“Courage lies in saying that an economic revolution draws its substance from labour, and that it is strengthened, advanced, and carried out by the intensification of production whether in the fields or in the factories, and by a further utilisation of scientific processes and methods of production.”
The Italian Situation. We agree upon a third point, in connection with existing circumstances, that is in maintaining that our national situation is critical, though far from being desperate. Briefly, it is this. From the 1st July we have been defaulting debtors of England. Since the 31st July other financial agreements with the United States must be faced. To save the situation a loan of one milliard dollars (seven to eight milliard lire) must be arranged. The railways have a coal supply for only fifteen more days. There are enough provisions for another twenty days, that is to say until the end of the month. Two million tons of food must be imported to save us from immediate hunger. But these financial and economic agreements depend upon the political ones at Paris.
The possibility, almost a certainty, has presented itself to us of obtaining large concessions in Asia Minor, with the coal mines of Heraclea. Clémenceau has made difficulties about it, but Lansing told him that he could not see any obstacle, given that Italy approved of the exploitation of the Saar mines on the part of France. We may also obtain oil wells in Armenia.
But these acquisitions in the East are in their turn subordinate to the Adriatic agreements. The solution of the problem of Fiume is already compromised by the work of the preceding Delegation, which had already accepted the principle of a Free State. But the project of Tardieu presented future dangers as far as the safeguarding of the Italian character of Fiume is concerned, because the Italian majority in the city would be overwhelmed by the mass of Slavs in the country. It is a question, then, of reducing these dangers to the smallest possible limits by the introduction of another plan which would substitute for the idea of a Free State that of a Free City with limited boundaries.
In Dalmatia it is only possible for us to save the centres which have an Italian majority, with guarantees for the safeguarding of those Italian minorities scattered in the other centres. The eventual loss of Sebenico, which had strategic and not national value, would be compensated for by some other strategic point to be given to Italy. Lansing said that this would be eventually sought for in the Mediterranean.
Given this situation, it is no exaggeration to say that the general Socialist strike is a real attempted crime against the nation. And note: I could understand a strike which had as its object the setting up of the Soviet in Italy, but I do not understand or admit this one, which is without aim, object or justification. It must and will fail, because the leaders themselves are in the cul de sac of this dilemma: either tragedy, because the State at this moment has its repressive machinery in full working order; or comedy, in the event of a revolt on the part of the workmen already outlined, and due to their being tired of serving a Socialist Party mostly composed of middle-class elements.
Perhaps it is worth while in passing to confute the objection in the Stampa of Portogruaro, which would like to deny our right of rising up against the strike on the ground that we were in favour of war. “What,” it says, “is the damage done in two days of strike compared with that done in four years of war?” We crush these gentlemen with the reply that four years of neutrality would have damaged us more, besides having been to our lasting and ineffaceable moral shame.
Reactionaries and vice versâ. For me revolution is not an attack of St. Vitus’ dance or an unexpected fit of epilepsy. It must have force, aims, and above all, method. In 1913, when the Socialist Party was already rotten, it was I who put into circulation the words which made the pulses of the big men of Italian Socialism beat: “This proletariat is in need of a bath of blood,” I said. It has had it, and it lasted for three years. “This proletariat is in need of a day of history.” And it has had a thousand.
It was necessary then to shake up the masses, because they had fallen into a state of weakness and insensibility. To-day this situation exists no longer. To-day the only way not to live in fear of a revolution is to think that we are now in the full swing of one, that it began in the August of 1914 and that it is still going on. It is not a question, as some think, of entering into a revolution as one passes from a state of tranquillity to a state of action. The task of really free spirits is different. If this great and immense process of changing the world stagnates or becomes confused, we can hasten it on; but if it is already progressing at a frantic rate, then our task is to apply the brakes and slow it down, in order to avoid disintegration and ruin. To be revolutionaries, in certain circumstances, time and place, can be the pride of a lifetime, but when those who speak of revolution are a lot of parasites, then one must not be afraid, in opposing them, to pass as a reactionary. One is always a reactionary and revolutionary for somebody. Fritz Adler, revolutionary in the time of Sturck, is a reactionary to-day compared with the Communists. I am not afraid of the word. I am a revolutionary and a reactionary. Really, life is always like this. I am afraid of the revolution which destroys and does not create. I fear going to extremes, the policy of madness, at the bottom of which may lie the destruction of this our fragile mechanical civilisation, robbed of its solid moral basis, and the coming of a terrible race of dominators who would reintroduce discipline into the world and re-establish the necessary hierarchies with the cracking of whips and machine-guns.
The Compass. At the same time, as regards reaction and revolution, I have a compass in my pocket which guides me. All that which tends towards making the Italian people great finds me favourable, and—vice versâ—all that which tends towards lowering, brutalising and impoverishing them finds me opposed.