We who desired the war and make it our boast that we did so, we who do not go humbly soliciting electoral divisions, we shall not follow the cowardly demagogic example of those who wish to ingratiate themselves with the people. Democracy does not signify descent. It means ascent. It means raising up those who are down. And so for all the sacred and youthful blood that has been shed, and that we have not forgotten, and for the sake of all that is still to be shed, let us renew the solemn pact of our faith in the certainty of victory.
No! Italy will not die, because Italy is immortal! (Frantic applause.)
THE FATAL VICTORY
Speech delivered at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, 24th May 1918.
On this occasion the principal speaker was the Editor of Il Popolo d’Italia, who had recovered his physical efficiency after severe wounds received on the Carso, and had a real influence in securing victory because of the encouragement he gave to the spirit of resistance within the country.
Bologna was then a stronghold of the opponents of war, on account of the net of political and syndicalist organisation stretching throughout the province, and of Socialist supremacy in the communes and dependent administrations. It is, unfortunately, well known that the State had by then ceased exercising any authority other than merely formal in this province.
A mark of Socialist power, which proves also the profound anti-national feeling of the defeated politicians who to-day stammer so many lying excuses, is offered by the absolute prohibition of manifestations calculated to glorify the Italian Army.
Mussolini’s speech at the “Comunale” temporarily reunited the sane sections of Bologna to the rest of Italy, then in great anxiety for her fate and future.
Combatants and Citizens! Will you allow me to pass over without unnecessary delay the polemics which preceded my coming to this city? If, as says our great poet Carducci, “one does not seek for butterflies beneath the arch of Titus,” one does not seek for them either beneath the arches of this, our ancient and magnificent town of Bologna, especially as one would probably not find butterflies at all, but bats dazed and frightened by this glorious May sunshine.
The form of my speech will not surprise you. In those days, three years ago, all the Italy that was conscious of life and possessed of will-power, the only Italy which has a right to transform her chaotic succession of events into history, burned with an intense ardour—our ardour. I have noticed now for some time that there are opportunists who are trying to open a door for eventual responsibilities and who are carefully and laboriously cataloguing the reasons why Italy could not remain neutral.