On the Treaty of Rapallo
By Benito Mussolini
I am somewhat disturbed and almost regret accepting the invitation offered to me with so much flattery and insistence by your president Mrs. Rizzioli, because I am not a ceremonial speaker, but rather a speaker of stormy meetings, and I confess that I feel a little uncomfortable before an assembly such as this. So please forgive me if my speech is a bit disorderly.
[...]
But there are other issues we must focus on which are more important. We are in the aftermath of a peace treaty that has not given us peace. Meanwhile, I hasten to add that no peace treaty will ever give definitive peace. The perpetual peace spoken of by the German philosopher Kant in his famous pamphlet was the sign of a tavern where there was a cemetery of crosses. Now then, all peace treaties are not definitive, they are not written in stone: they are all written with the more or less ephemeral ink of diplomacy, and the Treaty of Rapallo is no exception to this rule.
The Treaty of Rapallo is a necessary bastard solution. Before condemning it—and we do condemn it—it must first be explained and understood. First of all, it was concluded with the clear and indirect hostility of the allies, with the misunderstanding of the American diplomatic world, and with the deficiency of our ruling political class. This deficiency of our ruling political class must also be explained. Our people, after having been divided for fifteen centuries, have only had the luxury of unity for fifty years, and in just fifty years one can not expect to achieve that high type of national consciousness which is the privilege of nations that have been unified for many centuries.
Certainly this does not justify the deficiency of men. Certainly there are men who must be brought to the court of public judgment. We must revise—and we will revise—all the diplomatic activity of the Italian ruling class.
But all this must not lead us to petty judgments in the face of complex events.
The Treaty of Rapallo will be revised, just as all the other treaties that resulted from the great European war will be revised. The Treaty of Versailles—whether France likes it or not—is already in tatters. The treaties of Trianon, Sèvres and Saint-Germain will soon be torn up as well, because after demolishing Austria they created two more: one in the north, called Czechoslovakia, where five million Bohemians intend to control a nation of thirteen million; and in the south, so-called Yugoslavia, a foolish construct emanating from the Times and from an Italian newspaper; it is the triumph of the Pan-Serbist thesis, Belgrade's thesis, which seeks to centralize all the South Slavic peoples who are divided by language, religion, customs, history and civilization.
The Treaty of Rapallo does not make us friends with Yugoslavia. This was and is a pitiful illusion. It would be enough to look at what was printed in Belgrade after Rapallo to understand that those people will never have sincere friendship with us. And the reason is due to a formidable disagreement: for us the natural, just, sacred and sacrosanct border is at the Julian Alps; but according to Yugoslavia, the natural, just, sacred and sacrosanct border is at the Isonzo.
Now, there is no possibility of compromise between these two clearly antithetical concepts. The entire Serbian press has a demeanor of incitement and provocation against us. As soon as they entered Dalmatia, the Serbs systematically demolished everything that reminded them of Italy.
You will understand that the problem of relations between Italy and Yugoslavia is part of the wider scope of European politics. We will never be able to address the question of Italian-Yugoslav relations unless we first free ourselves from the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon world. We need to bring all the small questions back into the big picture. As long as we are dependent upon our allies for coal, bread and other raw materials, we can only have relative autonomy in matters of foreign policy. But the day in which this economic subjugation ends, then we—a people of fifty million inhabitants, a people in a state of development, an intelligent, industrious and prolific people who do not need to quiver in the face of population statistics like France does, which sees its population declining by four million inhabitants—then we will be able to have a decisive voice in the upcoming period of European history.
The problem arises in these terms: Italians must grow in strength, civilization and greatness, so that when the treaties of European politics are under discussion, we will be able to dictate the conditions in our favor, and never allow the Yugoslavs and their allies to impose theirs.
I said and wrote that the Italians of Dalmatia are the purest of the Italians, because they are the most persecuted and because they are truly ascending Calvary with their sacrifice and martyrdom. We carry this passion in our hearts, we carry it and we want to pass it on. What should we do now, so that the Italians on the other side of the sea do not feel forgotten and abandoned? Many things: internal agitation; make Dalmatia known to the Italians (the enormous geographical ignorance of Italians must come to an end); make Dalmatia known through publications, conferences, cinema, flyers and posters; in short, do anything that can serve to direct the Italian consciousness towards that issue. Then come the other practical forms of Italianness: send aid to those groups of Italians who are fighting to keep the flame lit, the schools opened and the newspapers published.
And above all, take action to liquidate the old Italian political caste. It may be that in the judgment of future historians the conduct of this class will find judges willing to mitigate their guilt. But we who are living in this century of passion, we who feel the burning and the shame, we say that this ruling political class has exhausted its task.
It was the political ruling class that began with Cairoli (who gave Tunisia to the French) and ended with Giolitti; it is a political class that can no longer hold the helm of the State in a nation like Italy, where there is a woeful lack of Italian pride.
You have the ability to significantly change this. It is not true that women have no influence in national political life. Now I do not want to flatter you by citing those women who have been able to direct the destiny of peoples in a more brilliant way than men, but it is clear that, if women want, they can determine states of consciousness and provoke that strange and very powerful fact that philosophers call the imponderable.
The socialist can assert that everything can be explained by the mechanism of production relations, and the positivist can tell us that what matters in the universe is brute fact. But today the new currents of thought have made a clean sweep of these childish conceptions. There are other values in the world which can be measured and which can not be explained by historical materialism. It is the domain of passion, of feelings; of those moods that at a given moment cause individuals to choose martyrdom and lead peoples towards the greatest epics. These are the states of mind that you can form with your assiduous, silent, delicate work, which connives rather than confronts, which tries to persuade, before finally playing your cards: the cards of kindness, courtesy and charm.
You, dear legionaries of Fiume and Dalmatia, you have assumed an extraordinarily delicate and difficult task. We Fascists are achieving a reversal of national consciousness; but you, living in the midst of the people, feel that the people are afraid that when it comes to national matters the ghost of war will reappear. Now needless to say we are not warmongers, but nor are we pacifists.
Life goes beyond these absolutes. It is criminal to always want war, but sometimes it can be criminal to always want peace. All of this depends on a complex of historical circumstances and situations upon which it is useless to discuss.
Now I said that you have taken on a delicate and difficult task, which is to create the Dalmatian and Adriatic state of mind in Italy. From 1870 onwards there was a particular state of mind in Italy which allowed many elements to collaborate together. Who as a student did not participate in the beautiful years of the demonstrations for Trento and Trieste? The universities, journalists, the Chamber, the Senate and the Republican Party always had Trento and Trieste on their lips. Many did not know exactly how near or far away Trento and Trieste were; they knew that they were two cities subjected to Austria. But the state of mind existed throughout the nation; that is to say, a large part of our national consciousness was oriented as a state of mind towards these two sister cities. It is too bad that even back then there was no mention of Fiume and Dalmatia!
And as far as Dalmatia is concerned, despite being respectful admirers of Mazzini, we observe that Mazzini never spoke of a Slavic Dalmatia; he spoke of an Italo-Slavic Dalmatia. On the other hand, after five years of world war, after enormous sacrifices by Italy, after Italian battalions conquered Monastir for Serbia and after the Italian Navy saved the Serbian army, it remains to be asked whether or not today the great Mazzini would reconfirm his judgment.
Why does it matter if Italians are a minority in Dalmatia? First of all we must take into consideration how they came to be a minority. It can be traced back to the diabolical persecutions of Viennese politicians, whose official policy was one of dividing peoples. And if you knew the history of Dalmatia, which is still being written, you would see that the denationalization of Dalmatia was the perfidious and criminal work of the Vienna government. In 1880 all the cities of Dalmatia had Italian mayors. The last mayor of Spalato, Antonio Bajamonti, was called "the wonderful mayor", which tells you that even Spalato was very Italian just thirty years ago.
On the other hand, does not the qualifying element matter at all? If we are more civilized, then it is only logical that the less civilized should be annexed by us, rather than the other way around.
The work that you have to accomplish does not require street politics or violence.
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National problems are not yet resolved... Here I must deplore that today a great Milanese newspaper said that Napoleon was not born on Italian soil, when it is well-known that Corsica is Italian land.
If you legionaries keep this state of mind alive then you will have fulfilled your duty. I realize that the results will not be immediate and flashy. I know very well that you will encounter difficulties. The difficulties of misoneism, of skepticism, of that superficiality that is characteristic of some Italian male element. But do not formalize this. When the problem of Dalmatia finally reaches the national consciousness, you—you who kept the flame burning—you will have the sovereign privilege of saying: today the vast majority of Italians are aware, but a few months ago we were the nucleus of the avant-garde, we belonged to the phalanx of pioneers, we set the path, we marched on the front lines, we did not ask to win but to fight. And you will have the great satisfaction of having accomplished your duty. And before the people that will solve the Dalmatian problem in an Italian way, you will wave your pennant and say: we are proud of our work. This is the pennant of the laborious vigil; it should be the pennant of triumphal victory.
