For the Feast of Combatants
By Benito Mussolini
Fellow-Soldiers! After your ranks, so well disciplined and of such fine bearing, have marched past His Majesty the King, the intangible symbol of the country, after the austere ceremony in its silent solemnity before the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, after this formidable display of sacred strength, words from me are absolutely superfluous, and I do not intend to make a speech. The march of today is a manifestation full of significance and warning. A whole people in arms has met today in spirit in the Eternal City. It is a whole people who, above unavoidable party differences, finds itself strongly united when the safety of the common Motherland is at stake.
On the occasion of the Etna eruption, national solidarity was wonderfully manifested; from every town, every village, one might say from every hamlet, a fraternal heart-throb went out to the land stricken by calamity.
Today tens of thousands of soldiers, thousands of standards, with men coming to Rome from all parts of Italy and from the far-away Colonies, from abroad, bear witness that the unity of the Italian nation is an accomplished and irrevocable fact.
After seven months of Government, to talk to you, my comrades of the trenches, is the highest honor which could fall to my lot. And I do not say this in order to flatter you, nor to pay you a tribute which might seem formal on an occasion like this. I have the right to interpret the thoughts of this meeting, which gathers to listen to my words as an expression of solidarity with the national Government. Let us not utter useless and fantastical words. Nobody attacks the sacred liberty of the Italian people. But I ask you: Should there be liberty to maim victory? (Cries of "No! no!") Should there be liberty to strike at the nation? Should there be liberty for those who have as their programme the overthrow of our national institutions? (Cries of "No! no!) I repeat what I explicitly said before. I do not feel myself infallible, I feel myself a man like you.
I do not repulse, I cannot, I shall not repulse any loyal and sincere collaboration.
Fellow-soldiers ! The task which weighs on my shoulders, but also on yours, is simply immense, and to it we shall be pledged for many years. It is, therefore, necessary not to waste, but to treasure and utilise all the energies which could be turned to the good of our country. Five years have passed since the battle of the Piave, from that victory on which it is impossible to sophisticate either within or beyond the frontier. It is necessary to proclaim, for you who listen to me, and also for those who read what I say, that the victory of the Piave was the deciding factor of the war... On the Piave the Austro-Hungarian Empire went to pieces, from the Piave started its flight on white wings the victory of the people in arms. The Government means to exalt the spiritual strength which rises out of the victory of a people in arms. It does not mean to disperse them, because it represents the sacred seed of the future. The more distant we get from those days, from that memorable victory, the more they seem to us wonderful, the more the victory appears enveloped in a halo of legend. In such a victory everybody would wish to have taken part!
We must win the Peace! Too late somebody perceived that when the country is in danger the duty of all citizens, from the highest to the lowest, is only one: to fight, to suffer and, if needs be, to die!
We have won the war, we have demolished an Empire which threatened our frontiers, stifled us and held us for ever under the extortion of armed menace. History has no end. Comrades! The history of peoples is not measured by years, but by tens of years, by centuries. This manifestation of yours is an infallible sign of the vitality of the Italian people.
The phrase "we must win the peace" is not an empty one. It contains a profound truth. Peace is won by harmony, by work and by discipline. This is the new gospel which has been opened before the eyes of the new generations who have come out of the trenches; a gospel simple and straightforward, which takes into account all the elements, which utilizes all the energies, which does not lend itself to tyrannies of grotesque exclusivism, because it has one sole aim, a common aim : the greatness and the salvation of the nation!
Fellow-soldiers! You have come to Rome, and it is natural, I dare to say, fated! Because Rome is always, as it will be tomorrow and in the centuries to come, the living heart of our race! It is the imperishable symbol of our vitality as a people. Who holds Rome, holds the nation!
The "Black Shirts" buried the Past. I assure you, my fellow-soldiers, that my Government, in spite of the manifest or hidden difficulties, will keep its pledges. It is the Government of Vittorio Veneto. You feel it and you know it. And if you did not believe it, you would not be here assembled in this square. Carry back to your towns, to your lands, to your houses, distant but near to my heart, the vigorous impression of this meeting.
Keep the flame burning, because that which has not been, may be, because if victory was maimed once, it does not follow that it can be maimed a second time!
I keep in mind your oath. I count upon you as I count upon all good Italians, but I count, above all, upon you, because you are of my generation, because you have come out from the bloody filth of the trenches, because you have lived and struggled and suffered in the face of death, because you have fulfilled your duty and have the right to vindicate that to which you are entitled, not only from the material but from the moral point of view. I tell you, I swear to you, that the time is passed for ever when fighters returning from the trenches had to be ashamed of themselves, the time when, owing to the threatening attitudes of Communists, the officers received the cowardly advice to dress in plain clothes. (Applause.) All that is buried. You must not forget, and nobody forgets, that seven months ago fifty-two thousand armed Black shirts came to Rome to bury the past!
Soldiers! Fellow-Soldiers! Let us raise before our great unknown comrade the cry, which sums up our faith: Long live the King! Long live Italy, victorious, impregnable, immortal!
