The meeting of the twenty-third of March sends its first greeting and reverent thought to the sons of Italy who died for the greatness of their country and for the freedom of the world; to the mutilated and to the invalids, to all those who fought, to the ex-prisoners who fulfilled their duty. It declares itself ready to uphold with all its energy the material and moral claims that will be put forward by the associations of those who fought.
The second declaration pledged the Fascisti of Combat to oppose themselves to the imperialism of any other countries damaging to Italy. It accepted the supreme postulates of the League of Nations regarding Italy. It affirmed the necessity to complete the stability of our frontiers between the Alps and the Adriatic with the claim of annexation of Fiume and of Dalmatia.
The third declaration spoke of the elections that were announced for the near future. In this motion the Fasci di Combattimento pledged themselves to fight with all their means the candidates that were milk-and-water Italians, to whatever party they belonged.
Finally we talked of organization—the organization that would be adapted to the new movement. I did not favor any bureaucratic cut-and-dried organization. It was thought wise that in every big town the correspondent of the Popolo d’Italia should be the organizer of a section of the Fasci di Combattimento, with the idea that each group should become a centre of Fascist ideas, work and action. The first expenses—amounting to a few thousand lire—were covered by the feeble resources of the Popolo d’Italia. A central committee was formed to guide the whole movement.
It is amusing for me to recall that this meeting remained almost unnoticed. The stupid irony of the Socialists and the narrow-minded incomprehensiveness of the Italian Liberal party could not grasp its significance.
The Corriere della Sera, that great liberal newspaper, dedicated to this news about twenty lines in its columns!
The internal situation in Italian politics and Italian policy continued to be nebulous and full of uncertainty.
Disillusion and the shattering of ideals could be noticed, even among those who had fought. A sense of weariness dominated all classes—every one. The Church, which had put herself apart during the great European conflict, now started activity in order to have her voice listened to at the peace negotiations and to have a say about all the questions that interested the nations that had taken part in the war.
So far as our national life was concerned, the Church limited her action to the creation of the Partito Popolare—the so-called Popular, or Catholic, party. It was faithful to some important programme points regarding the family and religion and the nation. It represented at that time an attempt to stop the prevalent diffusion of those Bolshevik ideas of socialistic parliamentary systems that were then disintegrating Rome and the provinces. But the Partito Popolare itself ran off the rails and jumped the fences; it tried to compete with the Socialists themselves. Of little and doubtful patriotic faith, it ran square against the Fascisti and the interventisti. The Popular party, along with the others, was too much in a hurry to close the parenthesis of the war.
Political riots, disturbances and strikes took place alternately in a kind of sickly rotation in every Italian city.