By Benito Mussolini
The speech I am going to make before you is one that I have meditated on for many months. This speech is likely to remain unpublished for the time being. However, I authorize you to transmit the speech and spread it orally. Please be very careful, because it is an important speech. It does not matter if you read the contents in a week, in two years, or in twenty years. The minutes of the authentic meeting of October 16, 1922, during which I decided to march on Rome, will after sixteen years be read to you next Friday, and you will find it very interesting.
You may recall another speech of this kind, the one I delivered in Eboli, which remains unpublished. I said then: "We will conquer the Negus, we will bring Ethiopia to its knees". It was reported in various versions, but it achieved the purpose that was intended: to boost the morale of the Italian people and their certainty in the outcome of the war, which by then was inevitable and necessary.
The Bourgeoisie
At the end of my October 16, 1922 speech I spotted an enemy—an enemy of our regime: "This enemy has the name bourgeoisie." When, a few years ago, I was dealing with this issue and attempted in vain to tame these dogs, I said you must make a very clear distinction between capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Because the bourgeoisie can be an economic category, but above all it is a moral category, it is a state of mind, a temperament. It is a mentality decidedly opposed to the Fascist mentality. One might say, in a rough way, that the bourgeoisie is situated between the workers on the one side and the peasants on the other, i.e. between a few million people. This does not satisfy us.
The bourgeoisie is a class of political-moral character. How do we identify it? By means of examples. For example: one day in July, Prince Colonna flies and dies. The Fascist temperament says: "This Roman prince, the scion of a great and very large family, had guts. His gesture is admirable. He could have been on Veneto Street engaging in useless conversation with other individuals, but instead he chose to fly." The bourgeois comments: "But who made him do it?".
We make transoceanic flights that take our airplanes to distant continents. The Fascist people are proud of this. They see this deed as something that makes the Italian people proud. It increases the moral prestige of the Nation. But the bourgeois sits at the table and calculates: "Three engines, three appliances, nine motors. Five hundred liters of fuel consumption for each engine. So that cost us between fifteen and twenty million." This is a typical mentality of the bourgeois.
Another way to identify the bourgeois, the bourgeois mentality: xenophilia. "Paris! But he who has not been to Paris does not know the world, is not a man!" And we also make the dull burn. "London! Dominates a quarter of the continent!"
According to them, Italy is a small, poor country that must go to the school of French democracy and British aristocracy, because it must always imitate someone or something.
Another characteristic trait of the bourgeoisie: their pessimism, which is different from our masculine pessimism, which is a pessimism that sees the obstacle and is determined to face it. The pessimism of the bourgeois, on the other hand, is the kind which bandages his arm before it even breaks. Before anything happens, he says: "What's going to happen? We are doomed! We are plunging into the unknown!"
Furthermore, the bourgeois loves to destroy those who are considered great men. The bourgeois takes great pleasure in imagining a shaved Napoleon wearing a kind of dressing gown during a visit with Maria Walewska. Because then the bourgeois says, "You see, he and I are the same". Indeed, they are the same. Napoleon did not go to bed with spurs and boots. But there is one thing that the bourgeois will never do. He will never win a battle like that of Austerlitz. Obviously there is something in Napoleon that is common to all men, but there is also something very different.
The bourgeois is an enemy of sports. Not only of sports, but an enemy of anything that could disturb his perennial state of rest. He is naturally pacifist, compassionate, sentimental, easily swayed, always humanitarian, infertile. Infertile, because the bourgeois makes too many calculations. If on a Saturday evening he discusses with his wife whether or not to make a baby, the calculations tell him not to do so, that it is better not to do it. Whereas, in fact, fecundity is a matter of instinct. Too much rationality is inimical to the primordial, incoercible and profound forms of humanity.
These are the somatic characteristic traits of the bourgeois.
Let's review what happened in the sixteenth year of the regime. A success of great importance. We have given powerful punches in the stomach of this Italian bourgeoisie. We have irritated it, we have unmasked it, we have identified it. Sometimes it is also hidden within our ranks. We need to get rid of it, we must drive it out, even if we are forced to tear off its flesh.
The Roman March
The first punch was the Roman march. The people now love it. But the bourgeoisie detested it. They said: “What is this Roman march?”. They did not know that it was invented by Eugene of Savoy and was later adopted by all armies. It was said that it was not democratic and therefore had been abolished, whereas we have restored it.
It was also said that it is the same as the "goose step". First of all, this is not true. Second, even if it were true, there is a curious fact: the Italian people are perhaps the only people in the world who have the goose in its history. Indeed, all the Roman historians attest to this. On the Capitoline Hill, the Roman guard made use of geese, which were better than guard dogs. Moreover, the goose was dedicated to Juno by the Romans, so it was a highly respected animal, and it is perfectly normal that the geese awakened the Romans—who perhaps were tired and fell asleep—and therefore the consul was able to defeat the Gauls (today the French) and prevent them from climbing up to the summit of Capitoline Hill.
All those who regarded our parade march as "Germanic" have realized that there is an essential difference between them. Besides, all armies have adopted it, including English, Albanian, Bulgarian, even the soldiers of the Republic of Argentina and the cadets of the United States. Obviously at a certain point you have to give the impression of strength.
The following is decisive and serious: why was the march not used sooner? Because it was believed that we were incapable of doing it. In fact, it was said: "It is a march for giants and can not be the march of a people who are all small and short". There was almost a recognition of our physical inferiority, telling us to renounce these demonstrations of our strength. The people heard it. The bourgeoisie is annoyed. But, after my words of February 1st, in which I cast the spotlight on the bourgeoisie, defining them, among other things, as sedentary lightweights, the bourgeoisie became silent.
That march expresses our will. Anyone can perform the march. If you take a flock of three thousand sheep with bells, all the bells ring at the same time and the flock marches in unison.
Can we compromise this? No. The introduction of the Roman march has had a huge impact around the world, as an expression of moral strength. We will keep it precisely because it corresponds to these characteristics.
Another small punch: the abolition of "lei". (Approval). It is incredible that for three centuries all Italians, without exception, have protested against this form of slavery, which was brought to us by Spain. Until the sixteenth century the Italians only used "tu" and "voi". Then only "tu", ignoring "lei". In fact, when the simple peasant spoke with me, he did not say: "Hear me, Excellency", but said: "Look, Duce, we do not have water."
In Romagna, even today, the wife uses "voi" with her husband, grandchildren use it with their grandfather, and sometimes the son uses "voi" with his father. Everyone in southern Italy ignores "lei", both among the educated classes and among the masses of people. This hispanicism has infected us and creates very complicated problems with syntax, because it is clear that "lei" is feminine. This was noted by men of great repute, such as Vittorio Alfieri, Giuseppe Giusti, Giacomo Leopardi and Silvio Pellico.
But the Italian bourgeoisie said: "What kind of history is this? Then I guess you should say Galileo Galivoi instead of Galileo Galilei."
Ridiculous cretinism; it is a joke which they think is witty, but instead is simply stupid.
The Racial Issue
Another punch in the stomach was the issue of race. I spoke of the Aryan race in 1921, and always spoke of race after that. Once or twice I spoke of stock, clearly alluding to race. And I rejected words like lineage, mankind, and other words which are too vague. And I talked about living men of flesh and bones. For the Pope souls have no colour, but for us faces have a colour.
Although I always talked about race, the bourgeoisie suddenly awakened and said: "Race?" So I wondered: "Am I perhaps the most quoted author that no one has ever actually read?" The racial issue, for me, is a very important achievement, and it is important to have it introduced in the history of Italy. The ancient Romans were racist beyond belief. The great struggle of the Roman Republic was this: whether the Roman race could join up with other races. This racial principle introduced for the first time in the history of the Italian people is of incalculable importance, because, also here, we had an inferiority complex before us. We were convinced that we were not one people, but a racial mix, like they claim in the United States: "There are two races in Italy: that of Northern Italy and that of Southern Italy." They make these false distinctions in certificates, etc.
We must get it into our minds that we are not Hamites, we are not Semites, and we are not Mongolians. And if we do not belong to any of these races, then obviously we are Aryans and have come across the Alps. Thus we are Aryans of the pure Mediterranean type: one of the few pure races existing in Europe. The barbarian invasions after the fall of the Empire were of few people. The Longobards were not more than eighty thousand, and were absorbed: after fifty years they spoke Latin. The Arabs of Sicily left no traces.
Without going back to the origins, to the Ligurians and to 5000 or 6000 years before Christ we will say only that, for at least 1500 years, our people have kept to themselves, for which reason our race is pure, especially in the countryside. Naturally, when a people becomes conscious of its own racial identity, it does so in relation to all the races, not of one alone. We became racially conscious only in the face of the Hamites, that is to say, the Africans. The lack of racial dignity had very grave consequences in Amara. It was one of the causes of the revolt of the Amarans. The Amarans had no interest in rebelling against Italian rule, no interest in doing so.
The proof of this is that during the Ethiopian conquest five thousand well-armed Amarans welcomed comrade Starace with demonstrations of obedience and enthusiasm when he descended from the plane. But later, when they saw Italians who were more ragged than themselves, who lived in tuculs, who abducted their women, etc., they said: "This is not a race that brings civilization!" And since the Amara are the most aristocratic race in Ethiopia, they rebelled. These things Catholics probably don't know, but we know. This is why the racial laws of the empire will be rigorously observed and that all who sin against them will be expelled, punished, imprisoned. Because for the empire to be preserved the natives must have a very clear and preponderant awareness of our superiority.
The Jewish Problem
I come now to the Jewish problem.
We must reject all expressions of pity for the poor Jew: "What is he guilty of? What bad thing has he done? They have been here for three centuries, five centuries, ten centuries..." With this kind of thinking, one can never approach a problem of a general nature. The problem must be posed in the following terms: the Jewish people are the people with the greatest racial awareness in the universe. It is wondrous how they kept themselves pure throughout the centuries. Since for them religion coincides with race and race with religion, Israel has been saved from "contamination" with other peoples. This people has never been able to assimilate because, as one reads in the Italian newspaper Israel, they are a race of prophets and priests. (Laughter). Now between us and them there are unbridgeable differences.
If you read the book of a certain Jew, you will find the following written in it:
"It is impossible for there to ever be a point of shared experience and understanding between us and the Aryans because we are men of the sand, you are men of the stone, we are the men of tents, you of the city; you are the men of the State, while we do not have a word in our language that means State. We have remained a tribe."There is no doubt that world Jewry was against Fascism, there is no doubt that all the sanctions during the maneuvers were plotted by the Jews, there is no doubt that in 1924 the anti-Fascist posters were dotted with Jewish names, there is no doubt that their population is not forty-thousand, but seventy-thousand!
And to all those who have soft hearts—too soft—it must be asked: Gentleman, what would be the fate of seventy-thousand Christians in a country of forty-four million Jews? (Very loud and prolonged cheers).
This notwithstanding, we have made some discriminations, but perhaps there is a misunderstanding. Discrimination is never in regards to us: it is in regards to other Jews. It means that those who are discriminated can not become politicians, diplomats, officers, heads of organizations, etc. They can have one hundred workers, who perhaps can be enrolled in the National Fascist Party; but this is in comparison to other Jews who do not have such facilities. This is a fact that will be clarified by legislation, which is being implemented as we speak.
Another thing which has impacted many people is the uniform for civil employees. It has been asked: "So then everyone in Italy must be military?". Precisely. Everything in Italy must be military; all in Italy must be militarized. (Very loud and prolonged applause).
The picturesque myth has duped us for three centuries. After 1513, with the fall of the Florentine Republic, Italians no longer bore arms, except in Piedmont, which was situated between large States and conducted itself very well. It was then very convenient for foreigners—and this view still persists even today—to envision Italy as a picturesque but disordered land of singers and musicians, which is reflected in the highly disparaging statement made recently by a British newspaper: "But why do the Italians, who know how to handle the pen and the brush so well, want to busy themselves with canons?" Because that is our business. And we plan to shoot them well and to also use machine guns.
Now this bourgeois spirit, once it is identified, must be isolated and destroyed.
Note that one can not expect everyone in a nation to be equal in regards to courage, decision, heroism. That would be too much to expect. We say only that forty-four thousand martyrs are not enough to stop our wagon. (Applause). In this case we cast them to the side of the road and keep moving. And if we find ourselves in truly desperate hours, we will not hesitate to eliminate them one at a time. (Cheers). We can no longer tolerate cozy and disintegrating trends.
We came out of a serious crisis: that of Munich. But, keep in mind comrades, there are two things to emphasize in regards to Munich. The bourgeois put the emphasis on the word "peace"; conversely Fascists worthy of the name put the emphasis on another fact: it is the first time since 1861 that Italy has had a preponderant and decisive role in European affairs. (Cheers and cries of "Duce! Duce!"). What happened at Munich is colossal. I use this word because it is coming from us. Think of the Colosseum! (Laughter and cheers). And this happened: the end of Bolshevism in Europe, the end of Communism in Europe, the end of all political influence in Europe from Russia. Prague was the headquarters of democracy and of Bolshevism; the archives of the Third International were in Prague. We beat Prague, we already have almost beaten Barcelona.
Then the bourgeois says: "There are eighty million Germans." No, dear bourgeois. There are one hundred million, because there are still fifteen to twenty million Germans living in the political frontiers of twelve other States. But they are not a concern for us, for a few very simple reasons. First of all, they have twelve borders to worry about; secondly, they have every interest in establishing a policy of friendship with us, because we are the ones who determine policy; in the third place, and to this I call your attention, the modern pan-Germanist current has nothing to do with that of the pre-war period. The modern pan-Germanist current is strictly racial. At one point during the Munich conference, when there was a disagreement with the English, Hitler, abandoning the calm which he had hitherto maintained, said: "Gentlemen, I do not want the Germans and would not even want a single Czech's weight in gold!"
Now the Axis is putting pressure on the stomach of these bourgeois, who always look towards France and think that England is the ideal of every state and even of every educated individual... (Laughter). But above all because the Axis means the end of all those ideologies and all those trends which the bourgeoisie remnant still believes in. (Cheers).
With an Axis of one hundred twenty-five million men, growing by a million each year, there is nothing they can do. It is pointless for France to spend sixteen billion on aviation. They already spent two hundred to get to Prague. It is not enough to have the means; you must have the courage. And this is something that can only be done by poor peoples. We must have the courage to face the risks of war and sacrifice. These are things which are alien to a people who eat five times a day, smoke refined cigars, and who have turned recreational games into a kind of professed religion.
As for this defeatism which sometimes rears its head, we Fascists categorically refuse to believe that the Italians of today do not have the courage that the Piedmontese had in 1848 when they faced the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or that the Milanese had in 1848 when, despite being few in number and poorly armed, were still able to expel the German army which had a fifteen thousand man garrison. We won a world war and the Germans have acknowledged it. Then we had another war, the Ethiopian, which was a masterpiece. Then we went to Spain, where our soldiers were genuinely clothed in glory, and they would be covered in even more glory if the Spaniards had allowed it. This is perfectly understandable: they wanted to win, but obviously they did not want victory to come exclusively—or almost exclusively—through Italian effort.
This is the situation of Fascist Italy at the end of the sixteenth year. A situation of incomparable prestige worldwide.
Sometimes you hear the bourgeois saying: "The Japanese... But England...". First Canton, now Han-Kow: the collapse of British prestige! (Cheers). Just as Czechoslovakia was the collapse of French prestige. The French said: "We must keep our commitments, which are sacred. Indeed, we will remain faithful." But then, when it came time to mobilize, the French did nothing. And this explains why anyone who is heard speaking French in Prague is killed. (Vibrant cheers).
Soon we will have a retirement gallery: the first retiree is the Negus, the second is Beneš. Soon we will also have Chiang-Kai-Shek. They will all gather together to console themselves on the shores of Lake Geneva, crying on each other's shoulders and saying, "This Fascism is really rough and decisive. There is nothing we can do against Fascism." Indeed it's true: there's nothing you can do. (Vibrant cheers and shouts: "Duce! Duce!").
Now let's address certain remnants that are still lingering. They are insignificant, but sometimes they pretend to represent the people. (Laughter). Even if I had no informants of any kind, even if there were no prefects, federal secretaries or carabinieri, I would still have my intuition; I would still sense what is in the air. This is due to my forty years of political experience, as well as my somewhat feline nature. Now these remnants say: "Why does Mussolini not open the ranks for the people?" But the people are all for Fascism. Are the one million children that we send to the sea and countryside not "the people"? And the two million Fascists? These ridiculous remnants would pretend to represent the Italian people. These puppets of a failed ideology want us to take them seriously. (Laughter). We do not take them seriously and never will.
Now, dear comrades, you have to spread what I have said today. I noticed that some of you took notes; this is a bit academic, but providential, because not everyone has a strong memory like myself. (Prolonged cheers).
You have to take care of the youth above all, devote your energies to the youth, but not in a sense that could be negative. The problem of the youth was solved by me one day with this fairly simple formula. I said: "There does not exist a problem of youth". My interlocutor asked me: "Why?". To which I replied: "What is the interest of every young person? To live. Because if he does not reach thirty, forty, fifty years old, it means something troubling happened: he died." (Laughter).
But the interest of all of us is not to live as long as possible, but to live in the fullness of our physical and spiritual means. Therefore, despite the the usual bourgeoisie criticism, he approves of the physical exercises performed by the hierarchs. Because the hierarch of our time is also a soldier. All those who deal with military affairs know how physical prestige is important among the troops. The units want to see their commander, they want men who are robust, vigorous, resistant to fatigue.
We must also keep in touch with the people, who are great and who truly deserve to be loved and defended. And we must react against the typical defeatists, who are poisoning the working masses. These masses must be made aware that if we do not flatter them it is because we are not courtiers of anyone, but we are deeply thoughtful of their conditions. Above all, I would like to draw your attention to my response to Starace's telegram concerning the Turin Exhibition. Everyone is well convinced, deep down, that the struggle for autarky will be carried out with a ruthless energy. (Long cheers).
We will carry it out to the max. They tried to strangle us once, but they will not try it again, because we have turned this terrible experience into a sacred memory. All those who oppose our autarkic plans for self-sufficiency, who spread defeatist propaganda, who try to attack us under the guise of crocodile tears, will be identified, unmasked, punished and presented to the people as deserters and traitors.
I want to finish my speech by saying that I am very happy for you, all of you, collectively and individually. You are the vital ferment of the provinces: those who maintain the connection between the people and the State. Therefore your work is invaluable. It is meritorious both for the Regime and for the Nation. None of you believes—and I'm sure nobody believes—that we are done yet. (Very loud voices: "No! No!"). Publishers recognize it very well: they no longer make atlases with linked pages, but on separate pages (very long applause), so that they do not need to redo the whole volume...
The bottom line is this, dear comrades: we are a people who ascend. Others decline. I was mathematically certain that the French and the British would not move against us. Where does my certainty come from? From the statistics of the English and French populations divided by age. Those French statistics revealed that there are twelve million men in France who are over 55 years old. There may be exceptions, but the great mass of people who have reached the age of 55 years are a tired, disillusioned mass, which has suffered the inevitable diseases that accompany the life of mortals, who only wants to drink brandy, smoke excellent tobacco, and live in peace.
Their dynamism is finished. It can no longer exist. It is over for them, because dynamism belongs to the youth. It is the youth who take risks. The elderly, if they have ever risked, are now at the end of their book; and if they never risked, they certainly will not start now. That is why we are confident in our future, that is why we tend all the energies of the Italian people towards the goal of power. Because the Europe of tomorrow will be a complex of three or four demographic masses, around which will be small satellites. We will be one of those masses.
