On the Exit of Italy From the League of Nations
By Benito Mussolini
Blackshirts!
The historic decision which the Grand Council has acclaimed and which you have welcomed with your very enthusiastic cheering could no longer be put off.
For many long years we have tried to offer to the world a spectacle of unheard patience. We have not forgotten and we will never forget the shameful attempt at economic strangulation of the Italian people perpetrated at Geneva. (The huge crowd shouts in indignation). One would have thought that at a certain moment the League of Nations would have made a gesture of dutiful reparation. It did not do this. It did not want to do this.
The good intentions of some governments were drowned as soon as their delegates came into contact with that deadly environment that is the Geneva Sanhedrin, maneuvered by dark occult forces hostile to our Italy and to our revolution.
Under such conditions, our presence in the halls of Geneva was no longer possible. It offended our doctrine, our style, our temperament as soldiers.
The hour was approaching when it was necessary to choose in this dilemma: either in or out.
In? (The multitude breaks forth in a formidable shout, "No!").
Out? (The multitude again shouts together as one voice, "Yes!").
And now we cry, enough! And we depart without any regret from that tottering temple where they do not work for peace, but prepare for war. It is simply grotesque to believe or to make anyone else believe that pressure was exerted on us in order to determine our attitude; there has been none, nor could there be any. Our comrades of the Berlin and Tokyo axis have, in all truth, shown absolute discretion.
The exit of Italy from the League of Nations is an event of great historical significance which has attracted the attention of the world, and its consequences cannot yet be completely foreseen.
But it does not mean that we will abandon our fundamental lines of policy, directed towards collaboration and peace. In recent days we have provided shining proof, consecrating peace in the waters of the Adriatic.
The threatening voices which from time to time arise and which perhaps will again arise from the gangs of the great democracies (the crowd whistles loudly) leave us completely indifferent. Nothing can be done against a people such as the Italian people, which is capable of any sacrifice. We are armed in the sky, on land and in the sea; we are numerous and hardened by two victorious wars. But above all we have the heroic spirit of out revolution which no human force in the world will ever be able to bend.
