and
insults at me. I had been recognized. Perhaps they intended, in their
collective wrath, to give me a beating in order to place on my person
the vengeance they had long since had in mind. The crowd, growing in
numbers, became more and more menacing, and so the owner of the café
and the female cashier hastened to pull down the shutters. She invited
me, according to the fashion of those disorderly times, to go out
because I was endangering their interests. I did not wait for a second
invitation. I am used to facing the rabble without fear. The more
there are of them, the more a man can move toward them with a sure
courage which, to some, may appear as an affectation. I cannot say that
there was any reluctance on my part to face these cowards.
I looked at the leaders and said, “What do you want of me? To strike
me? Well, begin. Then be thereafter on guard. For any insult of yours,
any blow, you will pay for dearly.”
I remember the picture of that wolf pack. They were silent. They looked
furtively at one another. The nearest withdrew, and then suddenly fear,
which is as contagious as courage in any crowd of people, spread among
the group. They backed away; they dispersed and only from a distance
flung their last insults.
I recite this incident because it was typical of the usual occurrence
in the life of a Fascist. But it must be remembered that in other
cases the end was quite different—beatings, knife thrusts, bullets,
assassinations, atrocities, torture and death.
In these days there began to develop a contest between General Diaz,
victor of our last campaign, and Nitti.
The London pact, which had given Italy certain promises, broke down.
The Adriatic coast-line was in a state of complete insecurity.
Absurd rumors spread in the diplomatic clubs. The danger of seeing
the Jugo-Slavians settled along the whole Adriatic shore had caused
a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions.
Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were
entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. There was an
appeal from all the groups representative of the best Italian life in
behalf of Dalmatia. All these forces of righteousness, on the occasion
of the anniversary of Italy’s entry into war, organized a Dalmatian
parade, with the object of dedicating, in the name of the fatherland,
their indestructible loyalty to their country.
Then, in the capital, came about an episode which is still vivid in our
memories. It raised general indignation. The Royal Guards, a new police
corps, created exclusively to serve the designs of the Nittian régime,
took the parade by storm. They fired gunshot volleys. Many victims
dropped and some fifty were wounded. This was the most unworthy episode
that ever happened under the sky of Rome within any memory. And as if
this assault and outrage were not sufficient, the Dalmatians living in
Rome were arrested, including the women. Very few dared to raise their
protests. Supine victims and bullying authorities were the fashion. In
the chamber certain deputies, among whom were the nationalist writer,
Luigi Siciliani, and Egilberto Martire, moved interpellations which
found no echo. From the columns of the _Popolo d’Italia_ I spread far
and wide my contempt. I hurled anathema against the system by which a
whole people were disgraced. My cry had some echoes in the senate—in
that senate where in historic hours some great name always rose up to
defend the dignity, the right and the nobility of the Italian people.
A group of senators, at the head of whom was the Generalissimo
Diaz, presented the following motion:
The senate regrets the methods of government which, by tolerating a
want of discipline destructive of the state’s power, diminishes the
glorious victory of our arms and the admirable resistance of our
people. It threatens any co-operative work for the prosperity of
the unified fatherland and the peaceful attainment of every civil
progress. These are methods opposite to Italian tradition, and they
have culminated in the violent repression of a patriotic manifestation
on May twenty-fourth with the arbitrary arrest of Dalmatians and
Fiumeans, guests of Rome.
Among the signatures, with the name of Diaz, were to be seen the names
of the Senator Attilio Hortis, a celebrated historian, of Admiral
Thaon de Revel, and of many personalities of high Italian culture. The
signers were sixty-four, among whom were the four vice-presidents of
the senate.
The motion, in addition to its hint to awake Italian tradition, had
strength and vigor, and disdain for the outrage done to the Italian war
victory. The leader of that disdain, before all others, was Armando
Diaz. The generalissimo bore about him the glory of Vittorio Veneto.
He saw from day to day that his fine and lofty idealism as soldier and
chieftain was fading away.
The Nitti government—part and parcel of a decadent party and futile
parliamentary system—the Nitti government, bearing the stamp of mere
pandering for favor and burned with the brand of politicians scrambling
for power without regard for the nation and without brave
idealism—fell ingloriously for the third time.
Giolitti came back.
After so many humiliations and oscillations, parliament and the
political system had revealed itself as an assembly wholly unworthy
to control or guide the destinies of a people. At the third fall of
Nitti, Giolitti, of whom it may be said that he made the premiership a
profession, came back upon the scene. His return gave some of us the
impression that he was a kind of a receiver in bankruptcy for so-called
self-government.
Justice requires our recognition of a great rectitude in the private
life of Giolitti; we cannot say so much for his rectitude in his
political character. He was a dissolver. He never gave evidence of
believing in the deep idealistic springs and streams of Italian life.
As a creature of the bureaucracy, he trusted the whole Italian problem
to the vicissitudes of democratic and parliamentary pretense and
artificiality. Thus, owing to his temperament, he held off during the
war. Soon after the victory he returned to the political scene like a
man who had to wind up a business. That business he was liquidating had
been certainly the most bloody and yet no doubt the most magnificent
and, in idealism, the most successful in our history as a united people.
The disclosed purposes of the Giolitti ministry as to domestic policy
were good. After the most unhappy Nittian mire, public opinion was
induced to accept new pilots without hostility. Foreign agents,
provoking elements, supported also by some domestic political
compromises, were inciting the Albanian population against us.
This noble land, which is but twelve hours distant from Bari, and
which had always absorbed an influx of our civilization, this land in
which some sparks of modern civil life had gleamed only because of the
influence we exercised there—all at once revolted against our garrison.
We had been at Valona with sanitary missions since 1908, and since 1914
we had had military there. We had built there the city, the hospital,
the magnificent roads which were a refuge for the Serbian army, routed
in 1916. In Albania we had sacrificed millions of lire and had devoted
thousands of soldiers to maintain her in efficiency and to give the
little state a future and a well-ordered existence.
I knew and urged that it was useless to expect any decided Albanian
policy from Giolitti. The domestic situation, which continued troubled,
deprived him of energy or mind to devote to foreign policy. At that
time the Honorable Sforza was Minister of Foreign Affairs; that was
quite enough to accomplish the last vandalism in the Adriatic question.
Meanwhile our military garrison was obliged to quit Valona, owing to
the ineptitude of our government.
We entered another phase of defeatism.
In 1920 there was adopted among the railway employees the systematic
practice of preventing the movement of trains carrying soldiers,
carabinieri or policemen. Sometimes a similar policy extended also
to the clergy. Against this inconceivable abuse of power, I alone
protested. The Italian people were suffering passively from a
stupid conception of their opportunities and from blindness which
closed their eyes to their own power and pride. Those who dared to
resist and were critical of the bureaucracy or of government policy
were persecuted by the government itself.
There was the incident of the station master of Cremona, Signor
Bergonzoni, which fell within my observation. He, by an energetic act,
ordered the railway men subject to his authority to hook onto a train
a car conveying some troops to Piacenza. For this episode, exhibiting
the most ordinary case of regularity in routine, the Railway Syndicate,
dominated by Socialists, demanded of the Ministry of Public Works the
dismissal of the station master, Bergonzoni. And because the ministry
by its firmness rejected this demand of the syndicate, Milan, which
had nothing to do with all this matter, had imposed upon it a railway
strike lasting thirteen days. Milan, a city of 900,000 inhabitants,
choked by an enormous traffic, found itself incommunicado from its
suburbs and the whole world. It was thrown back on the use of stage
coaches, autos, camions, and was obliged to use even the small boats
along the Naviglio River.
Milan, our greatest modern city, was in the power of political anarchy.
Those same military forces who would have been able easily to take
the situation in hand and dominate it were put at the mercy of the
local authorities. They were even obliged to ask the authorities for
the flour to make bread for the troops! The stations, situated at
the boundaries of the district of Milan, had in store heaps on
heaps of goods; of course these stores decayed or deteriorated and
were at the mercy of ware-house and freight-car robbers. At length,
after thirteen days, on the morning of June twenty-fourth and after a
meeting on behalf of the striking railway employees during which there
was a fusillade of firearms, with dead and wounded, the railway men,
overpowered by the indignation which had spread through the whole body
of citizens, were convinced that it was better to return to work. But
the state’s authority was dead; it was now ready for the grave.
The Giolitti ministry muddled amid a quantity of financial
difficulties. Giolitti himself hoped to be able to appease the
Socialists with the project of general confiscation of all war profits,
and still more with a plan to institute a strong tax on hereditary
succession. This latter measure, wholly socialistic, would have
annihilated the family conception of a patrimonial line. It would
have threatened the rights of an owner to bequeath to his heirs his
riches with his name. It had consequences which were not only economic
but also moral and social. Capital as an institution is only in its
infancy; the right of disposal is necessary to foster the functioning
and development of this instrument of ambition, of human welfare and of
civilization.
In international policy, Count Sforza, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
concluded the agreement of Spa, signed the protocol of Tirana with the
renunciation of Valona and Albania, signed the weak treaty of Sèvres
with Turkey, and prepared by fits and starts to attempt an end
also of the question of Fiume. This last happened at the conclusion of
the treaty of Rapallo.
The application of the pact of London, by which Dalmatia was assigned
to Italy, seemed to have been twisted without a single justifiable
reason into something not to be argued. And Senator Scialoia, a
gentleman of the old stamp, said amid the weak voices of the senate
that the London treaty “has continually been tricked out of force and
effect by those who are themselves Italians.”
Believing with all my being that it was necessary to stop the flood
of decadence in our foreign policy, I began to use our Fascisti
organization and the _Popolo d’Italia_. I tried to raise some dikes.
It was difficult to hold back the dirty water. There was a tendency
to go toward communism whatever the cost. The power of Lenin—I admit
it—had assumed a quality of potency only paralleled in mythology.
The Russian dictator dominated the masses. He enchanted the masses.
He charmed them as if they were hypnotized birdlings. Only some time
afterward did the news of the dreadful Russian famine, as well as the
information furnished by our mission which had gone to Russia to study
Bolshevism, open the eyes of the crowd to the falsity of the Russian
paradise-mirage. Enthusiasm ebbed away little by little. Finally Lenin
remained only as a kind of banner and catchword for our political
dabblers.
The aviation fields of Italy had been closed, the machines were
being dismounted. There had been, however, some attempts to engage
in civil aviation. One of the most unhappy and dramatic episodes of
that time came out of the sky above Verona. Returning from a trip
to Venice, a big airplane fell upon the city. The mishap caused the
death of sixteen persons, including the pilots. Among the dead there
were several journalists from Milan. The tragedy affected all Italy.
Mourning was general. But to my horror the authorities seized this
opportunity to abandon discussion of aviation and to dismantle the few
machines, motors and wings which were left.
It was just at that period that I wanted to take lessons to become
a pilot. The machine which crashed in Verona had been guided by a
neighbor of my birthplace, Lieutenant Ridolfi. His body was carried
to the churchyard of Forli. I had gone to Forli for a rest, with some
political friends. My reception in my own home district had been cold
and even hostile. My efforts to be agreeable and my willingness to
learn to fly just after Ridolfi had lost his life seemed to be quite
wasted. Anything in those days that did not have a material value
seemed to be superfluous. Those were years when men’s hearts were
gray. For the same reason the state for which Gabriele d’Annunzio was
preparing a durable form in Fiume did not catch the imagination of
mankind.
But I did not give up. I repeated my flights. I flew over Mantua
with the staff of the _Popolo d’Italia_. I was determined to show in
action that aviation ought not to disappear from our vision of Italian
possibilities and progress, to be won, if necessary, at the cost of
hardships. I gave an example personally every time I had the chance,
and my friends did likewise.
The growing exaltation of the bewitched masses and the incredible
weakness of the government culminated at the beginning of September
with the occupation of the factories on the part of the metal workers.
The occupation of the factories was to be an example of Bolshevism in
action. The doctrine to be illustrated was the taking possession of the
means of production. The workmen, with their childish understanding,
and much more the chiefs who were betraying them—and well aware of
their treachery as they did so—pretended that they were able to
administer directly, without an order from any one planned beforehand,
all the workshops, all the processes, and even the sales of the output.
In truth, though it is not commonly realized, they did nothing but make
some side arms, such as daggers and swords. They lost not less than
twenty-one days in forced leisure and childish manifestations of hatred
and impotence.
The occupation once begun, the managers, the owners, and the employes
of the establishments were sequestered by the workmen. The trade-marks
and factory signs were taken away, while upon the roofs and the doors
of the factories the red banners with the sickle and hammer, symbol
of the soviets, were hoisted with cheers. In every establishment a
committee was formed subject to a socialist-communist set of by-laws.
Telephones were used to threaten all who were keeping out of the
movement and who, like us of the _Popolo d’Italia_, were setting out to
war against this grotesque sovietist parody.
The seizure of the factories was accompanied by the most ferocious
acts. At Turin, the old capital of Piedmont, which had such glorious
monarchical and military traditions, the red court of justice worked
with all its might. Mario Sonzini, a nationalist and patriot, who had
gone over to Fascism among the first, was arrested by the workmen and
given a cruel and grotesque revolutionary trial. He was riddled by
bullets and his body was then thrown into a ditch. Somebody had a kind
Christian thought and threw him into the smelter ovens, but, as these
were extinguished and as cold as industry itself, somebody else thought
to put an end to the poor martyr by beating and kicking out what
remained of life. Sonzini’s guilt was only that he was a Fascist. The
same fate befell others. To this kind of inhuman brutality not even the
women were strangers. Apparently a bestial type of cruelty had taken
hold of men and women drunk with licentiousness.
The newspaper _Avanti_ on that occasion reported this barbarous murder
as follows:
It may happen in life for one to be nationalist, to pass to Fascism,
to reflect the tendencies of order and to be, nevertheless, arrested
and shot to death; this is an average stroke of destiny.
The occupation of the factories in several Italian towns was merely an
opportunity for violent demonstrations. There were dead at Monfalcone,
there were dead in Milan and there were dead in other towns on the
peninsula.
Our credit abroad had been extinguished like a puffed-out candle.
Even after the conclusion of peace, there was little thought any longer
devoted to a rehabilitation of our nation. One could feel a clear
sensation of collapse. The printing press began to spew out paper
money. It was necessary to increase circulation; it was necessary to
have recourse to inflation to prevent our economic life from going into
complete ruin. After ten years, we are still feeling the burden of the
consequences of that inauspicious period.
The exigencies of such artificial finance hastened the wreck. I
denounced the peril in a series of articles in a debate with Meda, a
member of the chamber, a man believed to be erudite in public finance.
I can say now that nobody in that murky time had the ability to
indicate any clear course to the Italian people; in financial matters
we were going straight toward utter ruin—and playing an accompaniment
on the strings of his foreign policy, Sforza was continuing his series
of renunciations. He arrived at Rapallo and from that moment Fiume was
doomed to become a detached, exiled city lying on a bed of thorns.
On November fourth the celebration of the anniversary of our victory
gave opportunity for slight symptoms of reawakening. Rome and Milan
both had extensive patriotic demonstrations. All Italy celebrated. I
did.
But that was transitory. Almost at once affliction came in those
mournful incidents—the tragedy of the Palace d’Accursio in Bologna,
that of the Palace Estense in Ferrara, and the Bloody Christmas in
Fiume.
In Bologna there was a bold handful of Fascists led by Arpinati. We
were aware that the Socialists were preparing, in the red city and
through the whole valley, pompous demonstrations to celebrate the
installation of the new city government of Bologna, composed for the
most part of reds. On November twenty-first, quantities of red banners
were hoisted on the high towers of the City Hall Palace as well as
on the private buildings. There had been planned also the release of
flocks of pigeons to bring the greetings of the Bologna Socialists to
their comrades of other places. The whole town was in the hands of the
Socialists. They were on the point of adopting a constitution of the
soviets. The city government minority, composed of elements of good
order, with Fascists and combatants, was present at the meeting. This
was considered by the reds as a provocation and a challenge.
The Fascist group of Bologna, which had its headquarters in a street
called Marsala, organized several squads to defend the public order at
any price. In the afternoon the Fascists were being singled out for
continuous and increasing insults and provocations. The Fascio—the
organization of the Fascisti—by placards made it plain that it was
resolved not to be bull-dozed, and it warned the women and children
to keep at home behind locked doors. It was foreseen that the streets
of Bologna might witness a tragedy. This firm attitude of the Bologna
Fascists, guided by Arpinati, whipped up the Socialists, not only
because they felt themselves no longer able to do as they pleased but
also because physical fear had taken possession of their leaders
all up and down the line. I say categorically that fear and cowardice
have always been typical characteristics of the Socialist party in
Italy.
At the moment when about thirty Fascists formed in tiny squads and
tried to go from Indipendenza Street, the open space crowded with the
Socialists, there came a general scattering and a disordered shouting
and clamor. A portion of the terrified crowd poured over to the City
Hall and entered the courtyard. The Socialists, barricaded there as
in a fortress, blinded by their own base fears, supposed that all
the fugitives were Fascists; they feared that the City Hall might be
invaded; therefore they threw from above, upon the crowd, hand bombs
with which they had armed themselves.
This increased the general terror in the crowd. Many of the people ran
off, tearing up their tickets of the Socialistic organizations.
While these events were going on around the palace and in the
courtyard, in the Hall of the City Council there exploded a sudden
tragedy. The red members of the council, frightened by the apprehension
of a Fascist invasion, thronged for the most part toward the exit.
Some of them, however, preferred joining the public, composed of red
elements; some flung themselves against the little group of the council
conservatives. The first shots were now heard in the hall. The guards,
not to be caught, threw themselves upon the ground. The few minority
councilors—among whom were the advocate Giordani and advocates Oviglio,
Biagi, Colliva, Manaresi—firmly kept their places, offering a
conspicuous mark for wrath whipped up by fear. Somebody fired. The
bullet missed Oviglio by a miracle. But a second shot killed Lieutenant
Giordani, a _bersagliere_, mutilated in war, hated for his record by
the reds. Meanwhile, the organizers of the bloody riot were continuing
to hurl bombs, as if they had gone out of their minds, into the square
crowded with people, and they hit fugitive Socialists under the
impression that their victims were Fascists. Horrible was the carnage
and the butchery.
Something of the same kind happened a little later at Ferrara on the
occasion of a great Socialistic manifestation which was to have taken
place in the historic castle of the Estensi. A column of Fascists,
advancing to the spot of the meeting, met a fusillade of lead. The
Fascists left on the ground three dead and numbers of wounded. Ferrara,
the red, Ferrara, in which all municipalities and the province were in
the hands of the Socialists; Ferrara, which had threatened to arrest
its own prefect—passed hours in anxiety. The same exasperated passion
of Bologna seized the noble province of the Estensi. I felt, however,
that one could catch a glimpse of tragedies which were mere preludes to
certain revolution. What revolution?
I called to Milan the responsible chiefs of the Fascist movement, the
representatives of the Po Valley, of Upper Italy, of the towns and
countrysides. Those present were not many, but they were men resolved
to take any risk. I made them understand, as I had suddenly understood,
that through newspaper propaganda, or by example, we would never
attain any great successes. It was necessary to beat the violent
adversary on the battle-field of violence.
As if a revelation had come to me, I realized that Italy would be saved
by one historic agency—in an imperfect world, sometimes inevitable
still—righteous force.
Our democracy of yesterdays had died; its testament had been read; it
had bequeathed us naught but chaos.