It is necessary for me to review the conditions which we faced. Orlando, president of the council, was incapacitated by temperament to dominate the internal situation, just as he was unable to be a master in foreign affairs. His work was contradictory, full of false sentimentality and failure to comprehend the real interests of Italy. Not knowing French, and ignorant of the treaties concluded with the Allied nations, Orlando, in spite of the presence of Sonnino, was a disastrous influence during the peace negotiations at Versailles. Wilson, so far as Italy was concerned, was ambiguous—so much so that on the twenty-third of April the Italian delegation had to leave Paris. It returned on the fifth of May—a dubious situation. In June, after a vote of the chamber, the Orlando cabinet retired. In the meantime—also in June—serious clashes took place at Fiume between French sailors and Italian soldiers.
Never did Italy have a man so damaging to the Italian interests and programmes as he who came next—Nitti.
He was and remains a personality that is the negation of any ideal of life and of manly conflict. He has a fairly good knowledge of finances. He is impudent in his assertions. He is intensely egocentric. He always wants to play the most important part in cabinets, whether he is president of the council or simply a minister.
His first act when he came into power was the granting of an amnesty. This amnesty was followed by two others. The first had a character of general principle and I approved it, but by granting the two others Nitti committed a great moral crime, for he abolished the difference between those who wore the ensigns of valor in sacrifice and those who had basely betrayed the nation during the war and even had gone over to the enemy!
All the work of Nitti was fish-bait for the approbation of the Socialists. He conceived the ambition of holding the presidency of a future Italian republic. His measures, which wore demagogic dress, did not prevent disorders or devastations sometimes brought about with the cost of lives. He never would face Bolshevism and the dissolutive forces in the open field. He had a decree issued and signed by the King establishing the price of bread; he had it withdrawn on the next day and replaced by another decree, also signed by His Majesty.
There was no point in the national life that he failed to bring up for discussion. All this puffed up the Socialists. They laughed in their sleeves as they foresaw a strong political success for them at the elections. The elections had to take place under the proportional system! The Socialists would become, through the election battle, masters of Italian political life!
It seemed to me that the season was our summer of torment and resolve.
In June, 1919, the Treaty of Peace with Germany was consummated at Versailles. The event for Europe was the end of a nightmare. The continual disillusionments, the reservations and the protests of Germany and the diatribes between the Allies constituted a permanent danger and a reason for anxiety for many nations. The conclusion of the treaty was therefore for them a liberation.
For Italy, on the contrary, it was a complete shattering of ideals. We had won the war; we were utterly defeated in the diplomatic battle. We were losing—except Zara—the whole of Dalmatia, our land by tradition and history, by manners and costumes, by the language spoken and by the ardent and constant aspirations of the Dalmatians toward the mother country. Fiume, most Italian of cities, was contested. The colonial problem was resolved for us in an absolutely negative way. To a nation like ours, powerful and prolific, that has a need of raw materials, of outlets, of markets and of land, on account of the exuberance of its population, only some insignificant rectifications of frontiers were granted when the glut of colonial spoil was passed around.
I could feel the discontent oozing down through our masses and infecting the combattenti themselves. Once more Italy, who had thrown into the conflict men, means, patrimony and youth, went out of a peace settlement with empty hands and manifold disillusions.