Speech in Eboli, July 6, 1935

By Benito Mussolini

Comrade Legionaries!

I have come here to salute you on behalf of the Fascist Government and on behalf of myself. My particularly comradely greeting is not for the sake of boosting morale, since I know you do not need it in the least: it is certain that you are prepared to carry out your duty at any moment. You have presented yourself here magnificently solid, compact, determined, physically and morally ready to fight. Has not "combat" always been our ultimate goal? And is it not the particular attitude of Fascists to prefer the risk of a heroic life, to the stasis of a dull existence? In all the trials that you are about to face, never forget to maintain the comradely spirit of all for one and one for all.

To those who would pretend to stop us with papers or words, we will respond with the heroic motto of the first action squads and we will go up against anyone, of any color, trying to cross the road.

Remember that when the forces were not so unequal, Italian soldiers regularly beat the Ethiopians. Adwa saw 14,000 Italians against 90,000 Abyssinians, but the massacre was so great, that in the evening, the Abyssinians abandoned the field and retreated into the mountains. The heroism of the Italian soldiers on that day was magnificent and recognized by the whole world. Adwa was lost not by our troops, but by a government that did not care about the sacrifice of the soldiers, but only about abject parliamentary maneuvers.

To you Blackshirt volunteers of this my land, who have "fighting in your blood", just like all the youth of this Fascist epoch, to you Blackshirts of tough Piedmont and of ardent Sicily, I tell you that we are engaged in a decisive struggle and that we are firmly determined to carry it out to the end.