Dear Companion: The dice are on the table. To-morrow I shall take Fiume with force of arms. The God of Italy assist us!
I arise from bed with fever. But it is impossible to delay. Once more the spirit dominates the miserable flesh.
Sum up the article that the Gazetta del Popolo will publish; give the end in full.
Sustain the cause without stint during the conflict.
I embrace you,
11 September, 1919. Gabrielle d’Annunzio.
The Italian atmosphere, so long checked and humiliated, exploded like Vesuvius after the announcement of the new D’Annunzio gesture. Again we heard the tune of high sentiments of fraternity and of enthusiasm. Again we felt the spirit of May, 1915. The best of our manhood felt the breath of poetry that came from this sacred liberation carried on in the face of the policy of the Nittian government.
The Fascisti were amongst the ardent legionaries of Fiume, while at home they were leading resistance against the defeatists, old and new. The Italian colonists all over the world—these colonists who had followed with anxiety and with unspeakable fright the negotiations of Versailles—sent money in great quantity for D’Annunzio’s expedition. Fiume felt an intuition of its salvation. There were manifestations of frantic enthusiasm. Audacity had repaired injustice; the city was strongly held, so that it could resist by force of arms and with courage all the Nittian or international interference.
The president of the council, Nitti, in parliament on this occasion, took an ignoble attitude. He summoned up the dangerous idea of protest by a general strike. By his ambiguous language he invited the classes which leaned toward socialism, and especially the Socialists and radicals themselves, to agitate for street demonstrations against D’Annunzio’s enterprise.
Nitti, after conversations with Trumbic, the Jugo-Slav minister, saw all his tangled and slimy net of humiliating understandings going to pieces through the will of a few brave boys.