The teacher is day-by-day experience.
The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.
I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional. I have searched, to be sure, with a spirit of analysis the whole ancient and modern history of my country. I have drawn parallels because I wanted to explore to the depths on the basis of historical fact the profound sources of our national life and of our character, and to compare our capacities with those of other people.
For my supreme aim I have had the public interest. If I spoke of life I did not speak of a concept of my own life, my family life or that of my friends. I spoke and thought and conceived of the whole Italian life taken as a synthesis—as an expression of a whole people.
I do not wish to be misunderstood, for I give a definite value to friendship, but it is more for sentimental reasons than for any logical necessity either in the realm of politics or that of reasoning and logic. I, perhaps more than most men, remember my school friends. I have followed their various careers. I keep in my memory all my war friends, and teachers and superiors and assistants. It makes little difference whether these friendships were with commanding officers or with typical workers of our soil.
On my soldier friends the life of trench warfare—hard and fascinating—has left, as it has upon me, a profound effect. Great friendships are not perfected on school benches, nor in political assemblies. Only in front of the magnitude and the suggestiveness of danger, only after having lived together in the anxieties and torments of war, can one weigh the soundness of a friendship or measure in advance how long it is destined to go on.
In politics, Italian life has had a rather short panorama of men. All know one another. I have not forgotten those who in other days were my companions in the socialistic struggle. Their friendship remains, provided they on their part acknowledge the need to make amends for many errors, and provided they have been able to understand that my political evolution has been the product of a constant expansion, of a flow from springs always nearer to the realities of living life and always further away from the rigid structures of sociological theorists.
My Fascist friends live always in my thoughts. I believe the younger ones have a special place there. The organization of Fascism was marked and stamped with youth. It has youth’s spirit and it gathered youth, which, like a young orchard, has many years of productiveness for the future.
Though it appears that the obligations of governing increase around me every day, I never forget those who were with me—the generous and wise builders, the unselfish and faithful collaborators, the devoted soldiers of a new Fascist Italy. I follow step by step their personal and public fortunes.
Some minds appear curious as to what territories my reading has explored. I have never attached my name or my mind to a certain school, and as I have already said, I never believed that books were absolute and sure viaticums of life.