Now it is very sad to think that there are those who formerly were in favour of intervention and who now have changed. Only a few have done so, and it has not always been for political reasons. Some have changed for those reasons, and this I do not wish to discuss, but there has also been defection due to physical fear. “In order to pacify these people let us cede Dalmatia, let us renounce something!” But their calculations have piteously failed. We shall not only refuse to take up this political line, but we shall not give way to that physical fear which is simply absurd. One life is of the same value as another, and one barricade is as good as another. If there is to be a fight, we shall engage also in that of the elections.
There have been neutralists also among the official Socialists and the Republicans. We shall go and examine the passports of all these people, both the ultra-neutralists and those who accepted the war as a painful burden; we shall go to their meetings, we shall present candidates and find every possible means of routing them. (Prolonged applause.)
OUTLINE OF THE AIMS AND PROGRAMME OF FASCISMO
Speech delivered at Milan, 22nd July 1919, at the Liceo Beccaria.
The evening before the general international strike of the 20th and 21st of July 1919, called by the federal organisations as a reaction to the rash movement, the National Socialists, the Republicans, the Democrats and the Fascisti met in order to share the responsibilities for possible complications and to demonstrate the inconsistency of so-called revolutionary attitudes.
This manifestation, according to the intention of its organisers, had also the object of marking the beginning of a political concentration of the Left, composed of ex-interventionists. But the attempt afterwards failed, chiefly on account of want of understanding on the part of the Republican Party, and because of the development of the spiritual crisis within the mass of Italian Fascismo.
I think that it will depend upon the sincerity and loyalty with which we join in this meeting whether it will become an historical event, or a little fact of everyday life destined to pass without leaving any trace.
This being the case, it will not surprise you if I speak with a frankness almost brutal. I add at once that the friendly confusion of this moment of reunion after schisms and separations will not eliminate the necessity of settling certain personal and political questions, otherwise this union, which we wish to be eminently fruitful, cannot be other than painfully sterile.
What are we looking for, we who are members of U.S.M., the Fascio of Fighters, the Association of Fighters, the Association of Arditi, the Union of Demobilised, the Association of Volunteers, the Association of Garibaldians, the Republican Party, the Italian Socialist Union, the Corridoni Club, etc.—we who are together represented in the Committee of Intesa e Azione[[5]] which was formed at the time of the movement against the high cost of living? We are looking for the least common denominator for this understanding and action. Shall we find it? Yes! We come from different schools; we have different temperaments, and temperaments divide men more widely than ideas; we belong to an individualist people; but all this does not prevent something else bringing us together and binding us both in these present contingencies and in that which has to do with the action of to-morrow.
[5]. Understanding and Action.