CHAPTER IV

WAR AND ITS EFFECT UPON A MAN

I write of war and my experience in and with war. I write of popular misconceptions as to war. I write of my convictions as to war. And I write of war from two points of view—the politics of the world and the reality of the trenches, where I have been and have learned the torture of pain.

It is impossible for me to show my development and feelings from war without showing how my nation entered war, felt war and accepted war. My psychology was the Italian psychology. I lived it and I cannot suppress it.

It was nonsense to believe that war came unheralded and as a new experience.

The European war, which suddenly burst out in 1914 during a period of apparent economic and moral peacefulness, was not a sudden return to barbarism, as many optimistic socialists and believers in democracy wished—and still to this day wish—people to believe. One must not forget that in 1904 and 1905 Russia fought with Japan a long, disastrous and exhausting war. In 1911 there was the Libyan war. In 1912 and 1913 two Balkan Wars had kept the awakened attention of Europe on the destinies of these nations. These wars had in them the characteristics of an extraordinary drama, as in the incident of Lule-Burgas and in the siege of Adrianople.

The real truth of the matter was that an intense spirit of war was all over Europe—in the air—and everybody breathed it. It was the imponderable; we were at the dawn of a new tragic period of the history of mankind. The beginning of that hard historic event, the World War, was at hand. The gigantic development drew in peoples and continents. It compelled tens of millions of men to live in the trenches, to fight inch by inch for years over the bloody theatre of tragic conflict. Millions of dead and wounded, victories and defeats, complex interests—moral or immoral—spirit of resentment and hate, bonds of friendship and disillusionments—all that chaotic and passionate world which lived and made the Great War was part of a cyclopic ensemble which is difficult to grasp, to define, to circumscribe in mere autobiographic memoirs like these.

When one thinks that Germany alone has already published on the war sixty official books, and considers many that the other nations have published or will publish, one may lose himself in the labyrinth of speculative thoughts. This tremendous chaos gave birth among the defeated nations to the dissolving intellectual scepticism from which sprang the philosophy of realities.

Therefore I proceed by impression, by remembrances. I force my memory to build up, in a logical line running parallel to my thoughts and actions, the rich picture and the innumerable interlocking events which took place in the most tortured period that humanity ever knew. I was intimately entwined with it.

The tragedy of Serajevo, the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, created a panic in the public opinion of the whole of Europe. Remember that I was then editor of an internationalist-socialist daily. That which wounded the sensitiveness of the various nations was the lightning rapidity of the tragedy. I could see the mathematical efficiency of the organizations which made possible the plans and success of the murder in spite of all the exceptional precautions taken by the police of Austria-Hungary. I realized that Europe was in sympathy with the restlessness of Serbia against the old Hapsburg monarchy. After the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, that region never had a minute’s peace. The Serbian mentality, which worked—and still does—itself along the subterranean tunnels of secret societies, gave from time to time unpleasant surprises to Austria-Hungary, and the large empire was suffering from it. But no more than a thoroughbred is disturbed by flies.

The tragedy of Serajevo, however, appeared to me to be the last straw. Every one understood that Austria would act. Strong measures! All the embassies, all the different political parties of Europe, realized the gravity of the case and its terrible consequences. They went feverishly to work to find a possible solution. And we looked on!

In Italy the echo of the murder of Serajevo aroused only curiosity and a thirst for more news. Even when the corpses of the archduke and his wife were taken into the Gulf of Triest, which was lighted up the whole night with tremendous torches, the impression on Italians, even those still under Austrian rule, was no deeper than it would have been in the presence of a spectacular epilogue of a theatrical tragedy.

Francis Ferdinand was an enemy of Italy. I thought that he always underestimated our race. He was not able to sense the heart throbs of the people of Italian blood still under his flag. He could not weigh the power of race consciousness. He was cherishing the dream of a monarchy melting three races together. Races, I knew, are difficult to melt. Francis Ferdinand enjoyed the display of his antipathy toward Italy. He took interest in the affairs of Italy only to seek a possible solution for the question of the temporal power of the Pope. It was said that in the secrecy of his court and among his religious advisers he contemplated the creation of a papal city in Rome with an outlet on the sea.

Though deeply a Catholic, like myself, he accepted of Christianity only the hard, familiar, autocratic ideals which were the base of the old despotism forming the platform of autocratic government, but were incapable of speaking to souls. In psychological makeup, this small, snarling archduke believed himself to be specially anointed by God to rule over subjects. He put fear in the hearts of smaller nations bordering his domain. His death gave surprise; it gave no sadness to us. For obvious reasons the pathetic end of the archduchess created feelings of a more sympathetic nature. We Italians are responsive, sympathetic.

The telegram of the Kaiser to the bereaved children fed the already dramatic tune and tempo of our impressions. I saw that Germany intended steadfastly to stand back of Austria for whatever action this nation was going to take toward Serbia. It was thought that Vienna would make a formal protest to Belgrade, but no one anticipated an ultimatum of such deadliness as fatally to wound the sensibility and the honor, as well as the very freedom, of that nation. All these currents I had to watch as the young editor of the _Avanti_.

The dictatorial form of the ultimatum, the style in which it was written, brought home to the world the shocking realization that war hung in the sky. We, in Italy, had to ask whether internationalism was having a success or whether it was an unreality. I wondered and reached a conclusion.

Embassies went feverishly to work; the political parties added the pressure of their weight to the diplomatic activities. The call to arms and the clamor of gathering armies put into second line the theoretical protests of socialist and international forces.

All of us in Italy who faced hard facts rather than mouthy theories heard the call of our country—a call of loneliness. Illusions burst like bubbles. Even the convention of French and German Socialists and the murder of Jaurès in Paris were but secondary episodes. To me they appeared as fringes of the mighty and dramatic conflict toward which day by day the various nations were being drawn by destiny.

I must not forget that a few months previous to the Great War I had heard and noted a voice raised in the French parliament painting with pessimistic colors the inefficiency of the French Army, both from the view-point of economic war and the lack of modern means of defense and offense. Clemenceau, foaming at the mouth, was present at this discussion. He said afterward that never in his career as a politician since 1871 had he witnessed a more dramatic séance than this one in which the French nation was compelled fully to realize the insufficiency of its army, lacking the very means needed for a great conflict. That was a lesson. We do not forget it.

War was ripe. The tardy and weak intervention, both known and secret, of the Pope and of the benevolent nations outside the circle of the Allies had no weight. They could not stop the procession of events. War began the first of August, 1914. It was the full bloom of summer. Under the deep shadow of the cloud the people of old Europe stood in awe, but fascinated as one is fascinated by a snake.

Italy a few years previously had renewed the Triple Alliance Treaty. It had been a marriage without respect and without trust, brought about more in order to counterbalance military power than by political necessity. There is small difference between security and military alliance.

The alliance with Austria and Germany gave, however, to Italy a certain latitude and a certain freedom of movement. The Marchese of San Giuliano, who was at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, faced by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia and by the scheming to bring about war at all costs, had to play fast to keep Italy neutral. As a matter of fact, the treaty called only for action if one or more of the nations of the Triple Alliance was assaulted by a nation outside that alliance. We were kept in the dark, as I well knew. That was enough to break the pact—to free us from further obligations to that alliance.

One of the first courageous actions in which Italy showed the measure of her independence and strength was recognition of this. Meanwhile the intervention of Russia in behalf of Serbia called also France against Germany, the ally of Austria-Hungary.

I watched England. She was pondering deeply upon the step to take; and then, in order to keep her supremacy, and also for the sake of her pride and the sake of humanity, she moved her formidable war machinery and quickened the organization of new armies to snatch from Germany’s grip the control of the old Continent.

Public opinion in Italy was deeply moved, facing war, with its German invasion of East France. There was the description, with horrid details, of German methods, and above all the invasion of Belgium in spite of every sense of right and humanity. The French Army was helplessly forced back. The future, not of one nation but of many nations, was in the scale. Of this, in my editorial office, I was always conscious. There was also the feeling of a common culture which was compelling us to forget past and present quarrels. I could not bear the idea that my country might abandon those who were crushed under the weight of war and unwarranted misfortune.

Germany began to influence Italian public opinion with methods of propaganda that irritated the sensitiveness of our race. That enraged me. To direct this propaganda, a great diplomat, Prince von Bülow, who knew the Italian and Roman world intimately, was sent. His aim in Italy was to ensure its neutrality for good and all.

But our nation was turning toward war. I was helping. The Socialist party, which at that time had a certain weight in Italian life, due more to weakness of other political parties than to its own strength, was uncertain what attitude to take. There it wabbled. The majority in that party stood for an absolute neutrality—a neutrality without limit of time, pledge or dignity. In that party there were many who stood openly in sympathy with Germany. I did not. A handful of intelligent and strong-willed men began to ask themselves if it was really right for Italians to lend themselves to the political aims of the King of Prussia, and if that was good for the future of Italy and of the world. I, myself, asked that question in the newspaper _Avanti_. For obvious reasons it was read avidly by every class of citizens. The putting of that question was my most distinguished effort at journalism.

It was sufficient to cause a part of public opinion to turn toward the possibility of our standing side by side with France and England in the war. We could not, and should not, forget that there were certain sentimental reasons, besides the practical reasons, advising us to review in this general conflict the old decision concerning our eastern border, which had remained open since our war with Austria in 1886.

At night I walked to my family, to my home, with pregnant questions in my mind, with deepening determination, with hardening resolution. Above all, there was my own country. I saw that internationalism was crumbling. The unit of loyalty was too large. I wrote an editorial in which I said also how utterly foolish was the idea that even if a socialist state were created, the old barriers of race and historical contentions would not go on causing wars.

Italy’s borders on the eastern side reached the Judrio, but the region of Trentino illegally held by Austria entered as a wedge between Lombardy and the Venetian provinces. Our deal with the empire of Austria-Hungary was still to be closed, because the borders prophesied by Dante were dear to every Italian heart. They were still and always would be along the line of the Brenner and of the Giulian and Illyrian Alps, including Fiume and Dalmatia.

Facing this new situation, every political man, including myself, began to examine his conscience. The mere mention of this problem was sufficient to make clear and evident the hidden travail of national consciousness. I was transformed in my thought.

“Now or never!” was the war cry of Cesare Battisti, whose noble spirit and final martyrdom by Austrian execution has made him immortal in Italian hearts. Then there was the prophetic vision of that fiery revolutionary spirit, Filippo Corridoni. With their inspiration I began to drag with me a fraction of the Socialists in favor of war. I had with me rebels of many schools, who through the dregs of their struggles would in the end now stand once more upon the indestructible vitality of our race.

The Socialist Senedrium, seeing where I was going, took the _Avanti_ out of my control. I could no longer preach, by that means, intervention of Italy in the war. I faced the Socialists in our conventions. I was expelled. I held public gatherings.

I created the Fasciti—a group of daring youths who believed that intervention could be forced. Do not doubt that their actions shook deeply our political framework, existing from the time of the independence of Italy up till 1914. I was their leader.

It is interesting to-day when democracy is challenged to recall that the Liberal Democratic pacifist group, headed by Giovanni Giolitti, a man of great influence in parliament and also a shrewd organizer of political schemes, was busy in the attempt to find a formula which would solve the problem of righting the borders of Italy, but which would save our country from the burden, the sacrifice and the loss of life that every war imposes. Giolitti promised that, even without war, Italy could obtain a great deal. This “great deal” awakened a feeling of sarcasm in the generous hearts of Italians. Naturally they are realists and the enemies of all forms of political bargaining.

Italians were looking beyond those peaceful concessions and those petty betterings of the borders. They did not believe in the sincerity of this scheming. I considered it weak statesmanship—the statesmanship of compromise. There were seers who saw in the European conflict not only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race. In the cycle of time, again a dramatic period had come which was making it possible for Italy by the weight of its army to deal as an equal with the leading nations of the world.

That was our chance. I wanted to seize it. It became my one thought of intensity.

The World War began on July 28, 1914. Within sixty days I severed my official connection with the Socialist party. I had already ceased to be editor of the _Avanti_.

I felt lighter, fresher. I was free! I was better prepared to fight my battles than when I was bound by the dogmas of any political organization. But I understood that I could not use with efficient strength my convictions if I was without that modern weapon, capable of all possibilities, ready to arm and to help, good for offense and defense—the newspaper.

I needed a daily paper. I hungered for one. I gathered together a few of my political friends who had followed me in the last hard struggle and we held a war council. When money alone is concerned, I am anything but a wizard. When it is a question of means or of capital to start a project, or how to finance a newspaper, I grasp only the abstract side, the political value, the spiritual essence of the thing. To me, money is detestable; what it may do is sometimes beautiful and sometimes noble.

A few friends, bristling with ideas and ardent with faith, almost immediately found small rooms, garret-like, in the narrow street of Paolo da Cannobio, near the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Near by there was a printing establishment. Its owner agreed to publish our newspaper at a small cost. I was mad to tell Italy and Italians the truth—their opportunity!

We had no need for great means. We wanted a newspaper that would hold the city of Milan like a fortress, with editorial articles of such value that they would be reprinted or quoted by every Italian newspaper.

Thus—and how dramatically!—the number of our readers would be multiplied. That was my passion. Our offices were quickly furnished with a desk and a few chairs. I can never cease to have affection for that intellectual dugout, the journalistic trenches from which I began to fight. A contract was signed with the printing establishment—a contract that every week was in danger of smashing for the lack of the few thousand lire needed to pay our weekly expense. But we were living on an idea.

On November 15, 1914, the first number of the _Popolo d’Italia_ appeared. Even now I call this new paper my most cherished child. It was only through it, small as was its beginning, that I was able to win all the battles of my political life. I am still its director.

I could write and I may write a thousand memories of this newspaper which was born in 1914 and remained my platform up to 1922. It was an instrument for the making of me. The name of the _Popolo d’Italia_ will occur over and over again. Its story in any case may be told through my personality as a political man, as a newspaper man, as a believer in this war, as a soldier, as an Italian and as a Fascist.

My first article in the _Popolo d’Italia_ turned a large part of public opinion toward the intervention of Italy in the war, side by side with France and England.

Standing by me and helping my work as newspaper man were the Fascisti. They were composed of revolutionary spirits who believed in intervention. They were youths—the students of the universities, the socialist syndicalists—destroying faith in Karl Marx by their ideals. There were professional men too—and the workingmen who could still hear the real voice of the country.

And now, while Italy remained out of the war, our first legions of volunteers were organized and went to France to fight. In the Argonne fell the two sons of Ricciotti Garibaldi, Bruno and Costante, nephews of the great Garibaldi, who conquered North Sicily and Naples for United Italy. The funeral of the two heroes took place in Rome and had solemn echoes all over Italy. Again the red shirts, once distinguished as the saviors of Italy, now in the land of France, testified to the indestructibility of Latinity.

[Illustration: The first offices, in Milan, of the _Popolo d’Italia_, Mussolini’s paper. ]

The past quarrels—not long past—of Mediterranean interests were wiped out. The hostilities of the French during the time of our war in Libya were put aside. No one remembered the episode of the French ships _Manouba_ and _Carthage_, which brought help to the Turks, who were fighting against us, in January, 1912. Everything was off. France was in danger, assaulted and invaded after the tragic rape of Belgium. This I preached and set forth. France was in danger!

Gabriele d’Annunzio, on the fifth of May, made his speech at Quarto dei Mille, near Genoa. Quarto dei Mille was the starting point of Garibaldi and his thousand northerners and other patriots who went down to Sicily to deliver Southern Italy from the yoke of the Bourbons. He, with superb eloquence, exhorted Italy to enter the war.

The spirit of the country was tuned up. The opposition of Giolitti brought about a quick decision. The crown, bound by parliamentary formulas and by the advice of its counsellors, wanting to follow strictly the literal and orthodox interpretation of the constitution, told the personal representative of the Kaiser that Italy as an old ally had been kept in the dark and thus betrayed.

The insurrection in Milan in favor of war, the strong feelings of the same flavor in Rome, Padua, Genoa and Naples, decided His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III to exclude Giovanni Giolitti and to reconfide to Salandra, who had tendered his resignation, the task of reconstituting a new ministry. I felt that I had had a part in winning this battle. Still a young unproved man, I had already a record of untrammeled freedom and power.

The new ministry spelled war. Thrown aside was the “great deal” of His Excellency Giolitti; the question now was to choose the right moment and the right way to jump into the war. We were breathing hard, our hearts were ready, we were awaiting the great hour. It came May 24, 1915. Can any one say what were my emotions at this moment of triumph?

I cannot try to narrate in one chapter all the events of the war on the Italian front. It is impossible. The war moulded me. I was forced into its dramatic unfolding in the circumscribed view-point of a mere soldier of the war. I will tell what touched me most as a soldier and indirectly as a political man.

I made up my mind to be the best soldier possible from the very day that I wore again the glorious uniform of gray-green of the regiment of Bersaglieri—the best shock troops of Italy—in which regiment I had already served during the time of my compulsory military service. I wanted to be a soldier, obedient, faithful to discipline, stretching myself with all my might to the fulfilment of my duty.

In this I felt that I succeeded. My political position brought me plenty of offers of privileges and sheltered places. I turned them down.

I wanted to create the impression of a complete and rigid consistence with an ideal. This was not a scheming on my part for personal gain; it was a deep need in my nature of what I believed and still hold on to as my life’s dedication—namely, that once a man sets up to be the expounder of an idea or of a new school of thought, he must consistently and intensively live the daily life and fight battles for the doctrines that he teaches at any cost until victory—to the end!

Time has effaced many things; the easy spirit of forgetfulness has erased so much. Victory, which came after forty-one months of hard fighting, has awakened many deep resentments.

As soon as war was declared, as I have said, I asked the military authorities to accept my services as a volunteer. They answered that I could not be a volunteer. That was a tragedy. They said that they refused on the ground that an article of the military by-laws considered as possible volunteers only those who had been rejected for physical unfitness, or were exonerated for other reasons from compulsory military service. I could not be accepted as a volunteer. I was to wait my turn to be called to arms until the order from my superiors should be sent me. I was disconsolate.

Happily, my turn came quickly. On September first, only three months after Italy declared war, I donned the simple uniform of a private Bersagliere. I was sent to Brescia, in Lombardy, not far from the raids of airplanes, to drill.

Almost at once I was, to my great relief, despatched to the thick of the fighting on the high Alps. For a few months I underwent the hardest trials of my life in mountain trenches. We still had nothing to soften our hardships in the trenches or in the barracks. We were simply stumbling along. Short of everything—carrying on—muddling through! What we suffered the first months—cold, rain, mud, hunger! They did not succeed in dampening in the slightest degree my enthusiasm and my conviction as to the necessity and the inevitableness of war. They did not change the direction of one hair of my head, one thought in it.

I was chosen to be the amanuensis of headquarters. That I refused. I refused flatly. I amused myself instead by joining the most dangerous reconnoitering expeditions. It was my will and my wish. I gained through that. Within a few months I was promoted corporal by merit of war action, with a citation from my superior in these words: “Benito Mussolini, ever the first in operations of courage and audacity;”

My political past, with the suspicions of cautious and sometimes unseeing authorities, still followed me; it was enough to keep my superiors from sending me to the training school for officers at Vernezzo. After one week of leave I went back to the trenches, where I remained for months. The same life, feverish, adventurous, desperate—and then typhoid fever sent me to the military hospital at Cividale. When I was better I was packed off to Ferrara for a brief, stupid period of convalescence. From there I again took my place on the high pinnacles of the Alps where at night one looking into the dark sky with its shimmering stars felt nearer to the great dome above.

My battalion was ordered to an advance post on the Carso—Section 144—to take up the offensive. I was then made one of the company of soldiers who had specialized in hand grenades. We lived only a few dozen yards from the enemy, in a perpetual and, it sometimes seemed, an eternal atmosphere of shell fire and mortal danger that would be our life forever.

After the first period of hardship I became perfectly and almost comfortably accustomed to all the terrible elements that life in the trenches involves. I read with hungry eagerness the _Popolo d’Italia_—my newspaper. I had left it in the hands of a few friends. Precipitously separated from it, as one leaves suddenly a beloved relative, I had given orders to keep alight the lamp of Italy’s duty and destiny.

I commanded: “Continue always to call for war to the end.”

I wrote often to my friends. Never did I let myself indulge in writing all my true feelings and opinions, because I was first of all a soldier, obeying. I found my recreation in the trenches studying the psychology of officers and troops. Later on that practice in observation became invaluable to me.

In my rough heart I held a persistent admiration for the soldiers from all corners of Italy. Many ordered to the eastern front were not convinced of the historical basis for the war; yet they knew how to obey their commanding officers with admirable discipline. Many of those officers were students of the colleges and universities. It was fine to see them striving to emulate the regulars and to prove that the old-time valor was still alive in the new Italian generation.

The fact was that war, with its heavy toll of man and materials, and with its terrific hardships, surprised us. It was far away from our Garibaldian conception of what war was. We were compelled, in breakneck haste, to modify our ideas, to change our systems of fighting and our methods of offense and defense. My heart was gladdened to see that the capacity for adaptability of our race brought marvellous and quick returns. The headquarters and all the auxiliary military organizations, particularly the medical, worked with a precision which I never have forgotten. But often, as I went over the political situation back of our armies, dark doubts were in my mind. The work and actions of the men in power and of the political organizations centred in Rome caused me deep fears. The parliamentary world seemed unable to free itself from its old faults.

The poisonous currents of non-intervention and neutrality were still spending their last strength upon us. They would not fairly face their defeat. I knew they were doing their utmost to minimize the energy and elasticity of our fighting efforts.

The foolish babblings and fears of the coffeehouse strategists, the slackers whose presence offended the families whose sons were in the war, contributed to depress the spirit of resistance. As a plain soldier, I could not understand how, for instance, Rumania could be dragged into the war with a few hundred machine guns. How could Greece be persuaded to march against the Turks, influenced by a classic dance that Isadora Duncan performed at the Piræus?

I was following, day by day, the movement of our army—the Battle of the Isonzo in 1916, the fights on the Alps. With less interest, I followed the fortunes of war in France, the unfortunate failure at the Dardanelles and the developments in the eastern section. As for Italy, never for a minute did I doubt that victory would finally come to us. Though war were to last longer than the longest estimate, though our economic power might totter under the effort and weight of the conflict, nevertheless I was sure of a final victory.

The Italian army in its various actions was led by a method of successive assaults, to shake the efficiency of the enemy. In spite of all the hardship, discipline remained intact throughout our lines. The invasion attempted on the plateaus of the Alps in 1916 was soon thrown back. The soldiers of the Carso, where I was, had all the appearance of seasoned veterans.

In such a gigantic drama, when thousands of our brothers fell, it is absurd to speak of oneself.

However, to prove once more what miseries were woven into the Italian life of politics, I was compelled from time to time to give out in the newspapers news concerning myself. This was in order to smash the suspicions of those persons who thought me hidden in some office, distributing mail and entertaining in my mind doubts of the possibility of our winning the war. I was compelled to offset this slander and to state over and over what I had done and what I was doing. I was then major corporal of the Bersaglieri and had been in the front line trenches from the beginning of the war up to February, 1917, always under arms, always facing the enemy without my faith being shaken or my convictions wavering an inch. From time to time I sent articles to the _Popolo d’Italia_ exhorting to endless resistance. I pleaded for unshaken faith in final victory. For reasons of military discipline I used a _nom de plume_. Thus I found myself fighting in two ways—against the enemy without and in front of me and against the enemy of weak spirit within and behind me.

On the morning of February 22, 1917, during a bombardment of the enemy trenches in Sector 144—the sector of the hard-pressed Carso under the heaviest shellfire—there happened one of those incidents which was a daily occurrence in trench life. One of our own grenades burst in our trench among about twenty of us soldiers. We were covered with dirt and smoke, and torn by metal. Four died. Various others were fatally wounded.

I was rushed to the hospital of Ronchi, a few miles from the enemy trenches. Doctor Piccagnoni and other surgeons took care of me with the greatest zeal. My wounds were serious. The patience and ability of the physicians succeeded in taking out of my body forty-four pieces of the grenade. Flesh was torn, bones broken. I faced atrocious pain; my suffering was indescribable. I underwent practically all my operations without the aid of an anæsthetic. I had twenty-seven operations in one month; all except two were without anæsthetics.

This infernal life of pain lasted until a furious bombardment burst into pieces one wing and part of the central building of my hospital at Ronchi. All the wounded were rushed to a far-away refuge, but my condition would not permit my removal. Unable to move, I remained for days under the intermittent fire of the enemy guns among the dirty, jagged ruins of the building. I was absolutely defenseless.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan._ A photograph of Mussolini in the war, published in the _Popola d’Italia_ Translation: The most recent snapshot of our editor and his captain taken at a point of the extreme lines on the Carso. ]

In spite of all, my wounds began to heal. Better days and relief came. I received numberless telegrams of solicitude and once His Majesty the King called; his warm sense of humanity toward all soldiers and toward the victims of the war will never be forgotten by me or by Italy.

After some months I found myself in a war hospital in Milan. In August I began to walk with crutches, on which I swung about for many months. My limbs were too weak to support my weight.

I took my place as a fighter in my newspaper office. The acute situation created by the incredible and inconceivable failure of the Russian front was putting upon us new duties. It was necessary to face them. To all this there was added a subtle propaganda in the land. That despicable poison had as a slogan the vile sentence of a Socialist member of parliament: “We will desert the trenches before the winter comes.”

There was need to fight to a finish these mysterious forces which were playing upon the sentiments and sufferings of the people. Soldiers, after a fortnight’s furlough, were returning to the trenches in a sullen frame of mind. Life in the cities had all the characteristics of revelry. It was the psychological moment in which it was necessary to have the people feel highly the strength of authority. It was necessary that the government should stand up in its shoes.

I do not choose to make posthumous recriminations. The weakness of internal politics in 1917, the feeble parliamentary situation, the hateful socialistic propaganda, were certainly preparing the ground for events that could prove to be ruinous. And the blow came in October, 1917; it took the name of Caporetto.

Never in my life as an Italian and as a politician have I experienced a sorrow equal to that which I suffered after news of the defeat of Caporetto.

This episode, compared with other defeats in the various theatres of the Great War, certainly did not have an exceptional importance, but it was a terrific blow for Italians. This sudden breaking down of our front let a wedge of the enemy army penetrate into the high valley of the Isonzo. In the first rush of the war we had gone over the borders into old Austria, carrying on our warfare on enemy ground. We had withstood in 1916 the attack on the Alps of Asiago. We had conquered the plateau of Bainsizza. We had been ten times victorious on the Isonzo. Our sensitiveness and tormented souls were now shaken to the depths.

The moment was fearful. The Third Army, surrounded on the other side of the Isonzo, must be saved. It was imperative to stand at all costs on the Piave and to resist like stone on Mount Grappa to save the north of the Venetian provinces from being cut off from the rest of Italy. The rally of the army, followed by quick action, took place in almost no time. On Mount Grappa the Army of Iron withstood. On the Piave the enemy could not pass by. A new strength entered into play. One could feel it coming. A new spirit of war took its unfaltering stand. Once more we saw the enemy face to face, after losing Gorizia and two provinces, Belluno and Udine. We were deeply wounded, and we lived dramatic moments which seared my heart. But we may now be sure that Italy did not go through the tragic hours that many armies and other countries underwent. Compare with our disaster the general picture of the Great War—the loss of three provinces with the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the invasion of Königsberg, the fourteen invaded departments of France and the flooding of Belgium.

I am proud that during that year of desperate moments my paper gave a higher note to the political life of the country. We raised the fighting spirit of the soldiers.

Helped by the mutilated, the wounded and the pro-war veterans, I began an active campaign of “Stand to a Finish.” With fiery style I demanded on the part of the central government severe action against slackers and whosoever undermined the spirit of war. I called for the organization of a volunteer army. I asked for military rule in the north of Italy. I insisted on the suppression of socialist newspapers. I asked for a more humane treatment of the soldiers. I campaigned for war discipline—first behind us and all over the land, then at the front. This campaign developed by degrees in the newspaper, then in public meetings, in gatherings at the front. It brought results far beyond my highest hopes. The government seemed to be tugged after us by our efforts, toward resistance and victory.

Thus the winter went by. With the coming of the spring the whole Italian people stretched out their energies toward the front on the Piave and that on the Grappa.

At last! A spirit of national solidarity, deep and alive, had become the common property both of the soldiers and of their families. A high spirit of duty and sacrifice was the rule of life in our Italy!

We were ready in 1918 on the Piave with a heroic army. The Arditi, the first shock troops, composed of volunteers who went over the top with hand grenades and daggers, was giving a unique dramatic appeal to our aggressive spirit. In every one there was the deep desire to efface the memory of the days of Caporetto. We were to go back—back to where our brothers, dead and alive, were waiting for us! The remembrance of our dead, above all, was calling to us. Surely the wish of our adversaries to cross the Piave could never be; it was an idle hope, to be met and crushed by our own offensive.

Aviation continued to give service of reconnoitering and bombardment. I could feel the soul of Italy stretching toward victory. Necessity had sharpened the more brilliant minds. June came and with it the dawn of the enemy’s attack.

Our secret service succeeded in learning exactly the time that the enemy would start his drive. Following sound war strategy, our supreme command decided to surprise the enemy, and just a few hours before the enemy was ready to move a deluge of every description fell on his front lines as well as the supporting lines behind. His plans were smashed. He threw bridges across the Piave, but every one was destroyed. The Montello, which was once the key of that front and which the enemy intended to take and use as a pincher against our army, we held with dogged tenacity. There were oscillations for a few miles, but the battle raged on without a stop. Our counter attacks came back always, again and again and again. Thus after the first three days the enemy felt that this time the Italians were like an unbreakable wall which they could not scale or batter down!

Near Zenzon the adversary succeeded in crossing the river as far as Monastie of Treviso, but a rapid counter attack of a few of our brigades threw him back on the Piave again. It turned into a disaster for the enemy, as the river, flooded, washed away bridges and soldiers toward the sea. On the twenty-third of June, five days after the beginning of the big battle, our supreme command assured Italy that our resistance was bound to hold. I felt that it was a sure sign that victory was at hand. I believe to this day that the Battle of the Piave was one of the most decisive of the whole World War.

The enemy suffered loss beyond reckoning. About 100,000 Hungarians were sacrificed on the Piave. That brought about deep resentment in Budapest. Among the people of the various races in the Austrian Empire there began discussions about the burdens that each nationality in that empire had to suffer. From them—the enemies—each nationality felt that its treatment was becoming intolerable.

News leaked out to us from Austria-Hungary. It was clear that internal difficulties there were growing every moment. The enemy’s army, however, was still holding together and under the goad of necessity was sharpening the work of oppression on our two provinces which still remained under the weight of occupation and misfortune.

It was at this time, right after the spirit of exhilaration of victory, that I observed strange tendencies in the Italian political world. Evil activity was at hand. It needed to be exposed and suppressed. It was cloaked under the appearance of humanitarianism. It was planning to give a series of national rights to peoples who never had the consciousness and the dignity of nations—to peoples who had been for more than a century instruments of oppressing the Italian elements under Austria, under the instigation of the despotic empire. The sun of our victory was rising, but to be a complete victory, a victory that would carry our soldiers on the road to Vienna, it must not falter through false sentimentality.

This crisis was sufficient to inspire many great men still under the influence of antiquated and rusted democratic ideas to start discussions about the problems of racial differences. They always tended to favor our worst enemies. The spirit of our nationalism was attacked and dwarfed by sophisticated and pernicious applications of sentiment, irritating to our deepest feelings and to our most legitimate susceptibilities. Voices of the Italians began to say that every time Italy was on the verge of living its hour of joy, glory and victory there were always those who soiled the moment, and this often not in good faith.

Summer went by, and in October, 1918, our supreme command, with fifty-one Italian divisions—to which were added three British, two French divisions, one American regiment and a few Czecho-Slovakian volunteers—determined to make a decisive and final drive on the Austrian front.

The strategic plan was a very wise one. The enemy’s front was pierced at Sernaglia; our army rushed through the break. We started a surrounding movement, one to the left toward Trento, and one to the right toward Udine and the lower Piave. The ardent dash of our soldiers and the ability of our officers brought these movements to full success and crumbled to pieces the whole front of the enemy. The _War Bulletin_ states the enormous number of prisoners, guns and war material that fell into our hands.

The army of Austria-Hungary was defeated. Its navy had suffered tremendous losses. We landed at Triest. We occupied Trento.

The final victory was not only a victory of a war. I saw more than that. It was a victory for the whole Italian race. After a thousand years we, awakened, were again giving a tangible proof of our moral and spiritual valor. We were living again on warlike tradition. Our love of country had bloomed again. We felt our formidable weight in the future of a new Europe. New generations of Italians rejoiced, for the Italian cities were once again rejoined to the country. Trento and Triest, as our race had wished so long, now were within the borders—the natural borders which Dante had prophesied and defined in the fourteenth century.

In every corner of the land the church-bells rang, saluting the new day. War, so long and so taxing, had ended!

It ended with a full undeniable victory of Italy in spite of the bankruptcy of Russia and of the abominable work of slackers and professional destroyers of ideals. For me, every family wore the badge of a dear one dead or wounded. Widows and orphans of war were proud to show the symbols of sadness and glory. We were in Trento and Triest. Fiume was half conquered, while Dalmatia was still in the scale.

Over Italy reigned almost supreme a spirit of pride and of serenity typical of those who have won. War had lasted longer than we thought, had diminished our wealth, had supposedly reduced to the minimum our future.

Victory, however, warmed our hearts and our souls. It exalted Italians and spurred them to higher work, honoring the dead as well as the living. From October to December, 1918, Italy seemed like a factory working in full blast in complete accord with progress. War had left, beyond its inevitable griefs, a deep poetical vein in our national life. No one sensed it better, no one seemed more a part of it, than I.

It was in this great historical moment immediately after a victory achieved with untold hardship that our young nation—younger as a nation than America—with traditions not yet seasoned by age, in spite of having thrown into the glowing brazier of the conflict men and wealth, was treacherously deceived. Its fundamental trustfulness was played upon in the making of the Treaty of Versailles.

This is the awful toll that Italy paid in the Great War—652,000 dead, 450,000 mutilated, 1,000,000 wounded. There is not in our country one single family which during the forty-one months of the war had not placed in the holocaust, on the altar of the country, a part of itself. I know every day, ten years later, that the mutilated, the wounded, the widows and orphans of war form a vast proportion of our population, inspiring the respect and homage of the multitude.

I never forget. We have gone through a thousand phases of internal troubles, from aberrations to a purifying revolution, yet—from Mount Stelvio to the sea, in our mountain cemeteries which the hand of time slowly effaces—there remains the most powerful citadel of the fortune of our nation and of our people. I never forget.

I had been the most tenacious believer in the war. I had fought with all my warm soul of Italian and soldier. I lived the joy of victory. I lived in the midst of the unrest of after-war. But in every event, happy or sad, I have always had as a touchstone, as a lighthouse, as a source of every advice and of deep wisdom, the memory of the dead. They are from every region and from every walk of life, even those who were under foreign yoke or emigrated to other countries. They gave their blood and were willing to offer the supreme sacrifice for the mother country. Until the time when a nation has the right of sitting with proud head among other nations, the surest sign of its strength, the highest title of its nobility, the vital food needed to reach greatness, will always be given by those who laid down their blood and life for their immortal country.

These are the marks that war made upon one’s body, one’s mind and one’s soul.

Above all, it gave to one, who was still young, an understanding of the essences of mankind.