Anniversary of the Victory
By Benito Mussolini
Royal Highnesses! Your Excellencies! Brothers in Arms!
First of all, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart my comrades from the National Association of Mutilated and Disabled War Veterans. They did me a great honor today by calling me to speak at this celebration and they also dispersed a misunderstanding which vainly circulated among who are now at the margins of Italian society.
Brothers in Arms! What speech do you expect from me? Sometimes I happen to read the anticipations of my speeches. It is a completely unique exercise because I think about my speeches the moment I pronounce them. Certainly you do not expect a rhetorical and poetic speech from me: you do not expect from me a pure and simple hymn for which a chorus or an orchestra or, if necessary, a fanfare would be sufficient.
You do not even expect from me a false, fatuous speech, full of clichés, nor a repulsive gravy that often arouses a feeling of disgust and nausea or even of simple endurance, like certain old arias that are heard playing in suburban alleys. I am sure that you are expecting a virile and joyful speech from me—very tough, one might say—but full of those bitter truths which are also fruitful for the spirit which meditates and reasons.
For ten years we have been living the great drama of the Nation which is becoming conscious of itself. This drama begins in 1915, with neutrality; when the war traveled like sudden lightning across the horizons of the world. All citizens then agreed on neutrality, but the most intelligent and the most lively of them understood that neutrality could not be an end in itself and there were anticipators to the outbreak of the war, such as those volunteers who went to die in Serbia or those who went to bloody the Argonne.
Then as the months passed, the anguish intensified: one had to choose and decide. What are the reasons, what are the elements that pushed Italy to intervene in the World War? There was a current that supported the war in the name of the ideals of freedom and a humanitarian idea of justice; another for the conquest of the borders of the Fatherland; and finally a third current that wanted war not for distant objectives nor for territorial objectives, but simply to remove the Nation from a state of moral inferiority. Certainly you remember those months that ended in bright May when Genoa was shaken by the formidable voice of the Poet, and Milan and Rome were dominated by popular extremism that overwhelmed the last barriers. It was then that the people imposed themselves on Parliament for the first time; it was then that for the first time 300 deputies were overwhelmed by the people who wanted to be the arbiter of their own destinies.
The intervention of the Italian masses cannot be explained without recalling the work of Gabriele D'Annunzio, who, in a time when many still hesitated, shook the Italian people in May in a decisive and indestructible way.
And so we were at war. The people went to war with enthusiasm.
There were 200 thousand volunteers: this demonstrates that the war was popular, but the mobilized mass also went to the border with a high sense of duty. But, dear gentlemen, war is not a matter of ordinary administration, such as the replacement of a Royal Commissioner or the dismissal of a Prefect.
The war, which put the existence, the future and the destiny of a whole people at stake, is the most solemn act that this people carried out in its history; and therefore it is necessary to educate men on the magnitude of these events.
I do not challenge, I do not in the least question the patriotism of those who led the war during the liberal-democratic regime. Their patriotism is beyond question. But demo-liberalism gave us a very sad page: we must never forget that. When the life of the Nation is at stake, there are no longer individual rights: there are only the rights of the people which must be saved at any cost.
And I say that if a stricter discipline had been imposed upon the Nation without a distinction between fronts and rears, most likely we would not have experienced a sad episode that still disturbs us. And above all, fellow soldiers, it was not necessary to cultivate the very cretinous principle that consists in accepting evil with the simple hope that a good will come of it. It would have been better to arrive at Vittorio Veneto without the days of October 1917. Enough with the idol and enough with the stupid idolatry of the stellone. History must teach us something.
On the other hand, after those days the people found themselves. There was the discipline that the great leaders had in vain requested from the front.
And the Italian people sent their young men to the Piave; the mutilated, even in the agony of old wounds, returned to the front to enhearten those who were in the trenches..
Italy was magnificent, it was superb, full of enthusiasm, faith, passion.
We achieved a triumphal victory in June and the no less triumphant victory of Vittorio Veneto.
Who among you does not remember those unavoidable days? However, the people were in the streets celebrating peace, not yet Victory. Human, profoundly human.
But the Victory did not yet appear to the spirits with all its creative power and not even throughout 1919, when peace was complete, was there a sense of Victory, and not even in 1920, when a noble city of Upper Italy, torn by enemy bombs, refused the war cross.
It only was in 1921, when a handful of Fascist deputies chased away a deserter in the Chamber of Deputies, that people began to understand that there was something new in Italy.
The infantryman had returned from the trenches, or rather had been dispersed from the trenches.
What was your reward, dear war-torn soldier, dear soldier of the tricolor—red for the karst trenches, white for the alpine glaciers and green for the bile that the draft dodgers made you eat during the war? Here was your reward: a clothing pack. At least there were moral satisfactions!
At least our surviving battalions were supposed to be brought to march on the enemy capitals; but you know how things changed at the last minute
You did not even have to have that satisfaction.
He said to the returning soldiers: you will have to hide the signs of your wounds; you will have to stop carrying the medals on your chest; you will have to become a number in the multitude and forget that you fought in war because now is the hour of atonement. This was the deadly, catastrophic word that came from the abyss of abjection, which dominated the spirit of the people at that time. They wanted the crime of war to be expiated: and they wanted an investigation into the war, as if war were any other administrative operation, and they wanted to punish great generals, towards whom the people ought to show gratitude even if they made a mistake, because we have to take into account the enormous difficulties that they have to face in certain hours while leading an Army.
Meanwhile, the diplomats sat around a green table. They were eloquent or were not eloquent, they thought of the Italian people or thought very little of them; but the victory was still almost unknown to the people. They did not feel it. It was only later in 1922 that the people finally realized the miracle they had accomplished. Miracle! Prodigy, human prodigy. Think, dear fellow soldiers, of the Italian history of this part of the century and you will almost certainly find the sign of God. Think of the period from 1820 to 1848, the period of conspiracies and exiles; think of the reckless war of little Piedmont in 1848 and 1849. And one of the causes of the route at Novara was—as historians have recognized—the excessive freedom of the press.
And think that with every attempt to enter the war there was a disagreement between the retroactive municipalists and the conservative democrats, whereas the Crimean War was the most brilliant act that diplomacy has ever seen.
Cavour decided to send 15,000 men to Crimea, Mazzini declared himself against this undertaking, while Garibaldi supported it. There were even those who did not want to vote on military budgets. And King Carlo Alberto the Magnanimous was right when, going to Porto, he said to the Italians: be a bit more united and you will become invincible.
Despite this, for the sacrifice, for the growing will, for the impulse given by Piedmont, for all the martyrdoms endured by all the patriots of all the regions of Italy, the great step was taken in 1870. Then in 1915 it was not only historical destiny, but also human will which pushed us to wield the sword. We conquered the truly sacred and inviolable borders, the borders of the Brenner and the Nevoso; woe to those who touch them. Were that to happen, the whole people would rush to the border with the desire for war and battle.
Why do I say that it is only today that the people have a sense of victory? Please follow me in this formulation of my thought which I will try to express as precisely as possible. The political regime preceding ours, the liberal democratic regime, ignored the masses. Later it no longer ignored them, but abandoned them to the mercies of others who whipped them up against the State.
Now, when you see veterans marching two or three abreast, when you see the magnificent discipline within the Italian people, no longer moving through the streets like herds of sheep as they used to, but in tight formation, you realize that a profound transformation has come about in their hearts, you realize that the Italian people are about to enter the State or have already become part of it.
After the war, who, by working with the raw materials of the war, on the passions, the triumphs, but also the disappointments of the war, succeeded in bringing this neglected people - grown hostile or indifferent - back into the fold of the State? Who? The Fascists. Not liberalism, not socialism.
The masses, now reconciled with the nation, enter the State through the main gate which the Fascist revolution opened wide. And the State, with the monarchy at the top, has enormously widened its base. There are no longer just subjects, but citizens; there is not only just a nation, but a people conscious of its destinies.
It is this achievement, this fruit of victory, which nourishes the self-confidence of the Italian people. But, fellow soldiers, victory is not a comfortable armchair to flop down in during commemorative ceremonies. No. It is a stimulus, a goad, which urges onwards towards strenuous heights and more arduous duties.
Let us look, with one eye, at the dove of peace, even though it only takes to the air from far-off horizons; but with the other eye, let us observe the concrete necessities of life, and history, which shows us the rise, growth and decline of individuals and peoples, creating major imbalances with fatal consequences. I do not exclude the possibility that tomorrow history will follow a different course from yesterday, but while we are waiting for this miracle, we must have a powerful and respected Army, a proper Navy, an Air Force with air superiority, an intense spirit of discipline and sacrifice in every class of people.
In 1836, after the abortive Savoy expedition, Giuseppe Mazzini asked, 'Supposing this Fatherland was nothing but an illusion? Supposing Italy, exhausted after two epochs of civilization, was now condemned to lie supine with no name or mission, yoked to a younger more vital nation?'
When Mazzini dictated these words, his soul was overwhelmed by what could be called a storm of doubt. Now, a century later, it is an ineffable experience for us, the Italians of this generation, to be able to dispel such distressing doubt and, mindful of Vittorio Veneto, to give a triumphant reply to the terrible question.
The Fatherland is no illusion! It is the sweetest, greatest, most human, most divine of realities! No, Italy did not exhaust itself in creating its first and second civilization, but is already creating a third!
Fellow soldiers! We will create it in the name of the King, in the name of Italy, with physical effort, with spirit, with blood and with life.
