One grave danger was threatening the Party: it was the too free admission of new elements. Our small handfuls in the warlike beginnings were now growing to excess, so much so that it was necessary to put a padlock on the door to prevent the influx of further membership. Once the solidity of Fascism had been proved, all the old world wanted to rush into its ranks. If this had happened, we would have come back to the old mentality, the old defects, by overhasty adulteration instead of keeping our growth selective through education and devotion. Otherwise the Party, augmented by all the opportunists of the eleventh hour, would have lost its vibrating and original soul. A check had to be placed upon the old world. It could go and wait with its bed-slippers on, without spoiling a movement of young people for Italian rebirth.
After I had closed, in 1926, the registration in the Party, I used all my force, care and means for the selection and the education of Youth. The Avanguardia was then created, together with the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the organization for boys and girls which, because of its numerous merits and the high value of its educational activities, I have chosen even recently to term “The invaluable pupil of the Fascist Régime.”
This programme brought forth unparalleled results; as a result of it the Party has never encountered a really serious crisis. I believe that I can count among my qualities the ability to act in good season and to strike at the right moment without false sentimentality where the shadow of a weakness or of a trap is hidden.
In this watchful work of prevention, I have always had at my side good secretaries of the Party who have helped me immeasurably. Michele Bianchi had already ably led the Party until the March on Rome. He had been able to balance the particularly violent character of the movement against the demands of political situations which had reality and which must be handled with wisdom. Michele Bianchi has been an excellent political secretary because of this very reason, and to-day he is still with the government, as my greatly appreciated collaborator in internal politics. He has a political mind of the first order, a reflective mind; he is faithful at every hour. The régime can count on him every time.
The Honorable Sansanelli, a courageous participant in the late war, and to-day president of the International Federation of World War Veterans, took his place. The Hon. Sansanelli has been able to face vague secessionist movements, which revealed an origin undoubtedly in the peculiar, pre-Fascist, Italian political Masonry.
There was in that period a reprisal by anti-Fascist forces. The old Liberal world, defeated, but tolerated by the generosity of the régime, was not exactly aware of the new order of things. It regained its wonted haughtiness; Italian Masonry was still developing, with its infinite and uncontrollable tentacles, its practices of corruption and of dissolution. These forces of negation even armed the Communist remnants in the obscurity of ambushes and cellars. A new “ direttorio,” presided over by the Secretary Hon. Giunta until September, 1924, was formed after the elections. I have already spoken of the Fascist activity of the Hon. Giunta. In the second half of that year, the anti-Fascist movement, aroused by obscure national and international forces, showed itself in growing intensity on all fronts. I threw it down on its nose with my speech of January 3, 1925. But also, following that, I determined that a line of more combatively intransigent nature should be imposed by our party: and with this duty in mind, on February 12, 1925, I appointed the Hon. Roberto Farinacci General Secretary of the Party.
Farinacci knew how to show himself worthy of the task with which I had intrusted him. His accomplishments, considered in their entirety and in the light of the results attained, were those of a well-deserving Secretary. He broke up the residues of the “aventinismo” which had remained here and there in the country; he gave a tone of high and cutting intransigentism, not only political but also moral, to the whole Party, invoked against offenders and plotters those exceptional laws which I had promulgated after four attempted assassinations had demonstrated the criminality of anti-Fascism. I was closely following this movement of vigorous reprisal by the Party and had prepared in time the necessary provisions. The Hon. Farinacci is one of the founders of Italian Fascism. He has followed me faithfully since 1914.
After his task had been accomplished, the Hon. Farinacci left the position of General Secretary to the Hon. Augusto Turati, a courageous veteran of the World War, a man of clear mind and aristocratic temperament, who has been able to give the Party the style of the new times and the consciousness of the new needs. The Hon. Turati has accomplished a great and indispensable work of educational improvement with the Fascist masses. Besides these precious elements in the high positions of the Party of to-day, I must mention the Hon. Renato Ricci for the organization of the “Balilla,” Melchiorri for the Militia, Marinelli, a courageous administrative secretary, Starrace, a valorous veteran, and Arpinati, a faithful Black Shirt since March, 1919, and a founder of Fascism in Bologna.
The Party has yielded me new prefects for Fascist Italy, elements for syndicalist organization, and consuls, while various deputies have been appointed Ministers and Under-Secretaries. Little by little, proceeding by degrees, I have given an ever more integral and intransigent line to the whole world of government. Almost all positions of command have to-day been intrusted to Fascist elements. Thus after four years of the régime we have given actuality to the formula: “All the Power to all-Fascism” which I enunciated in June, 1925, at a Fascist meeting in Rome.
I have controlled my impatience. I have avoided leaps into darkness. I do not sleep my way to conclusions, I have blended the pre-existing needs with the formation of a future. Naturally, giving to the state a completely Fascist character and filling all the ganglia of national life with the vitality and newer force of faithful Black Shirts, I not only did not detract from, but constantly added to the importance of the National Fascist Party as the force of the régime. This transfer from political organization to the permanent organization of a state guarantees in the most solid manner the future of the régime. I have laid, with my own hands, the corner-stone of representative reform, based on the interests of Italian unity and the Italian cosmos, and I have arranged that the Grand Fascist Council became a definite constitutional organ for the constancy of the state. Thus the Fascist Party, while remaining independent, is bound by ties of steel to the very essence of the new Fascist state.