Speech delivered at Sesto San Giovanni, 1st December 1917.
After the Caporetto disaster the patriotic organisations of Milan had consolidated their union, previously undermined by the opponents of war, who, thanks to the leniency of the Government, had been able to work in the interest of the enemy. They developed the existing sphere of propaganda, advocating resistance within the country. One of the centres most infected by neutralist opposition was undoubtedly Sesto San Giovanni, a large borough of the working classes at the gates of Milan, completely controlled by Social-Communist administration.
Mussolini, having just left the military hospital, where he had been lying ill as a result of many wounds received when a “bersagliere” of the 11th Regiment, spoke in this hostile citadel as only he could speak; and it is certainly beyond question that his frank and incisive eloquence was mainly instrumental in dispersing the bitter anti-war feelings fomented by stubborn and impudent Socialist neutralism.
Workmen and citizens! The other evening, after three years’ silence, I spoke to the audience of the Scala; an imposing audience and a large hall; but I prefer this friendly gathering of workmen and soldiers, because, in spite of everything, I am, and shall always remain, one with the masses which produce and work, and the implacable adversary of every parasite.
The International Illusion. I am here to talk to you of the war, and to remind you of an article, which some of you will still remember, in which, in a certain degree, I foresaw this truce. “A truce of arms” I called it then, and I repeat these words to-day. When one speaks of war, one must do so with a clear conscience and without all those useless ornaments of speech typical of an old, artificial style of literature. We must remember that while we stand together here to think of them, the best among our men, our brothers, your sons and your husbands are consuming themselves, suffering and perhaps dying for us, for our country and for our civilisation! We wished for the war, it is true, but because the arrogance of other men imposed it upon us. We had entertained the illusion that it was possible to realise the international dream among the peoples, but, while we were sincerely putting our faith in this beautiful chimera, the German “Internationals,” with Bebel at their head, were declaring themselves to be first Germans, and afterwards Socialists! And in the International Congresses the Germans always systematically refused to bind themselves to decisive action with the Socialists of other countries, under the specious pretext that the retrograde constitution of their country did not allow them, without jeopardising their organisation, to conclude international agreements. They held too much by their organisations, by their hundred and one deputies and by the fat and swollen purse of marks, which is the only thing which has been saved from German Socialism. (Loud applause.)
While Germany was preparing for war by organising formidable means of dominion and massacre, nobody in England, France, Italy or Russia dreamed of the imminence of the terrible scourge.
The True Germany. We had a very wrong idea of Germany. We only knew the Germany of the flaxen-haired Gretchens and of home-sick novels, and not that of Von Bernhardi, Harden and the Hohenzollerns.
It was Germany who wanted the war. Harden said so in an ill-considered outburst of sincerity. The Socialists, who claimed more land for the expansion of the German people, wanted it; spectacled professors incapable of synthesis, but terrible in analysis, prepared it; the military caste imposed it. The pretext for the unchaining of these forces was soon found. Two revolver shots in 1914; some bombs thrown; two imperial corpses hurried away in a court coach were the pretext. The war, for which the Central Powers were prepared, blazed up on all sides.
The Socialist Intervention. We Socialists who were in favour of intervention advocated war, because we divined that it contained within it the seeds of revolution. It is not the first instance of revolutionary war. There were the Napoleonic wars, the war of 1870, the enterprises of Garibaldi, in which, had we lived in those days, we should have joined in the same spirit and the same faith.
Karl Marx, too, was a jingoist. In 1855 he wrote that Germany would have been obliged to declare war against Russia; and in 1870 he said of the French: “They must be defeated! They will never be sufficiently beaten.” And when in 1871 the Socialists of France, with Latin ingenuousness, after declaring the Republic, sent a passionate appeal to the Germans for peace, Karl Marx said: “These imbeciles of Frenchmen claim that for their rag of a republic we should renounce all the advantages of this war.”