THE ATTITUDE OF FASCISMO TOWARDS THE POPULAR PARTY. THE VATICAN AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
Same speech delivered in the Chamber, 21st June 1921.
Hon. Mussolini. I come now to the Popular Party; and I wish to remind it first that in the history of Fascismo there are no invasions of churches, and not even the assassination of the monk Angelico Galassi, who was killed by revolver shots at the foot of the altar. I confess to you that there have been some chastisements and the sacred burning of the offices of a newspaper which called the Fascisti a band of criminals. (Comments; interruptions from the Centre.)
Fascismo neither practises nor preaches anti-Clericalism. It can also be said that it is not in any way tied to Freemasonry; this, however, should not be the cause of alarm which it is to some members of the Popular Party, as to my mind Freemasonry is an enormous screen behind which there are generally small things and small men. (Comments and laughter.) But let us come to concrete problems.
The question of divorce has been touched on here. I am not, at bottom, in favour of divorce, because I do not believe that questions of the sentimental order can be settled by juridical formulæ; but I ask the Popular Party to consider if it is just that the rich can obtain divorce by going into Hungary, while the poor are sometimes obliged to be tied all their lives.
We are one with the Popular Party as regards the liberty of schools. We are very near them as regards the agrarian problem, for we think that where small properties exist it is useless to destroy them; that where it is possible to create them, they ought to be created; that where they cannot be created, because they would be unproductive, other methods must be adopted, not excluding more or less collective co-operation. We agree about administrative decentralisation, provided, necessarily, that autonomy and federation are not spoken of, because regional federation would lead to provincial federation, and so on till Italy returned to what she was a century ago.
But there is another problem more important than these incidental questions to which I wish to draw the attention of the Popular Party, and that is the historical problem of the relations between Italy and the Vatican. (Signs of attention.)
All of us, who from fifteen to twenty-five drank deep at the fountain of Carduccian literature, learned to hate “una vecchia vaticana lupa cruenta” of which Carducci speaks, I think, in the ode To Ferrara; we heard talk of “a pontificate dark with mystery” on the one hand, and on the other of the sublime truth and the future in the words of the poet-prophet. Now all this, confined to literature, may be most brilliant, but to us Fascisti, who are eminently practical, it seems to-day more than a little out of date.
I maintain that the Imperial and Latin tradition of Rome is represented to-day by Catholicism. If, as Mommsen said thirty years ago, one could not stay in Rome without being impressed by the idea of universality, I both think and maintain that the only universal idea at Rome to-day is that which radiates from the Vatican. I am very disturbed when I see national churches being formed, because I think of the millions and millions of men who will no longer look towards Italy and Rome. For this reason I advance this hypothesis, that if the Vatican should definitely renounce its temporal ambitions—and I think it is already on that road—Italy ought to furnish it with the necessary material help for the schools, churches, hospitals, etc., that a temporal power has at its disposal. Because the increase of Catholicism in the world, the addition of four hundred millions of men who from all quarters of the globe look towards Rome, is a source of pride and of special interest to us Italians.
The Popular Party must choose; either it is going to be our friend, our enemy or neutral. Now that I have spoken clearly, I hope that some member of the party will do likewise.
Social Democracy seems to have a very ambiguous position. First of all one wonders why it is called Social Democracy. A democracy is already necessarily social; we think, however, that this Social Democracy is a kind of Trojan horse which holds within it an army against whom we shall always be at war.