To the Trentine Hierarchs
By Benito Mussolini
I am very pleased to receive you.
On that memorable day of August 30, 1935 I felt the heart of the Trentini vibrating in unison with my heart. During that superb gathering, your adherence to Fascism appeared enthusiastic and totalitarian. This adhesion has not faded over the years but remains strong and loyal during this very moment in the history of Italy and the world. Thus the greeting that you gave me is very dear to me, and I know that I can always count on the fidelity and spirit of sacrifice of the Trentine people.
In this particular moment, those of us who have always preached from the rooftops about the necessity of preparing a warrior youth, exalting the "forest of bayonets", can not remain hidden in our homes. Nor could it be otherwise, since our revolutionary movement arose under the name Italian Combat Leagues (Fasci Italiani di Combattimento); these leagues could have been called "reorganization leagues", "reconstruction leagues" or "national rebirth leagues", but instead they were called "combat leagues"; they chose combat as the instrument of their desired conquests, without hindering, so far, that ineluctable law of life.
And I know that the great masses of Italian people are with us. However, there are elements on the fringes that would prefer not to fight and they can be identified as follows:
1. Those who do not want to fight for physical reasons. There is nothing that can be done with such people; the fear within them is stronger than they are.
2. Those who do not want to fight because they still retain some "philia" for the opposing side; now we Fascists have only one "philia": philia for Italy.
3. Those who allow themselves to be carried away by feelings. But feelings must never exist in politics. Politics is driven only by interest, and our interests clash with the interests of the demo-plutocracies.
Then there are those who pray for peace and make others do the same. You can be certain that the day when we abandon the fulfillment of our demands, those people would be the first to hold it against us, turning it into a weapon for some reason or another, because we know they carry reservations deep within their minds.
But all these elements will be inexorably overwhelmed the moment when time catches up to history. If it is true—and it is true—that today the map of Europe is being redrawn, it is equally true that Italy can not remain outside the conflict, because in that case peace would be made without Italy and against Italy, and our Fatherland would fall from the rank of a great world power to a second-rate nation; it would be downgraded and this is something I will never allow.
Our peninsula is not relegated to the margins of Europe, far from the great clashes of peoples and outside the great currents of history, like Spain. On the contrary, located as it is at the center between Germany and France, it can not remain absent from the struggle. As long as the war was limited to Poland or even to Norway, we could remain in a state of non-belligerence; but now that the war has come to Lyons and Toulon, and hearing the sound of explosions so close to the Mediterranean in which Italy is a prisoner, we can not remain in this position.
Now Italy must finally break these bars of encirclement. We also have a duty to honour our commitments. If we do not intervene, if the Italian people do not honor the treaty, then the world's judgment upon us would be inexorable. It is fatal for a family of five hungry children to depend upon a family with one well-fed son; and this is precisely the situation of Germany and Italy.
However, what is happening today could have been avoided. We have supported a revisionist point of view since 1919, and the Four-Power Pact of 1934 could have been the most effective means of initiating and implementing a policy which I would call evolutionary. But the policy of the Four-Power Pact was likened to a "butcher" because it sought to cut Europe into slices. The Pact fell apart. If France and England were not so closed-minded in their dull selfishness and blind resentment, the fate of Europe would now be different, just as, according to some historians, the fate of the world would have been different if only Cleopatra's nose were a centimeter longer.
But politics, dear Trentine comrades, is not made with "ifs" or "buts" and we value people who fight. After all I have said, therefore, Italian intervention is inevitable, I repeat: inevitable; we will intervene.
When? This is not the time or place to set dates. When the time comes, we will march. By this I do not mean to say that our action should be imminent, as history proceeds with the fast pace of armored and motorized divisions. It would be foolish not to face reality. A reality which, when the time comes, we will have to face with that heroic spirit that has never failed us during these twenty years of relentless struggle and victory.
As for the result, there can be no doubt. Conservation has never triumphed over the revolution and it will not start now. An old Austrian general who was being carried into combat on a stretcher once reproached Napoleon, then a young man who was on horseback for twenty hours, telling him to overturn all the traditional concepts of strategy; but the fact is that Napoleon beat him.
We too have victoriously broken certain traditions and our own General Gambara was not worried about flanks during the battle of Catalonia, but penetrated deeply into the heart of enemy territory, completely sweeping them away with his rapid and impetuous movement, dealing only later with the Red Brigades lingering on the sides.
Now, when you return home, you know what you must say and do in the Fascist leagues, in the local groups, in the clubs, in the offices, with your family, even in the caffes: you must tell them that our destiny has arrived and is inevitable. When intervention is upon us, civil life will have to continue and will continue. Not the worldly life, not the comfortable and useless life, but a life of serious and constructive labour which builds for the present and for the future.
