I said then that never in the life of any nation on the day after victory had there been a more odious tragedy than that of this silly renunciation. In the first months of 1919, Italy, led on by politicians like Nitti and Albertini Salvemini, had only one frantic wish that I could see—it was to destroy every gain of victorious struggle. Its only dedication was to a denial of the borders and soil extent of the nation. It forgot our 600,000 dead and our 1,000,000 wounded. It made waste of their generous blood. These leaders wanted to satisfy foreign impulses of doubtful origin and doctrines brewed of poisons. This attempt at matricide of the motherland was abetted by Italians of perverted intellect and by professional socialists. Toward both, later on, the Fascist revolution showed so much forbearance that it was more than generosity.
I was snatched up in this fight against the returning beast of decadence. I was for our sacred rights to our own territories. Therefore I had to neglect in a degree the petty internal political life that was floundering in bewilderment and wallowing in disorder. On the international playground the stake was higher. One had to remain on the field to save what could be saved. As to internal politics, I knew very well that a strong government would quickly put in order the Socialists and the anarchists, the decadents and wreckers and the instigators of disorder. I knew at first hand their soul. It has always been the same at all times, in all ages—it is the spirit of coward wolves and ferocious sheep.
And thus one day, a few months after the Armistice, I saw at Milan a fact more disquieting and more important than I thought possible. I saw a Socialist procession, with an endless number of red flags, with thirty bands, with ensigns cursing the war. I saw a river in the street made of women, children, Russians, Germans, and Austrians, flowing through the town upward and downward from the popular quarters to those of the centre, and finally dispersing at one of the most central points of the town, at the amphitheater of the Arena. They had had numerous meetings. They clamored for amnesty for the deserters! They demanded the division of the land!
Milan was then considered, more than now, the city where the pulse of the working nation could be felt. Milan, where I had labored with ideals, had experienced in 1914 and in the first months of 1915 epic days for the war. The city always had a strong and gallant spirit. In it citizenship was more active than in many other parts of the country. It had known how to prepare itself with dignity to sustain war effort. And now, after the triumph, even this town, the town of the 10,000 volunteers, seemed to yield itself to a disease.
This procession I said was an evidence of the deep mire in which all the classes of the population were sinking, especially those belonging to the populari. As the procession passed through the streets the bourgeois—the shopkeepers, the hotel keepers—hastily closed their windows and doors. They pulled down the roller blinds.
“There,” said I, “are eyes closing with the weariness of anxiety and fear.”
Naturally enough, the revolutionists, observing their effect, puffed up with new braggart triumph. Not a single force, interventista or any other, set foot in the street to stop the irresponsibles. The beloved tricolor flag of Italy was taken as a mark. It was hastily taken off balconies!
I remember an episode in the shame of those days; a woman, a school-teacher in the popular quarters, ran to the defense of the Italian flag. Risking her life, she stood with blazing eyes against a herd of communists. You may be sure that in the period of redemption and resurrection, when we stood upright again, the golden medal for valor was bestowed on this woman of saintly courage.
The Popolo d’Italia, of which I was the founder and editor, lived then its life of intense polemics. Every day was a battle. The little street of Via Paolo da Conuobio was constantly blocked by police or by detachments of carabinieri and soldiers. All the staff were guarded whenever we appeared in public. One could understand that the government was anxious about us. The authorities wanted to control all that the Popolo d’Italia was doing and to curb all agitation for virile methods in the political struggle. The censorship was re-established exclusively and solely for the Popolo d’Italia. Through a back-door channel a disgusting Socialist deputy tried also to bring about an inquiry. His proposal was ridiculed out of the door.
I wrote, on the next day after the Procession of the Defeat of Milan, an article the title of which was taken from a famous polemical book of Giordano Bruno—“Against the Return of the Beast.”