My autobiography

by Benito Mussolini

The senate approved my policies and my acts.

In January, 1924, I was able at last to conclude with Pasic, the great Serb statesman, and with Nincic, the Jugoslav minister, a new treaty between Italy and our neighbor. As a consequence of this treaty Fiume became Italian. Other moves, continued in 1925, brought to signature the Nettuno Conventions, which regulated all the relations of good neighborliness between the two states. It remains for Jugoslavia to ratify.

At the end of all this diplomatic work on a wide field we definitely lost Dalmatia, we lost cities sacred to Italy by the history and the very soul of the populations which live in them. These had been assured us by the pact of London. No better settlement was possible than the one that I, with the good-will and the eagerness that I and Pasic and Nincic put into the negotiations, was able to draw up.

Though there is yet no Jugoslavian ratification of the Nettuno Conventions, our borders are well guarded and sure. Jugoslavia may show its good will; in any case we now can look calmly into the eyes of our troubled neighbor.

The foreign programme in 1924 obtained in the senate three hundred and fifteen favorable votes against six, with twenty-six absent. In December of that same year I had an interview with Chamberlain, new Foreign Minister of the British Empire. In the many events of international character I have always found him a friend of Italy and of Italians.

In 1925 I had to undergo a lively struggle with the government of Afghanistan. In the capital of that distant country one of our countrymen, an engineer, Piperno, who had gone there to work and study, had been slain, as a consequence of some events of internal character. The Afghan government refused to pay an indemnity to the family of Piperno. I had to send something of a demand. Though it was a definite claim for satisfaction, I did not close the door on the resumption of good friendship with the distant state, and indeed, the King of Afghanistan later had in Rome the warmest and most sympathetic of receptions.

The clouds come and pass away, and new clouds come into our skies. A new cloud showed in the anti-Italian propaganda, laid down by Germans in the region of our eastern border. In February, 1926, when the Fascist policy had made its justice, its weight and strength felt in the mixed-population zone of the High Adige, I had to speak clearly as to the problem of our relations with those Germans behind the Brenner Pass. I made two straight-from-the-shoulder speeches that shook many a timid and selfconscious plotter or sentimentalist. These are not practised in the habits of a school of courage and strength. I dismissed on that occasion another ambassador, Bosdari, who, at the centre of an event as significant as was this, one concerning deeply the relations between the Italian and the German people, was not able to behave as we might expect an ambassador of a power like Italy to behave.

The frank speech that I made on that occasion—it was cut from the same cloth as that I used in similar circumstances against the policy of Seipel, Premier of Austria—undoubtedly cleared our relations with the German population behind the borders.

This question of the High Adige, however, was framed in a wide vision of our relations with all other states. It was just at that time that I had a series of important interviews with the Bulgarian, Polish, Greek, Turkish and Rumanian foreign ministers.

Thanks then to this intense political rhythm, Rome became every day more and more a centre of attraction for important political activities and political exchange. The loyal character of my foreign policy, followed and appreciated by all Italians, has given Italy more consideration from other nations. A loyal policy is the one which scores the greatest success. Ambiguities and vagueness are not in my temperament, and consequently they are strangers to any policy of mine. I feel that I can speak with firmness and dignity, because I have behind me a people who, having fulfilled their duties, now have sacred rights to defend and for which to demand respect.