CHAPTER VIII

TOWARD CONQUEST OF POWER

Finance, the proper use and easy flow of capital, and the development of the banking structure of a nation must not be underestimated when one has to face the clear responsibility of building a state or of leading a people out of chaos.

The noisy crash of the great Banca Italiana di Sconto in Italy revealed, as I have said, a deep weakness in our economic structure. After the war it was clear that many banking and industrial enterprises were out of adjustment and must disappear or be succeeded by stronger institutions.

There were struggles between opposing groups of capitalists. These created a cynical attitude among the modern middle class; at the same time it was shown that our capitalistic industrial group resented the vice of having no comprehensive plan. We needed a strong capitalistic tradition, rigorous experience; we found that in the whir of events it was difficult to perceive who was right and who would probably be able to save himself, when the pressure came and a test of strength was made.

The other nations, who saw deeply into this strange cauldron through the cold eyes of their financiers, made dark prophecies as to our economic life. The Italian government itself did not know how to behave in its money affairs, and, not finding anything better, did as is often done in such circumstances—began to print money. That contributed to render a situation which was already bad and complicated, grotesquely worse.

In January, 1922, the Inter-Allied Conference was held at Cannes in southern France. It was a very good junket and it was made more pleasant by the fine hospitality of the French. I went there to serve my newspaper, the _Popolo d’Italia_. What an excellent occasion it was to distract public opinion from our internal crisis, at least temporarily! We could examine thoroughly, instead of domestic thorns, problems of international character!

At Cannes I wanted to interview the great world politicians—responsible men. I would have liked, from a full survey, to have informed Italian public opinion as to the various ingredients which we could find in the pudding of our international situation. The Cannes conference was the overture to the opera of the conference in Genoa. Italy should have selected her own policy. It should have been one which would not betray vital interests arising from our most urgent historic and political necessities.

At any rate because of these considerations, I decided to go to Cannes. I collected ten thousand lire for necessary expenses. My brother, Arnaldo, went to convert them at a money changer and brought me the equivalent in French money, which amounted to no more than five thousand, two hundred francs. Though I had followed the course of foreign exchange this little personal experience made a deep impression. It made me realize an angular fact; the Italian currency had lost nearly half of its value in comparison to French currency! It was a grave symptom. It was a humiliation. It was a blow to the self respect of a victorious nation, a vexing weathervane; it indicated our progress toward bankruptcy! Up leaped the thought that this situation must be cured by the vital strength of Fascism. It was one of our opportunities; the desperate developments unfortunately had not compelled the government, or political parties, or parliament itself to act. The monstrosity of inflation instead gave to everybody a fatuous, inconsistent, artificial sense of prosperity.

The Cannes conference had no importance; it was a preface for Genoa. It was clothed in an atmosphere of indifference. International meetings had followed each other with tiresome regularity here and there in resorts of Europe which appeared pleasant places to hold meetings. The last reunions had lost interest and were, instead of being important, the object of newspaper satire and of mocking “couplets” in comic reviews. To me, however, the sojourn at Cannes gave a means of extracting personally, from a direct and realistic examination of peoples and events, deep and well-rooted conclusions.

The Cannes conference had provoked a sudden ministerial crisis in France. Briand, whom I interviewed in the course of these days, resigned without waiting for a vote of the Chamber of Deputies. And I, in an article of January 14th, 1922, entitled “After Cannes,” having given due weight to the numerous sharp interrogation marks of the international situation, concluded:

“The unsolved problems, questionings and challenges could be ranged in line to infinity. It is urgent, instead, to take note of the most important lesson of the French crisis. It is a bitter verification. It will bring the masses of the populations who suffer morally and economically to say in their hearts, ‘These gentlemen are either without conscience, or they are powerless and flabby. They either have no wish to make peace or they are not able to make it. A Europe in such terrible spiritual and economic conditions as those of the present must embark on reason or sink. The Europe of to-morrow, broken in divisions of impoverished peoples, may become a colony: two other continents are already high up on the horizon of history!’”

To the plight disclosed by the wide picture of the European horizon unfolding to my eyes, was to be added that due to our domestic troubles, always growing a little worse.

I have always spoken as a journalist, as a politician, as a deputy, of the existence of two Italies. One appeared to me freed from servitude. It was noble, proud, loyal, devoutly dedicated by a bloody sacrifice of war, resolved to be always in the first rank to defend the right, the privilege and the great name of the Italian people. On the other side, however, I saw another Italy, dull to any consciousness of nobility and power, indifferent to origin and traditions, serving obscure “isms,” a slave to apathetic tendencies, cold, egotistic, incapable of gallantry, dead to sacrifice.

In a thousand hardships, in numerous fights, those two Italies were arrayed by immutable destiny one against the other; their opposition was revealed in bloody manifestations, typical of the fierce and final struggle between the Fascisti and their enemies. To see in its right light the character of this antithesis, let us examine some of the typical episodes.

In Pistoia, for instance, a brave officer, Lieutenant Federico Florio, who fought valiantly during the War and who had followed D’Annunzio in Fiume, was treacherously murdered by a deserter anarchist, Cafiero Lucchesi. It was a crime premeditated by a craven to strike down a gallant man. This criminal outrage filled the souls of the Fascisti with utter indignation. The last words of our martyr were simple and solemn, “I am sorry now I will not be able to do something else for my Country.” No more. Then the agony came. I felt that such sacrifices cemented indissolubly the unity of Fascism.

“A formidable cement!” I wrote in my paper. “It binds the Fascisti legions; a sacred and intangible bond keeps close the faithful of the Littorio. It is the sacred bond of our dead. They are hundreds. Youths. Mature men. Not a party in Italy, nor any movement in recent Italian history can be compared to Fascism. Not one ideal has been like the Fascist—consecrated by the blood of so many young souls.

“If Fascism were not a faith, how did it or could it give stoicism and courage to its legions? Only a faith which has reached the heights, only a faith can suggest those words that came out from the lips of Federico Florio, already bloodless and gray. Those words are a document; they are a testament. They are as simple and as grave as a passage from the Gospel.

“The Fascisti of all Italy must receive and meditate these words—in silence—but unceasingly marching, always more determined—toward the goal! No obstacle will ever stop them.”

All of us had full realization of the command and the impulse which came from the dead. When faith leaps out of the hearts of martyrs it carries irresistibly the sure impression of nobility, and brands men with the symbol of its eternal greatness.

The groups of the Fascisti, their meetings, their compact parades, and their services in patriotism had as ideal leaders our martyrs, invincible knights of the Fascist faith and passion. We called them by name, one by one, with firm and sure voice. At every name, the comrades answered, “Present.” This was a simple rite; it had all the value and the affirmation of a vow.

Quite an opposite symptom of the two contrasting Italies was plainly manifested in the politics displayed by the two senators, Credaro and Salata, who were in border zones, as high commissioners of the government. These two men seemed to ask from the natives who were not of Italian blood a kind of mercy and tolerance for the fact that they themselves were Italians. No demand of the German-speaking people on the frontier was considered unjustified. Little by little, following that policy of cowardice and servitude, we renounced our well-defined rights, sanctified by the blood spilled by volunteer heroes. Already in June, 1921—as I said in the preceding chapter—without mincing words I had denounced and ridiculed in the presence of all the chamber of parliament the work done by Credaro and Salata. Their destructive, eroding activity, however, continued. The Fascisti, confronted by successive proofs of such innate and inane weakness, were roused; they accused the two governors with violent words. On January 17th, 1922, at the meeting held in Triest, the Fascisti demanded the recall of Salata and the suppression of the central office for the New Provinces. That campaign succeeded in making its own way some time afterward. In fact the two senators, Credaro and Salata were recalled even though they were replaced by the government. But the consequence of their errors were to be suffered for a weary time. Quite differently, with pride and dignity, would the black shirts have garrisoned the sacred limits of the Brenner and the Nevosso.

In that period of bitter charges, counter charges, debates and squabbles, while the European horizon was still filled with thunder storms, came the death of the Pontiff Benedict XV, Giacomo della Chiesa, of a noble family of Genoa. He passed away January 22nd, 1922. He had ruled the Church in the stormiest period of the war, following Pius X, the kind-hearted patriarch of Venice, who distinguished his pontificate by a strong battle against the fads of political and religious modernism.

Benedict XV did not leave in our souls a sympathetic memory. We could not, if we tried, forget that in 1917, while people were struggling, when we had already seen the fall of Czarism and the Russian revolution with the defection of the armies on the eastern front, the Pontiff defined the war with the unhappy expression, “a useless massacre.” That phrase, inconceivable in such a terrible moment, was a blow to those who had faith in sacrifice for an ideal and who hoped the war would correct many deep-rooted historical injustices. Besides, war had been our invention; the Catholic Church had ever been a stranger to wars, when she did not provoke them herself. And yet, the ambiguous conduct of the Pope amid the fighting nations is considered nowadays by some zealous persons who are deficient in critical sense and blind to historical consciousness, as the maximum of equity and the essence of an objective spirit.

But that attitude and its expression had, for us Italians, a very different value. It served to make evident an anomalous phase of Italy’s situation—that is, the position of the Pontiff in Rome during a period in which Italy was engaged in a terrible struggle. For that reason, on the death of Benedict XV, the succession to the pontificate took on at that moment a particular importance for the future.

There is a saying in our country which is applied to the most extraordinary events to imply that the most complex things can be reduced to very simple terms. The expression is, “When a Pope is dead, another one is made.” There is no comment to be made on that simple statement. But to succeed to the throne of St. Peter, to become the worthy substitute for the Prince of the Apostles, to represent on earth the Divinity of Christ, is one thing; the weight and value of a conclusion reached by an elective assembly is another. In view of the relationship that existed between the State and the Church in Italy one can easily understand that there could be reasons for apprehension, as well as deep interest in the results of the Conclave. The eyes of all the Catholic world were turned toward Rome. Great vexations stirred all the European chanceries; secret influences were penetrating deep places; they were trying to suppress and overpower each other.

Spectators and diplomats of every country in the world were spell bound by the complexities at the very moment that preparations for the Conclave were being made, when all Rome was getting ready to wait patiently in the Plaza of St. Peter’s during the balloting.

Meanwhile in Italy there arose a debate on the political effects of Benedict XV. Various prophecies were made as to his successor; the journalistic row that went on had never been surpassed. Many problems of vast consequences were superficially treated.

The fall of the Bonomi ministry, attributed to inefficiency in domestic politics and to the fall of the Banca Italiana di Sconto, was really due to the failure of a commemoration for Pope Benedict XV from the national parliament.

I had already on various occasions disclosed to the Fascisti, whom I considered and consider always the aristocracy of Italy, that our religious ideal had in itself moral attributes of first importance. I had affirmed the necessity of condemning the unfruitful conception, absurd and artificial, of affected or vicious anti-clericalism. That tendency not only kept us in a situation of moral inferiority as compared with other peoples, but also divided the Italians in the religious field into various schools of thought. Above all it exposed us to such corrupting, sinister and tortuous power as that of international Masonry of a political type, as distinguished from the Masonry known in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

I had wanted to show that the problem of the relations between the State and the Church in Italy was not to be considered insoluble, and to explain how necessary it was to create, after a calm and impartial objective examination, an atmosphere of understanding, in order to give to the Italian people a basis for a life of harmony between religious faith and civil life.

The Fascisti, as intelligent people worthy of the epoch in which they were living, followed me in the new conception of religious policy. To it was attached our war against Masonry as we knew Masonry in Italy. It was a war of fundamental importance and Fascism was almost unanimous in a determination to fight it to the end.

Let us not forget that the Masons of Italy have always represented a distortion, not only in political life, but in spiritual concepts. All the strength of Masonry was directed against the papal policies, but this struggle represented no real and profound ideal. The secret society from a practical point of view rested on an association of mutual adulation, of reciprocal aid, of pernicious nepotism and favoritism. To become powerful and to consummate its underhanded dealings, Masonry made use of the weaknesses of the Liberal governments that succeeded each other in Italy after 1870 to extend its machinations in the bureaucracy, in the magistracy, in the field of education, and also in the army, so that it could dominate the vital ganglions of the whole nation. Its secret character throughout the twentieth century, its mysterious meetings, abhorrent to our beautiful communities with their sunlight and their love of truth, gave to the sect the character of corruption, a crooked concept of life, without programme, without soul, without moral value.

My antipathy for that disgusting form of secret association goes back to my youth. Long before, at the Socialist congress of Ancona in 1914, I had presented to my comrades the dilemma: Socialists or Masons? That point of view had won a complete triumph, in spite of the strong opposition of the Mason-socialists.

Later, in Fascism, I made the same gesture of strength. It took courage. I obeyed the positive command of my conscience, and not any opportunism. My attitude had nothing in common with the anti-Masonic spirit of the Jesuits. They acted for reasons of defense. After all, their inner organization as a religious society is almost completely unknown.

For my direct, methodical and consistent course of policy the hate of the Masonic sect persecutes me even now. Masonry of that type has been beaten in Italy, but it operates and conspires behind mask of the international anti-Fascism. It utterly fails to defeat me. It tries to throw mud at me, but the insult does not reach its mark. It machinates plots and crimes, but the hired assassins do not control my destiny. It goes gossiping about my weaknesses, and the supposed organic afflictions of my body, but I am more alive and stronger than ever.

This is a war without quarter, a war of which I am a veteran. Every time that I have wanted to cauterize difficult situations in Italian political life, every time that I have wanted to give a sincere, frank and loyal moral rectitude to the personnel in politics, I have always had against me our Masonry! But that organization, which in other times was very powerful, has been beaten by me. Against me it did not and cannot win. Italians won this battle for me. They found the cure for this leprosy.

To-day in Italy we breathe the open air; life is exposed to the light of day.

When Bonomi fell, the King consulted with many minds. I too was called twice to the Quirinal, his official palace, where conferences are held. Obvious reasons of reserve forbid me to make known what I said to the Sovereign. This political crisis took on abnormal aspects. We groped in the dark. The number of men in the political field who were fit to fill a minority was very limited. They looked toward Orlando, then toward De Nicola, but nobody wanted to accept the responsibility of forming a ministry under the prevailing conditions. They were obliged to go back to Bonomi, who fell for the second time on the “via crucis” when he presented himself again at the chamber.

New consultations and new suggestions were made. Always the same names were given: Orlando, De Nicola, Bonomi. The picture presented that degree of helplessness which has afflicted so many democracies, and which has enabled many countries to vie with each other in the humiliating and derisive boast that they have had more governments and ministries than years of existence! The requirements for leadership were unchanged—the ability to compromise principles and sometimes even integrity, to barter and negotiate with palavering artistry in an effort to build another shaky structure which would perpetuate the whole depressing system. This system may be dear to the heart of doctrinaires. It was quite another affair in practice.

The “Popular” or “Catholic” party, following its bad political instinct, which caused it to be ultra conservative under cover and revolutionary in the street and in parliament, vetoed any return of Giolitti. The posture of the “popolari” was quite unique. Unfortunately they controlled a strong group in the chamber. While they refused to accept the responsibility of power, they blue-pencilled Giolitti and denied support to Bonomi. They rendered the composition of any ministry well-nigh impossible even as a makeshift.

In spite of repeated consultations the same names always came to the surface. It was such a stagnation as comes finally to weak democracies. It was tearing to pieces political logic, common sense, and, unfortunately, also Italy herself.

At last the Facta ministry was formed. This mediocre selection of a member of parliament, closely bound to Giolitti, was made as the only anchor of safety in an absurd extravaganza. Every day we went down one step on the stairs of dignity. Nevertheless, because of the conditions, and because Facta undertook a burden that nobody else wanted, I did not hesitate to declare in my paper that the new cabinet, colorless as it was, might function to some end. I was prepared to say that it could represent, if nothing else, a will to go on, at least in the affairs of ordinary routine administration. It is bad enough to suffer a government which creates nothing; it is even worse to suffer a system of politics which cannot of itself create even an administration!

Facta was an old veteran of parliament and I feel sure that he was a gentleman stamped out by the old die. Respectful of the third rate political morals of the men of his age, he had only one devotion. That was for his teacher, Giolitti. Facta had been a discreet Minister of the Treasury in other times. He had not, as even his friends admitted, the strength and authority needed to draw up a ministry at a serious moment. He had to face the gas and smoke of the struggle between parties, of the pretensions of the “popolari,” of the growing strength of Fascism, and, finally, a delicate international situation abroad.

It was in just such ways that the old “liberal” Italy with its petty dealing with problems, its little parliamentary pea-shooting, its unworthy plots in corridor and cloak rooms, ante-rooms and sidewalk cafes, for puny personal power, its recurring crises, its journalistic bickerings, was breaking the real Italy. Italy, with its struggling co-operatives, its inadequate rural banks, its mean and superficial measures of economy, its incapable and improvident charity! Italy, in its position of humble servant, with napkin on arm to wipe other mouths at international conferences! Italy, prolific and powerful! Italy, like a mother able to supply, even for foreign ingratitude, laborious sons to make fruitful other soils, other climates, other cities and other peoples! Such was her leadership; such was her plight!

Facta was the man who fully represented that old world. Facta was the first to be surprised that he had suddenly found so many admirers. He often said that he failed to understand why he should be at the head of the Italian government. This timid member of parliament forgot that all these people around him who gave him by their mouthings a sensation of strength and influence were only the survivors of an old Liberal-Democratic world, incapable of living, outdated, shipwrecked, clinging for safety to the last Liberal planks of compromise.

But the powerful machine of Fascism was already in motion. Nobody could step into its path to stop it, for it had one aim: to give a government to Italy.

In these days there were some attempts at Fascist secession and schism. I removed them with a few strokes of the pen and a few measures taken within. I was troubled less by mistaken disaffections than by a single grave incident in Fiume. There a renegade Italian, Zanella, nursed and nourished an ignoble anti-Italian plot. The Fascisti imposed banishment upon him. This evil representative of the autonomists and of the Jugo-Slavs was obliged to leave the unhappy city which without Italy would never have been able to put its lips to the cup of peace.

At this time Charles of Hapsburg died, after having twice tried vainly to seize again the crown of Saint Stephen. The nemesis of history completed its work and took away from the Hapsburg line the last possibility of return. In Italian history this reigning house had represented always a most unfortunate influence. It had been invariably adverse to our solidarity.

Without attracting deep attention or intelligent public interest, living this way and that, up and down by alternate hopes and crises, optimisms and weary despairs—came the Conference of Genoa.

On the first of that May was celebrated the so-called Festival of Labor. Unfortunately the only distinctions given this festival were an increased outburst of Socialist and Communist attacks and ambushes. Even the anniversary of the declaration of war, May 24th, was saddened by blood. Solemn celebrations were held throughout Italy, but in Rome the Communists dared to fire at the parade which was doing honor to Enrico Toti, the Roman who, besides his life, had hurled against the fugitive enemy also his crutches. One person fell dead and there were twenty-four wounded.

As if that was not enough the Alliance of Labor, a hybrid coalition of all the anti-Fascist groups, proclaimed a general strike.

It was too much! There was no sign of any act of energy from the government. Without hesitation I ordered a general mobilization of the Fascisti. I affirmed on my word of honor that we would break the back of the attempt of the red rabble. “We are sure to smash, _we say crush_, this bad beast once for all.”

Considering the timid behavior of the middle classes and of the government, this virile decision, taken after full analysis, with full determination and full responsibility, served as a cold douche for the socialists and the reds. The Fascist mobilization came like lightning.

On the same day the strike ended.

While the public streets, squares and fields were being put in order by the energetic intervention of the Fascisti, in the parliament at Montecitorio the usual intrigues went on. There was oscillation of plans and programmes. These ranged from proposals of a dictatorship to collaboration with the reds! In the general marasmus there came on July 12th a statement from the Minister of the Treasury, Peano, which marked for me the maximum of our anxiety.

_The budget of the nation had a deficit of six billions and a half._ It was a terrific figure for Italy. It was a situation impossible for our economic structure to bear. To errors in foreign and domestic policy was added financial chaos. Minister Facta in record-breaking speed had demonstrated his incapacity in every way. I made a speech in parliament on July 19th, 1922, in which I specifically and flatly withdrew from the ministry the votes of the Fascist group. After having demonstrated the equivocal position of the Socialists, who wanted to collaborate with the government so that they might blackmail it the better, and of the “popolari” who wrongly considered themselves supreme rulers of the situation, I said these clear and sharp words to the Premier himself:

“Honorable Facta, I tell you that your ministry cannot live because it is unbecoming from every point of view. Your ministry cannot live, I might better say vegetate, or drag its life along, thanks to the charity of all those who sustain you. The traditional rope in the same manner sustains the not less traditional hanged. After all, your makers are there to testify to the character of your ministry; you have been the first to be surprised into the presidency of the council.”

I went on then to examine the disheartening mistakes of the Facta policies and I concluded by asserting that Fascism by getting away from the parliamentary majority, had accomplished a “gesture of high political and moral modesty....” “It is impossible to be part of the majority,” I added, “and at the same time act outside as Fascism is now forced to act.”

These words excited a brisk stir of mumbles, exclamations, and comments, which went to a higher pitch when I added:

“Fascism will make its own decisions. Probably it will soon say if it wants to become a legitimate party, for that means a government party, or if it will instead be a party of insurrection. In the latter case it will no longer be able to be part of any governmental majority. Consequently it will not be obliged to sit in this chamber.”

I gave in that way, not only to the dying Facta ministry, but also to any other new government, an energetic and unmistakable warning. I had put up the signboard of my intentions and declared in the open where I stood.

On that day the Facta ministry fell. And immediately they began to grope in the dark again, trying to find a successor. Orlando, Bonomi, Facta, Giolitti. Again these were the names mouthed about.

By process of deductions and eliminations the name finally hit upon was Meda. He was the Popular party deputy from Milan, and the chief of the “popolari” deputies who with their secret, sinister tactics kept any ministry under their power. Meda, who had already been a minister, made his gesture of refusal and renunciation because of fear. That was our paradox—nobody in Italy, amid this so-called strength of the constituted order, which included priests and radicals, wanted or was able to assume responsibility of power. Whatever claims “liberalism” and “democracy” had for power, now at least nobody would touch the treasure.

In this situation the socialists cheerfully blackmailed the nation, while the Fascisti were silently preparing the yeast and the bread, the will and the weapons for an insurrection of national dignity.

While the conferences to find ways out of the crisis went on slowly, at the moment of inability to constitute a government there came about in Italy an almost inconceivable situation. All the strength of the left party, not only those openly subversive, but also the organization of the Labor Confederation, the Socialist parliamentary group, the Democratic groups, and the Republicans, staged a general strike all over Italy. Its character was typically and solely anti-Fascist. Its pretense was to save the liberty of the people, threatened by Fascism!

This galaxy of political elements, more despicable than riffraff, these inert, wasteful, hopeless forces which in the past had massacred every liberty and had trampled in every imaginable way on our morals, our peace, our efficiency, and our order, could not have done a more illogical, a more unjust, a more offensive and provocative act toward Fascism and the Italian people.

The days marked by these sinister forces were days in which I made irrevocable decisions. Our development brought by degrees a political and a military reserve strength, which was to bring us in the end to the March on Rome and the conquest of power.

As an answer to the anti-Fascist provocation, I ordered another general mobilization of the Fascisti. The council of the “Fasci Italiani di combattimento” was ordered to sit permanently. The Fascist technicians were to be brought together to continue the work in the public services. The “squadristi” were to disperse subversive organizations. The Fascisti of Milan assaulted the _Avanti_, which was considered the lair of our opponents. They burned the offices. They occupied the street-car barns. They began to make the public services operative in spite of the declared strike.

To crush a strike the government was powerless, but a new strength had been substituted for the government! The Fascisti, well armed, occupied the electric stations in order to prevent acts of sabotage. It was necessary to destroy forever all the nerve centres of disorder. The Fascisti did it.

In Milan alone three young black shirts lost their lives. Of these, two were university students. We had many wounded boys.

The trial of strength, however, was successful. The enemies of Italy were taken with convulsions. They tossed responsibilities back and forth in foolish oratorical and literary battles. The life of the people had come back to a normal rhythm. Fascism had revealed a profound strength, one able to dominate our Italy of to-morrow, not only in the sense of mere force, but in determination, fundamental wisdom, character and unselfish patriotism.

Our antagonists were defeated, confused and humiliated. One of those who called themselves interpreters of the liberal idea recognized—how generous!—that Fascism was now a power which could not be neglected. The _Corriere della Sera_, the serious and in some ways admirable Milan newspaper—which had always used its circulation to become the speaking trumpet for the spirit of moribund, middle class mediocrity—had given, in the past, a sort of halo to Filippo Turati, the Socialist leader. Now it felt that it was necessary to give a bit of space to recognize the right of Fascism to participation in the government. The unsettled crisis went lumbering along. I was again called by the King. I had some interviews with Orlando. One after another all the projected combinations fell apart and were put aside like old rejected castings. So, wearily, they came back to Facta. He sent one of his emissaries to me and asked me under what conditions the Fascisti would accept places in the new government. I sent back word by the messenger that Fascism would ask for the most important offices.

I was urged to take a position in the Cabinet, but how absurd! Naturally I had to stay out of the coalition so that I could maintain my freedom to criticise, and if need be to take action. My claims, however, for Fascist representation were judged immoderate. The ill-starred Facta ministry was launched without us, but as the ship took the water the nation’s sole greeting was a mutter of contempt and indifference.

Friends and enemies both looked only toward Fascism. It was the one element that sparked interest in the life of the Italian people.

I had made up my mind to lead the black shirts myself. I already had crystallized my determination to march on Rome.

The situation admitted of no other solution.

I called to Milan on October 16th a general who had special fitness and who was saturated by real Fascist faith. I made a scheme of military and political organization on the model of the old Roman legions. The Fascisti were divided by me into “principi” and “triari.” We created, after conferring with the high leaders, a slogan, a uniform, and a watchword. I knew perfectly the Fascist and anti-Fascist situation in every region of Italy. I could march on Rome along the Tyrrhenian sea, deviating toward Umbria. From the south the compact formations of Puglie and Naples could join me. The only obstacle was a hostile zone, which centred in Ancona. I called Arpinati and other lieutenants of Fascism and ordered them to free Ancona from social-communist domination. The town, which was known to be in the hands of the anarchists, was conquered by maneuvres carried out in perfect military fashion. There were some dead and wounded. Too bad! But now the remnants of the anti-Fascist forces were destroyed. Anti-Fascism was now concentrated in Rome; it was driven back to its barrack on Montecitorio, where parliament sat.

A new sunshine broke over the multitudes of our provinces. We could all breathe with full lungs. The brave effort of Fascism was now rising with the flood tide of its full efficiency. Critics of reputation, historians of wide-world fame, studious people from every part of the earth were beginning to regard with quickening interest the movement I had created and dominated and was leading toward victory.

While I was penning some editorials against representatives of the sceptics, I wrote: “Fascism is to-day in the first stage of its life: the one of Christ. Don’t be in a hurry; the one of Saint Paul will come.”

I was preparing then every minute the details of the conquest of Rome and of power. I was certainly not moved by any mirage of personal power, nor by any other allurement, nor by a desire for egotistical political domination.

I have always had a vision of life which was altruistic. I have groped in the dark of theories, but I groped not to relieve myself, but to bring something to others. I have fought, but not for my advantage, indirect or immediate. I have aimed for the supreme advantages of my nation. I desired finally that Fascism should rule Italy for her glory and her good fortune.

I cannot, for obvious reasons, discuss all the measures, even some of the most simple, that I took in this period. Some are of political and secret character about which reserve is absolutely necessary. The _Popolo d’Italia_, my paper, without attracting too much attention from outsiders and from my enemies, had become the headquarters of the spiritual and material preparation for the March on Rome. It was the hub of our thought and action. The military and the political forces both obeyed my command. I weighed all the plans and proposals. Having made my own plan at last I gave the necessary orders. Then there began extensive preparatory maneuvres, such as the occupation of Trento, of Ancona and of Bolzano—places which might threaten our strategy.

I wanted to inform myself about the state of mind of the Fascisti, about their efficiency and their determination. Accordingly I went to make four important speeches in different parts of Italy. In those speeches I set forth the policies of to-morrow. I defined the ultimate goal of Fascism. It was candidly stated. It was the conquest of power. I didn’t want to ingratiate myself with the masses. I have always spoken with naked candor and even with brutality to the multitudes. That is a distinct contrast to the contemptible courtship made for their favor by the political parties of every time and every land.

On September 17th, 1922, for instance, one month before the March on Rome, I wrote that it was necessary to “throw down, from the altars erected by the ‘Demos,’ His Holiness _the Mass_!”

The Fascisti meetings which I attended were held in Udine, which is in northern Italy, in Cremona, which lies in the valley of the Po, in industrial Milan and in Naples, the centre of southern Italy. I wanted to be personally acquainted with the spirit of those districts, each with a nobility of its own. I was acclaimed as a conqueror and a saviour. This flattered me, but be sure that it did not make me proud. I felt stronger, and yet realized the more that I faced mountains of responsibility. In those four cities, so different and so far one from the other, I saw the same light! I had with me the honest, the good, the pure, the sincere soul of the Italian people!

I assembled the Central Committee of the Fasci Italian! di Combattimento—the Bundles of Fight—and we came to an accord on the outlines of the movement, which was to lead the black shirts triumphantly along the sacred roads to Rome.

Speaking in those days at the Circolo Sciesa of Milan I said to my trusted men that we finally had come to the “sad sunset of Liberalism, and to the Fascist-dawn of a new Italy.”