By Benito Mussolini
In order to indicate the direction which Italian foreign policy should take in the immediate future, it is a good thing to give a glance first at the general situation in the world, and at the forces and currents which are at work, with a view to finding out what may be the possible developments and results. All the States of the world are in a condition of fatal interdependence. The period of splendid isolation is passed for everyone. It can be said that with the War and by the War, the history of mankind has acquired a world movement. While Europe, severely weakened, struggles to recover her economic, political and spiritual balance, already beyond the boundaries of the old Continent a formidable clash of interests is shaping itself. I allude to the conflict between the United States and Japan, and to the accounts of recent episodes, from the Affair of the Cable to the Bill against the Yellow immigration in California, which have occupied the papers. Japan has a population of 77 million, and the United States 110 million. That it was well-known that a struggle between these two States was inevitable is proved by this very significant fact: the book which had the widest circulation among all classes in Tokyo was called Our Next War with the United States, a book which outlined the war between the continents for the dominion of the Pacific. The axis of world civilization tends to alter its position. Up to about 1500 it was in the Mediterranean; from 1492 onwards, after the discovery of America, it shifted to the Atlantic; today it announces its passage to the biggest ocean on the planet.
I said, last time I spoke here, that we were approaching the "Asiatic" century. Japan is destined to be the fermenting element of all the Yellow world, although this does not mean that Isaac Rufus, who became Lord Reading and Viceroy of India, will be able to save those lands of British imperialism.
As a result of shifting the axis of civilization from London to New York (which has already 7 million inhabitants and will soon be the largest agglomeration of human beings on the earth), and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there are those who foresee a gradual economic and spiritual decay of our old Europe, and of our wonderful little continent, which has been, hitherto, the guiding light of all the world. Shall we live to see the eclipse of the European role in the history of mankind?
To this disturbing and distressing question we answer: it is possible. The life of Europe, especially that of Central Europe, is at the mercy of the Americans. On the other hand, Europe presents a very troubled political and economic panorama, a thorny maze of national and social questions, and it happens that Communism is sometimes the mask of Nationalism and vice versa. European "unity" does not seem to be a realistic possibility. Egoism and the interests of nations and classes exist in constant contrast. Russia is no longer an enigma from the economic point of view. In Russia there is neither Communism nor Socialism, but an agrarian revolution of the democratic type, of the petty-bourgeois. She only remains an enigma from the political point of view. What foreign policy does Russia follow? Is it a policy of peace or war? The variety of facts which reach our ears make us continually waver between one opinion and another. Perhaps under the emblem of the sickle and the hammer is hidden—or not hidden—the old Pan-slavism, which today would also be dominated by the immediate necessity of extending the "revolution" to the rest of Europe, in order to save the Soviet Government in Russia.
If Russia adopts a policy of war, the fate of the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) will be sealed. The fate of Poland would also be uncertain, and she might find herself driven against the hostile German wall by an eventual flood of the Russians. There are serious conflicting interests between the different States of those north-east shores. There is a disagreement between Poland, Lithuania and Russia as regards Vilna and Grodno. The rights, on the basis of history and statistics, is on the side of Poland. In the district of Vilna there are 263,000 Poles, 118,000 Lithuanians, 8,000 White Ruthenians and 83,000 Jews. The same figures, proportionately, are found in Grodno. As for Upper Silesia, which keeps the Polish and German worlds in a state of continuous agitation, the German statistics give these returns: 1,348,000 Poles; 588,000 Germans. Upper Silesia is, therefore, Polish, but its final destiny will be decided by the plebiscite summoned for the 15th March.
The Great War has resulted in six treaties of peace up to the present: Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly, Sevres, Rapallo. Not one of these treaties has wholly satisfied all the victors; not one of these treaties, even the Treaty of Rapallo, which was supposed to be a triumph of friendly and peaceful negotiation, has been accepted by the defeated. Each of these treaties contain controversial or difficult to achieve points. As for the "greatest" Treaty of Versailles, even at this moment the important question of the indemnity which Germany ought to pay is still under discussion: it is a figure which makes you giddy. The last word has not yet been spoken. All the settlements, especially those made by diplomats, have an ironically provisional character. The Germans, who have formed the "sacred union" of non-payment, announce that they will make counter-proposals themselves, by representatives who will speak at London in a few weeks' time. Our opinion is, that if the Germans can pay they ought to, to the extent of their possibility, and the "experts" must ascertain the extent of this possibility. We must not forget, before allowing ourselves to pity the Germans, that Germany had already fixed our indemnity at 500 milliards of gold, in the case of a German victory; we must not forget that it was the Germans who started the war, and that the first irredentism was directed by Germany against Italy, on account of those minorities which had descended, unlawfully, into South Tyrol.
The present Austrian Republic was the result of the Treaty of St. Germain. Can it continue to live, formed as it currently is? It is generally thought not. There remains the alternative of a Danubian Confederation with its centre at Vienna and Budapest, but the "Little Entente" ensures that there shall be no return, under any form, of the old regime.
We think that, by the force of events, an economic Danubian Confederation will be formed sooner or later, in which case the conditions of Austria, and especially of Vienna, would improve until she had arrived at the point of lessening the pro-German annexationist movement. From the standpoint of justice, and whenever there was a clear manifestation of the will of the people, Austria would have the right of separating herself from Germany. This possible eventuality cannot leave us indifferent, because of the boundaries of the Brenner, which is a question of life or death for the Po Valley. A hungry and pauper Austria cannot organize a dangerous irredentism against us; but as the result of a union with Germany the question of South Tyrol would certainly become more acute.
As for Hungary, she can certainly expect a reasonable revision of the treaty which mutilated her on every side. It must be added, however, that the chapter of Fiume is definitely closed in Hungarian history.
Centres of infection for another war exist all over the Balkan world. Let us cite Montenegro and Albania, for example. We are in favour of the independence of both these States, provided that they show themselves capable of enjoying it. Macedonia is Bulgarian (1,181,000 Bulgarians, in front of 499,000 Turks and 228,000 Greeks). Bulgaria also has a right to a port on the Aegean. And this is of capital importance for the Italian economic expansion in Bulgaria. The Treaty of Sevres crushed Turkey in order to exalt the Greece of Venizelos and Constantine, which gave the European war the sacrifice of 787 "evzones." We believe, as far as the Eastern Mediterranean is concerned, that Italy, on the whole, should follow a pro-Turkish policy.
Immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, the Central Committee of the Fasci passed its judgment upon it, finding it "acceptable for the Eastern boundaries, inacceptable and deficient as regards Fiume, and insufficient and to be rejected as regards Zara and Dalmatia." At three months' distance this judgment does not seem to be contradicted by successive events. The Treaty of Rapallo is an unhappy compromise, against which pages of criticism were printed in Il Popolo d'Italia, which it is now useless to repeat. It must be explained why victorious Italy ever arrived at the point of signing the Treaty of Rapallo.
And the explanations do not need much mental exertion. Rapallo was the logical consequence of the line of foreign policy followed by us or imposed upon us before the war, during the war and after the war. To explain Rapallo, we must consider the allies, two of which, being Mediterranean by geographical position (France) or by interests and colonies (England), can not look kindly upon the rise of Italian power in the Mediterranean. In all their zeal and maneuvers, more or less oblique, they managed to create in the Upper and Lower Adriatic, the maritime counterpart — the Yugoslav and Greek — of Italy. Rapallo is explained by Wilson and his so-called "experts"; by the absolute lack of Italian propaganda abroad; by the mortal weariness of the people. Rapallo is explained by the meeting of the oppressed nationalities held at Rome in April 1918, which meeting can be directly connected with the ill-fated story of Caporetto. Everything is paid for in this life. On 12th November 1920, we paid at Rapallo for the route of 24th October 1917. Without Caporetto, there would have been no Pact of Rome. In that congress the Yugoslavs threw dust in our eyes, because in reality they did nothing, absolutely nothing, towards disintegrating the dual monarchy from within, of which they were the faithful servants to the last, with traditional Croat loyalty. Not for nothing did the Hapsburg monarchy, upon its death, try to present the Yugoslavs with its war fleet. But it was in the April of 1918 that the irreparable was committed, with the consent of all currents of Italian public opinion, including ours and the Nationalists—that is to say, our worst enemies were raised to the rank of effectual and powerful allies, and naturally, when the victory was obtained, there was no accepting of the role of vanquished, but they adopted that of co-operators with a relative share in the common spoils. After the Pact of Rome it was no longer possible to place our knee on the chest of Yugoslavia: this is the truth. And so it happened that the Italian people—tired, impoverished and unnerved by two long years of useless negotiations, demoralised by the policy of Cagoia and the tremendous wave of after-war defeatism (against which only the Fascists reacted powerfully)—accepted, or rather suffered, the Treaty of Rapallo, without manifestations of grief or joy. And, in order to finish it once and for all, many people would also have accepted the terrible line of Montemaggiore. All the parties, of all the gradients of Right and Left, accepted the treaty as a "lesser evil." We, too, submitted to it, considering it merely as a transitory and ephemeral act (has there ever been anything definite in the world, much less upon the moving sands of diplomacy?), and with the intention of gathering our forces to be ready for the revision which, sooner or later, would improve the treaty and not make it worse, would carry our boundaries to the Dinaric Alps, but never again allow the boundaries of Yugoslavia to reach the Isonzo. The fate meted out to Dalmatia gives us deep anguish. But the fault does not lie wholly with the negotiators of the last hour; the renunciation had already been made in Parliament, in journalism and in the universities themselves, where a professor printed a book, which was naturally translated at Zagreb, in which he attempted to prove, in his own way, that Dalmatia is not Italian!
The Dalmatian tragedy lies in this ignorance, bad faith and lack of understanding; faults which we hope to repair with our future work, which is designed to make known, loved and defended Italian Dalmatia.
The treaty, once signed, could be annulled in one of two ways: either by war on the outside or revolution on the inside. Both are equally absurd! You do not shoot people in the squares in order to change a peace treaty after five years of bloodshed. No one is capable of working such prodigies!
It was possible to cause a revolution in Italy in order to obtain intervention; but to cause a revolution in November 1920, in order to annul a peace treaty which, good or bad, had been accepted by 99 percent of Italians, could not be considered! I do not possess, among all the possible and conceivable virtues, coherency; but there are authentic stenographic records which bear witness to the fact that, after Rapallo, I steadily refused to go against the treaty either by promoting outside war or internal revolution. I considered that it was also dangerous to get mixed up in an armed resistance to the treaty, remaining in a peripheral point of the Nation, in Fiume.
Two months of polemics and daily articles during November and December bear witness to my support of the cause of Fiume, and my open and fierce opposition to the Government of Giolitti. It is a great pity that oblivion falls so quickly on the words of a daily paper; and I have not the melancholy habit of unearthing what I publish. But the undeniable truth is this: that day after day I battled so that the Government of Rome should recognise the Government of Fiume; so that the representatives of the Regency should be invited to Rapallo; and so that the Government of Rome should avoid any armed attack on Fiume. At the outset I called the attack of Christmas Eve an enormous crime and a tragedy, and I always exalted the spirit of justice, of liberty and of will, which is the immortal spirit of the legions of Ronchi.
It sometimes happens in history, as in the theatre, that there is an audience snarling in the gallery, which, having paid for its tickets, demands that the performance shall run to a close at all costs. Thus in Italy today there are two types of individuals: those who, as Malagodi and Papini, blame D'Annunzio for having survived the Fiume tragedy, and those who blame Mussolini for not having brought about that easy, pretty little thing which is called a "revolution". I have always disdained the cowardly method by which, in Italy, impotence, anger and misery are laid upon the heads of real or imaginary scapegoats. The Fasci of Combat had never promised to bring about revolution in the event of an attack on Fiume, especially after the defection of Millo, nor have I ever written or made known to D'Annunzio that revolution depended upon my caprice. I do not bluff and I do not sell smoke. Revolution is not a Jack-in-the-box which can be worked at will. I do not carry it in my pocket, any more than those who fill their noisy mouths with its name and in practice do not get beyond disorders in the squares after unimportant demonstrations accompanied by a providential arrest to avoid any more serious complications. I know species and humans. I have been in politics for twenty years. In the war between Caviglia and Fiume, either great things should have been accomplished, or else, for reasons of self-respect, excessive chattering and raising of smoke, which vanished at once without trace and without bloodshed, should have been avoided.
History learned from far-off events teaches men little; but that which we see written daily under our eyes ought to be more successful. Now these chronicles of every day tell us that revolution is made with an army and not against an army; with arms, not without arms; with movements of trained squadrons, not with the untrained masses called to meetings in the squares. They succeed when they are made in an atmosphere of sympathy on the part of the majority; if this is lacking they die down and fail. Now, in the tragedy of Fiume, the army and navy did not fail. A certain revolutionary spirit of the eleventh hour did not take definite shape; it was the work sometimes of anarchists and sometimes of Nationalists. According to some "emissaries" it was possible to put the devil and holy water together; the nation and the anti-nation; Misiano and Delcroix. Now I reject all forms of Bolshevism, but if I were obliged to choose one, I should choose that of Moscow and Lenin, if for no other reason because at least it has gigantic, barbaric and universal proportions. What revolution was it to be, then? National or Bolshevist? A great uncertainty, complicated by a great many minor considerations, confused souls, while the nation, in a mood of revolt against that which had happened around Fiume, abandoned itself to an attitude of grief, in which the only bright spot was the hope that the episode would retain its local character and come quickly to a peaceful conclusion.
If there had been an insurrection on our part—and this was not possible owing to the armed forces which the Government had at its disposal—there must have been one of two results: defeat or victory. In the first case, everything would have been irretrievably lost in the abyss of civil war. Let us, for the sake of argument, presuppose the second hypothesis: that of victory with the fall of the Government and of the regime. After the more or less easy period of demolition, what form would the revolution take? Social, as some Bolshevists wish—those with the motto "Always further Left," the equivalent of the grotesque "Go to the reddest"—or national, Dalmatian and reactionary, as others desire?
There is no possibility of reconciliation between the two currents. In a revolution of the social order, what importance would the territorial questions, and more precisely that of Dalmatia, have had? In the other event of a national revolution against the Treaty of Rapallo, everything would have been limited to a formal annulment of the treaty and to a substitution of men; to be followed later by another treaty in another Rapallo, in order that one day or another the nation might have her peace. An episode of civil war was not remedied by letting loose a bigger war in times like these through which we are passing, and nobody is capable of prolonging and creating artificially historical situations which are over and done with. Only the man who knows how to lift himself above common passions, who knows how to draw conclusions from conflicting elements and how to distinguish the pure grain from the equivocal chaff, is able to understand that Fiumian Christmas, which can be called the tragic crossroads between the reason of the State and the reason of the ideal; the meeting-place of all our deficiencies and all our greatness.
The first is that of Fiume. We do not feel the necessity of reaffirming our sympathy for the sacrificed city. We have given the most tangible proofs, recently, of our solidarity with the Fiumian Fasci of Combat, in order to put it in a position to undertake the struggle against the Croats, who are now beginning to show signs of life. The action of the Fascists must strive to achieve, for the moment, the economic annexation of Fiume to Italy. Arouse the interest of the Government and private individuals. At the same time keep alive, by every means, the torch of Italianity, so that in due time economic annexation will be followed by political annexation. We shall achieve this in spite of everything. All the Fascist solidarity, national and governmental, must be concentrated on Zara, so that the little city shall be able to accomplish her important and delicate mission in history. There must be effective protection for the Italians who have remained in the principal cities of Dalmatia, and no separate constituencies for the Slavs in Istria or for the Germans in South Tyrol. It is not possible to establish such a precedent, as it would carry us far. The French of the Val d'Aosta, who are, in reality, excellent Italians, have no special constituencies or other special privileges of this kind. These duplicate constituencies would be a grave mistake. It is up to the Fascists of Trentino and Trieste to prevent this from happening at any cost.
The guidelines established at the gathering of May in Milan last year have not become out of date or in need of revision.
Fascism has a reputation of being "imperialist." This accusation goes together with that of being "reactionary". Fascism is anti-renunciation when "renunciation" means humiliation and diminution. A few points:
1) Fascism does not believe in the principles of the so-called League of Nations nor in its vitality. In this League the Nations are not on an equal footing. Rather it is a sort of Holy Alliance among the Franco-Anglo-Saxon plutocratic nations to secure—despite inevitable conflicts of interest—the exploitation of the greater part of the world.From these premises it follows that the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento demands:
2) Fascism does not believe in the Red Internationals, which die, reproduce themselves, multiply and die again. They are artificial and formalistic constructions which gather only small minorities compared to the masses of the population, which, living, dying, progressing or retrogressing, finishes by deciding those changes of interests before which the international organizations of the first, second and third order crumble to pieces.
3) Fascism does not believe in the immediate possibility of universal disarmament.
4) Fascism considers that Italy, in the present historical period, should follow a policy of European equilibrium and conciliation of the different Powers.
a) That the peace treaties shall be revised and modified in those parts which have proved inapplicable, or which might prove in application the cause of formidable hatred and new wars.
b) The economic annexation of Fiume to Italy, and the protection of the Italians resident in Dalmatia.
c) The gradual economic emancipation of Italy from the Western plutocratic nations through the development of our internal productive forces.
d) Reconciliation with the enemy nations—Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey and Hungary—but with an attitude of dignity, while holding fast to the supreme necessity of maintaining our northern and eastern boundaries.
e) The creation and intensification of friendly relations with all the peoples of the East, not excluding those governed by the "Soviets" and Southeastern Europe.
f) The vindication of the rights and interests of the nation as regards the colonies.
g) The rejuvenation and renewal of all our diplomatic representatives with others from the special university faculties.
h) The valorization of the Italian colonies in the Mediterranean and beyond the Atlantic with economic and cultural institutions, and with rapid communications.I have an unbounded faith in the future greatness of the Italian people. Ours is, among the European peoples, the most numerous and most homogeneous. The Mediterranean is destined to return to us. Rome is destined to become once more the city which directs the civilization of the whole of Western Europe. We raise the banner of the Empire, but our imperialism should not be confused with the Prussian or English brands. Let us pass on to the new and rising generation this flame of our passion: to make Italy one of the nations without which it is impossible to conceive the future history of humanity.
We reject all the stolid and sedentary objections of those who speak of illiteracy and pellagra, and more, when we see that half a century of "staying at home" has not healed those which are neither crimes nor shameful. Unlike the pessimists who believe that everything is great in other people's land, while nothing in their own land is good enough, we must have pride in our race and in our history. The war has enormously increased the moral prestige of Italy. They now cry "Long live Italy!" in far-off Latvia and in still more distant Georgia. Italy is the tricolour wing of Ferrarin, the magnetic wave of Marconi, the baton of Toscanini, the return of Dante, in the sixth centenary of his departure. Let us prepare ourselves—with energetic work each day—for the Italy of tomorrow of which we dream; an Italy free and rich, resounding with shipyards, with seas and skies populated by her fleets, and her land fruitful beneath her plows. And may future Italian generations repeat what Virgil said about Ancient Rome: imperium oceano, fama terminavit astris: the Empire ended with the ocean, but her fame reached the stars.
