The years which preceded the March on Rome were years in which the
necessity of action did not permit complete doctrinal investigations
or elaborations. The battle was raging in the towns and villages.
There were discussions, but what was more important and sacred--there
was death. Men knew how to die. The doctrine--all complete and formed,
with divisions into chapters, paragraphs, and accompanying
elucubrations--might be missing; but there was something more decided
to replace it, there was faith.
Notwithstanding, whoever remembers with the aid of books and speeches,
whoever could search through them and select, would find that the
fundamental principles were laid down whilst the battle raged. It was
really in those years that the Fascist idea armed itself, became
refined and proceeded towards organisation: the problems of the
individual and of the State, the problems of authority and of liberty,
the political and social problems, especially national; the fight
against the liberal, democratic, socialistic and popular doctrines,
was carried out together with the "punitive expeditions."
But as a "system" was lacking, our adversaries in bad faith, denied to
Fascism any capacity to produce a doctrine, though that doctrine was
growing tumultuously, at first under the aspect of violent and
dogmatic negation, as happens to all newly-born ideas, and later under
the positive aspect of construction which was successively realised,
in the years 1926-27-28 through the laws and institutions of the
regime. Fascism today stands clearly defined not only as a regime, but
also as a doctrine. This word doctrine should be interpreted in the
sense that Fascism, to-day, when passing criticism on itself and
others, has its own point of view and its own point of reference, and
therefore also its own orientation when facing those problems which
beset the world in the spirit and in the matter.