(Published in Il Popolo d'ltalia, December 15, 1917)
By Benito Mussolini
The word is ugly. No matter. There are uglier ones which have long enjoyed the rights of citizenship in the Italian language. We don't give a fig about "purists" who snarl at "neologisms". It is all part of the eternal conflict between the old sensibility and the new!
Trenchocracy is the aristocracy of the trenches. It is the aristocracy of tomorrow! It is the aristocracy in action. It comes from the depths. Its "quarterings of nobility" are a splendid blood red. On its coat of arms one may depict a Friesian horse, a trench pit and a hand grenade.
Launching a grenade is a most brilliant exercise, even when it blows up in your hand and forces you to consider that perhaps it was made by a negligent draft-dodger.
There are many varieties of grenades: the Sype, the Besozzi, the B.P.D., the Tehrenit, etc. They are stylish. Very chic.
There's one that has a vest. In our military jargon we called it "Signorina". You carried the grenades in your haversack, along with canned meat and bread. Then you threw them at the snouts of the Austrians. Very beautiful!
It's not clear why no one in Italy has ever taken the initiative of establishing a school to train future soldiers how to throw grenades. On the fourth pages of newspapers there is a lot of advertising for how to avoid military service, with schools for turners, motorcyclists, chauffeurs; such advertising should be banned. Soon you will see that there will also be a school for grenade throwing.
Let's move on.
A new aristocracy is emerging. The myopic idiots still do not see it. Yet, this aristocracy has already taken its first steps. It is already claiming its birthright. It is already planning in detail its attempts to "take possession" of social positions. It is an obscure, intense labour of preparation, reminiscent of that carried out by the French bourgeoisie before 1789.
[...]
In Milan, the whole movement of propaganda and resistance is in the hands of the Action Committee run by disabled and wounded veterans. In Turin, a full-fledged party has been formed for "veterans of the front", with the absolute exclusion of draft-dodgers. In Bologna, they have announced the forthcoming publication of a newspaper entitled: The Voice of the Veterans (La voce dei reduci). If there is any livid soul who proposed the infamous speculation on the wounded and disabled, then today he must feel totally disappointed. The wounded and disabled veterans of the Great War will not bring cantons to pity the heart and purse of the passersby...
What an immense moral force is contained in the patriotic spirit of those who come back from the front.
[...]
The disabled veterans today are the vanguard of the great army that will return tomorrow. They are the thousands who await millions of demobilized soldiers. This enormous mass—conscious of what it has achieved—is bound to cause shifts in the equilibrium of society.
The brutal and bloody apprenticeship of the trenches will mean something. It will mean more courage, more faith, more tenacity.
The old parties and the old men who carry on with the exploitation of the political Italy of tomorrow, as if nothing had happened, will be swept aside. The music of tomorrow will have another tempo. It will be an andantino sostenuto, and a hot fortissimo will not be ruled out. There will also be many a diesis in key. It is this prediction which makes us observe with a certain contempt everything that is said and done by the old windbags who govern us, so full of presumption, sacred formulas and senile imbecility.
These gray-haired people still desperately clinging to old patterns are pitiful. They are people who missed the train. The train passed and these people are still standing on the platform of the station with their grimaced and spiteful faces. The words republic, democracy, radicalism and liberalism no longer have any more meaning than the word socialism. They will have one tomorrow, but it will be the meaning given by the millions of soldiers returning from the front. This meaning could be quite different from the ones we are accustomed to.
It could be an anti-Marxist socialism, for instance; a national socialism. The millions of workers who will return to the furrows of their fields after having lived in the furrows of the trenches will realize the synthesis of the antithesis: class and nation.
Here already the telltale signs can be seen...
Now, those who do not fight for more or less justifiable reasons, they have an obligation—if they truly and selflessly love Italy—they have an obligation in their speeches, in their intentions and in their actions, to never speak ill of those who suffered and died so that Italy could live.
Those who in eleven battles chased Austria back beyond the Isonzo; those who stopped Austria and Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey on the Piave, watch, listen, understand.
The Italy of today is here. The Italy of tomorrow is too.
We are gathering the passions of the soldiers and we will be with them tomorrow to see that the highest justice is done.
