I may say at once, with the supreme contempt I have for all nominalism, that I shall adopt a reactionary line throughout my speech, which will be, I do not know how Parliamentary in form, but anti-Socialist and anti-Democratic in substance. (Approval.) In spite of this I am audacious enough to affirm that I shall be listened to with advantage by all sections of the Chamber. In the first place by the Government, which will notice our position with regard to it. In the second place by the Socialists, who, after seven years of changing fortunes, see before them, in the proud attitude of a heretic, the man they excommunicated from their orthodox church. They will listen to me, too, because, having held their fortunes in the palm of my hand for two years, there may still be some secret longings for me in the depths of their hearts!
I may also be listened to with interest by the Popular Party and the other groups and sections. In fact, since I hope to define some political aspects, and I may add some historical ones, of this extremely powerful and complicated movement Fascismo, perhaps what I have to say may have political consequences worthy of note.
I beg you not to interrupt me, because I shall never interrupt anybody, and I add that from this moment I shall make sparing use of my freedom of speech in this Assembly.
And now to the argument.
Italophobia on the Upper Adige. In the speech from the throne, the Hon. Giolitti made the Sovereign say that the barrier of the Alps was entirely in our hands. I dispute the geographical and political exactness of this statement. We have not yet, at a few kilometres from Milan, the barrier of the Alps as the defence of Lombardy and the valley of the Po.
I am touching on a delicate subject, but it is well known, both in this Chamber and elsewhere, that in the Canton Ticino, which is being Germanised and bastardised, there is springing up a nationalist vanguard whom the Fascisti look on with favour.
What is the present Government doing to defend the Alpine barrier of the Brenner and the Nevoso? Its policy, as regards the Upper Adige, is simply lamentable and, though its representatives would doubtless be extremely capable of running a kindergarten, I absolutely deny that they have the necessary qualifications for governing a region where several languages are spoken and the rivalry between the races is very bitter. The Governor of Venezia Tridentina, for instance, has made a present of the constituency of Gorizia to the Slovaks and of four German deputies to the Italian Chamber; while the other belongs to that category of more or less respectable people who are slaves to one so-called immortal principle, which consists in maintaining that there is only one form of good government in the world, and that it is applicable to all peoples, at all times, and in all quarters of the globe.
Allow me to put before the Chamber the results of a few personal enquiries I have made into the situation on the Upper Adige.
The political anti-Italian movement on the Upper Adige is monopolised by the Deutscher Verband, an offspring of the Andreas Hoferbund, which has its centre at Munich, and claims that the German frontier is not at the Pass of Salorno but at the Bern Clause or Chiusa di Verona.
Now the representative of whom I have just spoken is responsible for this German propaganda, because he has written the preface to a book which states that the natural boundaries of Germany are at the foot of the Alps towards the valley of the Po. In the first days of the military occupation, immediately after the Armistice, this Italophobia was not possible; but when, by a great misfortune, this governor was appointed, the attitude of the people changed immediately and the submission previously shown was succeeded by an insolent arrogance, which denied the Austrian reverses and kept alive the desire for the return of the Hapsburgs.