I studied for a long time the complex phenomenon of state, private, and individual finance. I was making a comparison between our own economic phase and the situation of analogous countries. I was watching closely the statistical data of our commercial balance. I had in my hand all the evidence for a sure and positive judgment, and was ready to say the word which would influence, in a clear and decisive way, the economic life of Italy.
Thus it happened that in August, 1926, in a square of a beautiful town of central Italy at Pesaro, I made a speech which was to become famous and which was destined to mark the beginning of the revaluation of the lira and our starting-point toward a gold basis.
I had decided for some time to speak out with candor to the Italian people. Foreign exchange had revealed a weakness in our credit abroad. Instability every day, under a régime of giddy and disastrous finance, was a sign of underground work. I had to put speculation back to the wall with a slam. I had to face and defeat that part of a certain class who would have pushed the nation toward bankruptcy. The government could not ignore them or their machinations. It was not only a matter touching the financial future of the country; the very flag of the Italian people was being jeopardized. In fact, in certain situations, even the soundness of a currency can assume the dignity of a flag and must be defended by every open means. One cannot entrench oneself behind ignorance when the patrimony and the dignity of an entire people is being threatened.
Fascism, which had put discipline into the nation, had to put its firm hand on that class of short-sighted speculators who wanted to bring to nothing the value of our currency. Fascism, which had won on the political line, now faced, as I could well see, a defeat if it did not intervene energetically in the financial field.
In this plot against us were joined all the strength of the international anti-Fascists spurred and aroused by our eternal foes, inside Italy and out. I understood that combined with this problem of honesty and rectitude, there was also a problem of will. So I spoke. Here is the essence of my speech:
You must not be surprised if I make a political declaration of definite importance. It is not the first time that I have addressed to the people directly, without any official apparatus, my convictions and my decisions. I must always be trusted, but especially when I am speaking to the people, looking into its eyes and listening to the beating of its heart. I am speaking to you, but in this moment I am speaking to all Italians and my voice for obvious reasons will certainly have an echo behind the Alps, and overseas. Let me tell you that I will defend the Italian lira to the last gasp! I will never subject the marvellous Italian people, which for four years has worked with ascetic discipline, and is ready for other and harder sacrifices, to the moral shame and economic catastrophe of the bankruptcy of the lira.
The Fascist régime will resist with all its strength the attempts to suffocate Italy being made by inimical financial forces. We will squash them as soon as they are identified at home. The lira, which is the sign of our economic life, the symbol of our long sacrifices and of our tenacious work, will be defended and it will be firmly defended—and at any cost! When I go among a people that really works, I feel that in speaking this way I interpret sincerely its sentiment, its hopes, and its will.
Citizens and Black Shirts! I have already pronounced the most important part of my speech, destined to dissipate the fogs of uncertainty and to weaken the eventual attempts of troublesome defeatism.
My sentences were like whip-lashes for all the speculators hidden in the bourses. The great financial institutions understood that it was not possible to adopt independent policies without having to reckon with the government. Speculators perceived that they had fallen into a trap.
On the other hand, I did not want to confine myself to words. In the council of the ministers on September first, I adopted measures which were to guarantee my financial policies. These measures can be summed up: transfer of the Morgan loan of ninety millions of dollars to the Bank of Italy; regularization of the accounts between the state and the Bank of Italy; reduction of two billion, five hundred millions of the circulation on account of the state; liquidation of the autonomistic section of the Consorzio Valori.