CHAPTER VI

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.