Mussolini as revealed in his political speeches (November 1914-August 1923)

by Benito Mussolini

FASCISMO AND THE NEW PROVINCES

Speech delivered in the Chamber, 21st June 1921.

Hon. Mussolini. I am not displeased, gentlemen, to make my speech from the benches of the Extreme Right, where formerly no one dared to sit.

I may say at once, with the supreme contempt I have for all nominalism, that I shall adopt a reactionary line throughout my speech, which will be, I do not know how Parliamentary in form, but anti-Socialist and anti-Democratic in substance. (Approval.) In spite of this I am audacious enough to affirm that I shall be listened to with advantage by all sections of the Chamber. In the first place by the Government, which will notice our position with regard to it. In the second place by the Socialists, who, after seven years of changing fortunes, see before them, in the proud attitude of a heretic, the man they excommunicated from their orthodox church. They will listen to me, too, because, having held their fortunes in the palm of my hand for two years, there may still be some secret longings for me in the depths of their hearts!

I may also be listened to with interest by the Popular Party and the other groups and sections. In fact, since I hope to define some political aspects, and I may add some historical ones, of this extremely powerful and complicated movement Fascismo, perhaps what I have to say may have political consequences worthy of note.

I beg you not to interrupt me, because I shall never interrupt anybody, and I add that from this moment I shall make sparing use of my freedom of speech in this Assembly.

And now to the argument.

Italophobia on the Upper Adige. In the speech from the throne, the Hon. Giolitti made the Sovereign say that the barrier of the Alps was entirely in our hands. I dispute the geographical and political exactness of this statement. We have not yet, at a few kilometres from Milan, the barrier of the Alps as the defence of Lombardy and the valley of the Po.

I am touching on a delicate subject, but it is well known, both in this Chamber and elsewhere, that in the Canton Ticino, which is being Germanised and bastardised, there is springing up a nationalist vanguard whom the Fascisti look on with favour.

What is the present Government doing to defend the Alpine barrier of the Brenner and the Nevoso? Its policy, as regards the Upper Adige, is simply lamentable and, though its representatives would doubtless be extremely capable of running a kindergarten, I absolutely deny that they have the necessary qualifications for governing a region where several languages are spoken and the rivalry between the races is very bitter. The Governor of Venezia Tridentina, for instance, has made a present of the constituency of Gorizia to the Slovaks and of four German deputies to the Italian Chamber; while the other belongs to that category of more or less respectable people who are slaves to one so-called immortal principle, which consists in maintaining that there is only one form of good government in the world, and that it is applicable to all peoples, at all times, and in all quarters of the globe.

Allow me to put before the Chamber the results of a few personal enquiries I have made into the situation on the Upper Adige.

The political anti-Italian movement on the Upper Adige is monopolised by the Deutscher Verband, an offspring of the Andreas Hoferbund, which has its centre at Munich, and claims that the German frontier is not at the Pass of Salorno but at the Bern Clause or Chiusa di Verona.

Now the representative of whom I have just spoken is responsible for this German propaganda, because he has written the preface to a book which states that the natural boundaries of Germany are at the foot of the Alps towards the valley of the Po. In the first days of the military occupation, immediately after the Armistice, this Italophobia was not possible; but when, by a great misfortune, this governor was appointed, the attitude of the people changed immediately and the submission previously shown was succeeded by an insolent arrogance, which denied the Austrian reverses and kept alive the desire for the return of the Hapsburgs.

At the sample fair organised by the Chamber of Commerce of Bolzano, a nest of Pangermanism, all Italian firms were excluded, so much so that the invitations were issued in German, and a Bavarian band played for the whole duration of the fair!

I come now to the events of 24th April, when a Fascista bomb, justly administered by way of reprisal, and for which I take upon myself the moral responsibility—(Loud applause and comments.)—marked the limit to which Fascismo intended that the German movement should go.

The demonstration of 24th April in the Tyrol was only a simultaneous manifestation to the plebiscite which had been summoned that day beyond the Brenner, because the Germans in the Upper Adige resort to these subtle tricks of making the same manifestations under different guises. In this way, when they publicly mourned the loss of the Upper Adige on this side of the Brenner, on the other they did the same for the fallen Austrian soldiers. When the Fascisti presented themselves at Bolzano, they found the police helmeted and tasselled, and when they were arrested, the enquiry was entrusted to Count Breitemburg, a notorious member of the Deutscher Verband.

I will not linger over the cases of Malmeter, because they are more like the chapters of a novel. But I cannot help mentioning one most curious episode.

The Commissioner of Merano went to the commune of Maja Alta and was received, not in the town hall, but in an old mansion house, where were gathered the mayor and the councillors. The commissioner read the form of the oath, and the mayor and the councillors, sitting down immediately, put on their hats and burst out laughing. The commissioner had hardly recovered from his surprise when the mayor rose to his feet and began a storm of abuse against the King, Italy and the commissioner, who, returning to Merano, requested the dismissal of this council. But the Deutscher Verband interceded with the governor, who returned the commissioner’s report, writing at the same time that it was not a good thing to practise irredentism. And the representatives of the commune remained as they were!

Since the period of mismanagement the Upper Adige is no longer bi-lingual. The mayor himself refused to accept the evidence he had asked for concerning the events of 24th April, because they were written in Italian. These are small individual cases, but they serve to give an idea of the whole situation.

At Megré the Italophobe president of the Young Catholics’ Club turned out two young men because they presented their demands in Italian, saying that that language would not do for his office and telling them to keep it for themselves. And among all those competing for the office of President of the Court of Appeal of redeemed Italian Trento, the one selected was a man who in 1915 had resigned his magistracy in order to serve as a “Kaiser-Jäger” volunteer under the Austrian flag. To-day this man administers justice in the name of Italy! (Comments.)

If you imagine that the postal and telegraphic services in the Upper Adige are in Italian hands, you are much mistaken. The Deutscher Verband has control of all the communications and disposes of them at its pleasure. Although 24th April was a holiday, the Pangermans and the heads of the movement at Innsbruck were kept informed all along of the development of events at Bolzano, while all communications with the civil and military authorities were cut and the town completely isolated from Trento and the rest of Italy for twenty-four hours. This is the situation.

What the Fascisti ask as regards the Upper Adige. Gentlemen of the Government, as regards the Upper Adige, we ask you for these immediate measures:

1. The abolition of everything which reminds us of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, even in outward form. Because I wish to say to the House that it is useless to make compacts to prevent the return of the Hapsburgs with the Austrian heirs, who are more Austrian than Austria, when we leave a great part of Austria intact within our own boundaries.

2. The dissolution of the Deutscher Verband.

3. The immediate dismissal of the two Italian governors.

4. The formation of a united province of Trento with the administration at Trento, and the strictest observance of the use of the two languages in every act of public administration.

I do not know what measures will be adopted by the Government in these cases, but I hereby declare, and I do so before the four German deputies that they may repeat it and make it known beyond the Brenner, that there we are and there we mean to stay at all costs. (Applause.)

Giolitti (Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior). Upon this we are all agreed. (Applause.)

Mussolini. I note with pleasure the explicit declaration the Prime Minister has just made.