Convalescence. I am an optimist, and see the Italy of to-morrow through rose-coloured spectacles. Enough of the Italy of the hotel-keeper, goal of the idle with their odious Baedekers in their hands; enough of dusting old plaster-work; we are and we wish to be a nation of producers.
We are a people who will expand without aiming at conquest. We shall gain the world’s respect by means of our industries and our work. It will be the august name of Rome which will still guide our forces in the Adriatic, the Gulf of the Mediterranean, and in the Mediterranean, which forms the communication between three continents.
Those who have been wounded know what convalescence means. There comes a day when the surgeon no longer takes his ruthless but life-giving knife from the tray, no longer tortures the suffering flesh. The danger of infection is over, and you feel yourself re-born. A second youth begins. Things, men, the voice of a woman, the caress of a child, the flowering of a tree—everything gives you the ineffable sensation of a return. New blood surges through your veins, and fills you with a feverish desire to work.
The Italian people too will have its convalescence, and it will be a competition for reconstruction after destruction. The flag of the disabled is a symbol of a change in their moral and spiritual life. Just think that certain rascals thought to take advantage of them for their infamous speculations. But the disabled answered: “We will not lend ourselves to this shameful game, we do not intend to accept from your charity and sympathy help which would humiliate us.” And they do not curse their fate, they do not complain, even if they are without an arm or a leg; even those who have lost the divine light of their eyes hold their peace. In vain the enemy hoped to profit by the state of mind of these people. They reply to this by saying that all they had they gave for their country, and to-day they do not wish to be a burden upon her, and so they work and train themselves, and give further proof of their devotion to the sacred cause.
The Returning Battalions. I no longer see relegated to some far future time the day upon which the banners of the disabled will precede the torn and glorious standards of the regiments. And around the standards will be collected the veterans and the people. And there will be the shadow of our dead, from those who fell on the Alps to those who were buried beyond the Isonzo, from those who stormed Gorizia to those who were mowed down between Hermada and the mysterious Timavo, or upon the banks of the Piave. All this sacred phalanx we sum up in three names: Cesare Battisti, who wished deliberately to face martyrdom, and who was never so noble as when he offered his neck to the Hapsburg executioner; Giacomo Venezian, who left the austere halls of your Athenæum in order to go and meet his death upon the road to Trieste; and Filippo Corridoni, born of the people, a fighter for the people, and who died for the people on the first rocky ridges of the Carso.
The returning battalions will move with the slow and measured tread of those who have lived and suffered much and who have seen innumerable others suffer and die. They will say, we shall say:
“Here upon the track which leads back to the harvest field, here in the factory which now forges the instruments of peace, here in the tumultuous city and the silent country, now that the duty was done and the goal reached, let us set up the symbol of our new right. Away with shadows! We, the survivors—we, the returned, vindicate our right to govern Italy, not to her destruction and decay, but in order to lead her ever higher, ever on, to make her—in thought and deed—worthy to take her place among the great nations which will build up the civilisation of the world to-morrow.”
“IN HONOUR OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”
Speech delivered at Milan on the occasion of the popular demonstration of 8th April 1918.
The exaggerated welcome lavished upon President Wilson during his visit to Italy is well known; and of all cities Milan accorded him the most generous hospitality. Benito Mussolini, who on that occasion was specially entrusted with the task of addressing the President of the United States on behalf of the Lombard Association of Journalists, had prepared the mind of the Milanese eight months before, by a speech delivered in Piazza Cordusio, extolling the generous and brotherly effort of the great and vigorous American people.