By Benito Mussolini
Comrades!
This today is the second quinquennial assembly of the Regime. The third will be held in 1939 in front of the Casa Littoria; the fourth will be held in 1944; the fifth in 1949; and so on...
[...]
From 1929 to today Fascism has passed from being an Italian phenomenon to a universal phenomenon. But within this phenomenon we must distinguish the negative from the positive aspect. The negative aspect is the liquidation of all the doctrinal positions of the past, the demolition of those that were also enemies of Fascism; the positive aspect is that of reconstruction. Only those who accept the positive aspect of Fascism interest us, that is to say, those who after having demolished know how to rebuild. As for the negative aspect of the phenomenon, one need only look around to see that the principles of the past century are dead. They gave what they could give. We certainly admit that they had their period of fruitfulness and grandeur. But it is over now. Those who wanted to stop the course of history, those who wanted to arrest its movement or stem its tide, have been overwhelmed.
The political forces of the last century—Democracy, Socialism, Liberalism, Freemasonry—are exhausted. The obvious proof is that they no longer resonate with the new generations. The murky coalitions of interests, in which economic and political interests are often intertwined, and the desperate but unrealistic attempts of those who depended upon them, can not prevent the inevitable. We are moving towards new forms of civilization, both in politics and in economics. The State is resuming its right and its prestige as the sole and supreme interpreter of the needs of society. The People are the body of the State and the State is the spirit of the People. In the Fascist conception, the People are the State and the State is the People.
The instruments through which this ideality is realized within the State are the Party and the Guild. Today the Party is the formidable instrument, and at the same time extremely widespread, which introduces the People into the political and general life of the State; the Guild is the institution with which the economic world—hitherto foreign and disordered—belongs to the State.
[...]
I explained the role of the guild in the Fascist system in two speeches: but soon the guilds will begin to take on life, which is always more important than words. In the Corporative State labour is no longer the object of the economy, but its subject, because it is labour which forms and accumulates capital. The Guilds will take on life because the law—which is a point of departure, not of arrival, and even more so a historical and vital necessity—has created them, and because the Party will maintain the necessary atmosphere around them and men will think and act as revolutionaries.
Fascism re-establishes necessary balances in the contemporary world, including that between man and machine: the latter has the potential to subjugate the individual, but this will be prevented by the State, which will bring it back to the service of man and the community as an instrument of liberation, rather than an accumulator of miseries.
The more the revolution develops and ascends, the more the existence of the Party is necessary, and henceforth only the young shall enter: those young people, raised and trained in Fascist organizations, must enter into the active and responsible life of the Regime without delay.
If we glance into the near future, we can say that by around 1940 many of the works currently under way will be completed. Much of the land reclamation, especially in the Pontine Marshes, will be completed; the aqueducts will be finished; nearly the entire network of highways will be systemized; the construction of the Italian universities will be completed, which will suffice for their needs for a few centuries; the regulatory plans of many cities will have been carried out and completed, including that of Rome.
After the Rome of the Caesars, after that of the Popes, there is today a third Rome: Fascist Rome, which, simultaneously ancient and modern, once again commands the admiration of the world. This was a necessary expense, even if it cost a considerable sum, because the Capital of every well-ordered State—especially that of the Fascist Regime, and especially a Capital such as Rome—is not a city, but a political institution, a moral category. However, we spent much less than the billions spent by the other States worthy the name on the development of their capitals; here we have spent only millions... Through the labour of thousands of workers, it cost a total of 112 million to improve a landscape that does not have—and will never have—any other equal on earth. It can be further added that the whole Nation has already earned at least twenty times the amount spent, since millions of foreigners have come—and will continue to come—to behold this prodigal city designed, directed and built by the Fascist Regime.
Up until now, due to the prevailing urban trends, we have preoccupied ourselves with agglomerated dwellings. We will continue to do so because certain neighborhoods of the major and minor cities of Italy are an insult to hygiene and to morale, but it is time to also focus on the homes of the peasants, if they are to survive in the countryside. Based on a survey carried out by the Central Institute of Statistics on my order, it appears that the isolated rural houses number approximately 3,390,000. Of these, as many as 142,298 are uninhabitable and must be demolished; 475,000 are habitable but require major repairs; 930,000 require minor repairs; the other 1,840,000 are habitable without any repairs necessary. In this sector there is work to be done for at least the next thirty years. For the most part, these properties are incapable of assuming the expense. It requires State intervention with a contribution to be established for each category of houses to be demolished or repaired. All this is part of public works and at the same time creates jobs.
The bottom line is this: within a few decades all rural Italians must have a large and healthy home, where the peasant generations can live and last for centuries, as the secure and unchangeable basis of our race. Only in this way can nefarious urbanism be fought, only in this way can we bring back to the villages and to the countryside those old families that have been diminished as a result of being seduced by the illusions and disappointments of cash salaries and cozy entertainment in the cities.
This is not the time or place for a detailed examination of our international relations. We will limit the discussion to those States which border us and to certain problems of a general nature. Relations with Switzerland are very cordial. The treaty of friendship that was signed in 1924 expires in September of this year; we are willing to renew it for the same period of time. After the war we enacted a policy of friendship with Austria aimed at defending its integrity and independence. We stood alone for a long time. When things took a dramatic turn, others woke up too. We will continue with this policy. Austria knows that it can count on us to defend its independence as a sovereign State and knows that we will make every effort to elevate the conditions of its people.
Relations with Yugoslavia are normal, that is to say diplomatically correct. It is possible to improve them, especially because in the sphere of economic relations the two countries complement each other. The problem of Italian-Yugoslav relations must be confronted only when the necessary and sufficient conditions to resolve it have been determined. Relations with France have improved from a general point of view, but reality forces us to admit that none of the major and minor problems that have existed between Italy and France for the last fifteen years have been resolved. However, a rapprochement has worked in a moral way and on some very important issues of a European scale and this is a favorable element that can lead to further developments, which we hope will be fruitful.
In recent days, the President of the Hungarian Council and the Chancellor of the Austrian Republic were guests of the Italian Government. The protocols speak for themselves. Forcing an interpretation is futile. Friendly relations exist between Italy, Austria and Hungary, which found greater justification and foundation after the war. Hungary, isolated and even stripped of lands that were absolutely Hungarian, has found a sympathetic friend in Italy, which is not the same Italy as yesterday, as has been clearly demonstrated by our foreign policy. Hungary asks for "justice" and the maintenance of the promises solemnly made to it at the time of the treaties: Italy has supported and still supports this postulate. The Hungarian people are a strong people that deserve a better destiny and they will have one. The protocols recently signed in Rome, which establish the terms of a closer collaboration between Italy, Austria and Hungary, do not exclude further inclusions and broader collaborations with other States...
The problems of a general nature concern above all the League of Nations. The principle of a reform has been almost universally accepted. It is clear that the reform must be addressed after the conclusion of the Disarmament Conference, because if the Conference fails, there is no longer any need to reform the League of Nations; it will be enough to signal its death. We already know the Disarmament Conference will fail—at least with regard to its original major objectives—and indeed this will the only peaceful thing, in the sense that the armed States will not disarm while the unarmed will have a more or less defensive rearmament. The Italian Memorandum has ripped open the veils that hid the problem in its crude reality. If the armed States do not disarm, then they are violating the fifth part of the Treaty of Versailles and therefore can not logically oppose the practical application of those equal rights which were recognized for Germany in December 1932. There are no alternatives. Pretending to keep a people like the Germans disarmed forever is a pure illusion, perhaps already shattered by the facts. Unless the aim is to prevent the eventual subsequent rearmament of Germany by force. But that game has only one result: war. In other words, the lives of millions of men and the destiny of Europe. We have openly advanced the thesis that we must grant Germany the rearmament which it requires in effective and defensive material by signing a convention based on the Italian Memorandum in order to reestablish between the major and minor Powers of Europe that atmosphere of understanding, without which Europe will enter a phase of decline.
Another statesman who is facing the reality of the situation is the Count of Broqueville, President of the Belgian Council of Ministers. His speech was symptomatic but courageous, and despite the clamor about the controversies involved, it is useful for the purposes of European coexistence. This rapid examination of foreign policy must be united with the Italian military problem, which I hasted to logically link together. For financial reasons, the Fascist government has severely cut the military budget for the last two years and for the upcoming year. But we will not go any further. Today more than ever, especially in light of the failing paralysis of the so-called Disarmament Conference, the categorical imperative for any Nation that wants to live—and especially for Italy, which must calmly carry out the reconstructive work of the Revolution—is this: we must be strong. Not so we can attack others, but so that we can be prepared to face any situation. The Napoleonic wars, the wars of the Risorgimento, and especially the last World War, demonstrated to the world the military and heroic qualities of the Italian people. The whole life of our Regime must revolve around this axis: the military power of the Nation, which gives the people a sense of security and the habit of an increasingly strict and conscious discipline.
Peace will be assured by our sincere will for collaboration with other peoples, but also by our armed frontiers, by our spirits which are prepared for sacrifice, and by our means adapted to our goals. The premise and condition of this power is the moral and organic unity of all the armed forces and their full, integral, definitive fusion in the life of the Revolution.
Italy has the privilege of being the most clearly identifiable Nation from the geographical point of view, and the most compactly homogeneous from an ethnic, linguistic and moral point of view. Religious unity is one of the great strengths of a people. Compromising it or even just undermining it constitutes a crime against the Nation. From a geographical point of view, Italy is more than a peninsula; it is an island. These figures prove it. The maritime borders of France total 2,850 kilometers; Spain 3,144 kilometers; Germany 1,733; and Italy a good 8,500 kilometers. This insularity is not diminished by our land border: on the contrary, one could say it is intensified, since 1,920 kilometers of the land border consists a chain of mountains—the highest in Europe—crossed by 14 railways, 27 State highways and 8 non-State highway. All of Italy is on the sea. Thirty of our provincial capitals are on the sea. Rome itself is on the sea. Geography is the immutable datum that conditions the destinies of peoples. The Alps are a bulwark that, as Napoleon said, separate and protect Italy, but at the same time allows contact between North and South and exchanges, facilitated by the very configuration of Italy which stretches from the inaccessible peaks of the Alps to the shores of Africa. The Italians therefore can not help but be a people of farmers and sailors. The Sea and the Alps are the natural defenses of Italy. Even in the centuries of division and servitude it was never easy to cross the Alps, but when they were crossed, having an alliance or a "league"—even a temporary one—between Italian cities was always enough to expel the foreigners beyond the boundaries that nature and history assigned to the Fatherland.
The military power of a State and the future and safety of a Nation are linked to the demographic problem, and this poses a serious problem for all countries of the white race, including our own. I must reaffirm once again, and in the most peremptory manner—and it will not be the last time either—that numbers are the indispensable prerequisite for power. Without numerical superiority everything declines, collapses and dies. Mother and Child Day, the tax on celibacy and its moral condemnation (except in cases where it is justified), the evacuation of the cities, rural reclamation, the National Agency of Maternity and Infant Welfare, the coastal and mountain colonies, physical education, youth organizations, the hygiene laws, all contribute to the defense of the race. The Florentine Machiavelli said:
"Those who would have their city become a great empire, must endeavour by every means to fill it with inhabitants; for without a numerous population no city can ever succeed in growing powerful."The Milanese Pietro Verri, two centuries later, in turn warned:
"The population is one of the factors of national wealth; it constitutes the real, physical force of the State; the number of inhabitants is the only measure of its might."The notion that an increase of population brings about a condition of poverty is so idiotic that it does not even deserve the honor of rebuttal. One would have to demonstrate that wealth does not arise from the multiplication of life, but from the multiplication of death. Instead, renowned economists point to the declining birth rate as one of the causes of the crisis... The countries with the highest decline in birth rates are those where the crisis has become chronic. Here too it is a question of moral cowardice, because it primarily exists in the so-called upper classes, which also have no material concerns, not in the common people. I refuse to believe that the Italian people of the Fascist era, forced to decide between living and dying, would choose the latter path; and I refuse to believe that between youth, which renews its spring waves, and old age, which declines towards dark winters, that they would choose the latter and in a few decades offer the infinitely painful spectacle of an elderly Italy, of an Italy without Italians, in other words, the death of the Nation.
This is the era of four-year, five-year, ten-year and forty-year "plans". These plans respond to a necessity of spirits, battered by the crisis and by the fall of old idols.
A "plan" is an attempt to subdue forces and mortgage the future. A "plan" is an attempt to eliminate the arbitrary and the unpredictable from the development of situations. I too could give you the details of a plan up to 1945. I prefer instead to point out to you the historical objectives towards which our generation and the generations to follow must aim towards in this present century. Let us calmly consider a plan that approaches the millennium: the year 2000. It is only a question of sixty years. The historical objectives of Italy have two names: Asia and Africa. South and East are the cardinal points that should arouse the interest and determination of the Italians. There is little or nothing to do toward the North, and the same is true toward the West, whether it be in Europe or overseas.
These two objectives of ours are justified by geography and history. Of all the great Western powers of Europe, Italy is the nearest to Africa and to Asia. A few hours by sea and much less by air are enough to connect Italy with Africa and Asia. Let nobody misunderstand the meaning of this century-old task that I assign to the Italian generations of today and the future. It is not a question of territorial conquests—and this should be heard by everyone, both near and far—but a natural expansion that should lead to collaboration between Italy and the peoples of Africa, between Italy and the nations of the Near East and the Middle East. The aim we have in mind is the development and valorization of the still-countless resources of these two continents—and especially Africa—and of bringing these areas more closely into the orbit of world civilization. Italy is in a position to accomplish this task. Her location in the Mediterranean, which is resuming its historic role of uniting the East and the West, confers this right to Italy and binds upon it this duty. We do not intend to claim neither monopolies nor privileges, but we do ask and desire that those countries who have already arrived, those who are satisfied and conservative, do not try to block on every side the spiritual, political and economic expansion of Fascist Italy!
The Fascist people of Italy to whom I deliver these great marching directives are today all gathered around Fascism and they will demonstrate it on Sunday with a plebiscite. Anti-Fascism is dead. Its impulses are easily identifiable and increasingly sporadic. Traitors, gossipers and the faint of heart will be eliminated without mercy. There is one danger that can threaten the Regime: a danger that is commonly called the 'bourgeois spirit', the spirit of satisfaction and accommodation, the tendency towards skepticism, compromise, the comfortable life, careerism. The bourgeoisized Fascist is he who believes that there is nothing left to do now, that enthusiasm is a disturbance, that there are too many parades, that it is time to slow things down, that having only one child is sufficient, and that renunciation is king. I do not exclude the existence of bourgeois temperaments, but I deny that they can be Fascist. The Fascist creed is heroism, the bourgeois creed is egoism.
Against this danger there is but one remedy: the principle of continuous revolution. This principle must be entrusted to the youth. It alienates the intellectual cowards and keeps the interest of the people always alert: it does not immobilize history, but develops its strength. According to our thought, the revolution is a creation that alternates the dull fatigue of daily construction with the dazzling moments of sacrifice and glory. After being subjected to the harsh conditions following the war, it is already possible to see the physical and moral change of the Italian people. The fourth great historical epoch of the Italian people—which future historians will label the Epoch of the Blackshirts—has already begun. This epoch will see integral Fascists—that is to say, those who are born, raised, and spend their entire lives in our climate, and who are endowed with those virtues that confer upon a people the privilege of leadership in the world.
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In order for work to yield maximum efficiency it is necessary to have absolute ideal intransigence, absolute fidelity to principles, an ever-clearer distinction between the sacred and the profane, and assiduous vigilance against everything that could so much as harm the moral prestige of the Regime. This prestige is like a precious asset entrusted to all of you who represent the hierarchy of the Regime. Even in this particularly delicate sector, as in others, you have offered me and shall offer me a collaboration which I acknowledge and for which I am grateful.
Starting from this criteria it is easy to immediately identify who is true Fascist and who is a Fascist only in name. A mere word, nostalgia or proposal is enough to arouse suspicion. And since one can not continue to eternally pour new wine into old wineskins, and since parliamentarism has fallen lower now than it ever has (and anywhere where it still exists, it is dying), and since the functioning Guild has surpassed it as a system of representation, it is obvious, logical and inevitable that this outdated institution, the product of a determined movement of ideas, is now exhausted in its historical cycle. The Revolution has many delicate and important tasks before it. And the weather is always harsh. The latecomers, the fence-sitters and the nostalgics will be kicked to the side of the curb. The Italian people want to advance under the sign of the Fasces which represents unity, will, discipline. This will of the Italian people will have another opportunity to manifest itself on Sunday. All Fascists from top to bottom must feel the humility and the pride of "serving" this State, to assure the wellbeing and power of our people.
