The electoral tragedy had broken up our central committees. Many of us had been arrested; many, threatened, had disappeared. Little by little, calm having been restored, I rewove at the Popolo d’Italia the fabric of our cause and tried to build again the structure of our organization. In various meetings I explained the gravity of the Italian situation. I spoke independently of the particular attitude of the Fascisti.
The victory of the Socialists was a danger, not so much because of the fact itself as because of the phenomenal retreat to their holes of all the weak and the incapables which followed the day after the Socialist victory. That victory crushed the Liberals and the Democrats. For some time a low furtive literature of propaganda had spread stories about disquieting episodes in the defeated German and Austrian countries. This literature spun narratives about professors obliged to become servants and scullions, Russian princesses engaged as ballet dancers, generals who were selling matches on the streets. All this put together with the Socialist victory produced a wave of fright in all classes, and I could see a serious fact of corruption and political paralysis. The old parties had been beaten by pussyfoot socialism. That socialism had no aim. It was victorious only through cowardice in the others and because of the general uneasiness in the population. Certainly it did not win on any declaration of a great faith.
I did not fold under the smallest edge of my flag. From my editor’s office that was getting barer and barer, to my readers that were getting fewer and fewer, I addressed the most bitter and severe exhortations to resist, resist, resist.
I made a little fortress out of the editor’s office. The newspaper was sequestrated and censored every day; but notwithstanding difficulties and lack of means, I succeeded in keeping the little paper alive. I was throttled by the skinny hand of poverty. I could have sold out, but I held on.
So that I might be completely withdrawn from circulation, various messengers of the Nittian government came to me advising me to go and study the autonomous republics of Southern Russia. I understood the double game. They acted with me as they acted with D’Annunzio when they advised him to try the flight from Rome to Tokio. But D’Annunzio was now still resisting at Fiume, and I, with my newspaper, was renewing and reassembling the dispersed ranks of the Fascisti. I held meetings constantly. Not for a moment did I cease my activity. It cannot be said that I failed to look the triumphant beast in the face.
One day, just after the elections, I had to go personally because of postal regulations to the money-order window of the main post office in Milan. I was to receive some considerable contributions that Italians from oversea colonies were sending for the Fiume enterprise. In the huge buildings of the Central Post Office one could still see visible signs of the elections—the murmur of the discussions, the stenciled inscriptions on the walls were all there. I presented myself with my brother, Arnaldo, at the window of the money-order office.
The Bolshevik clerk, with evident irony, said I had to make myself known. He did not know any “certain Benito Mussolini.” A short discussion arose that attracted other Bolshevik elements, who amused themselves by affirming that nobody knew Benito Mussolini. The development of this discussion, impudently provoking, was stopped by an old clerk of the post office, a faithful servant of the state who certainly was not intoxicated by the Socialist success.
He said, “Pay this money transfer. Do not be silly. Mussolini has a name that is not only known now here but will be known and judged all over the world.”
I have never learned the name of this gentleman. He was straight and fair.
Some symptoms of reaction against the Socialist victory were to be noticed now. One day at the editor’s office of the newspaper, facing the anxieties of my associates and the doubts of some half-hearted ones in my service, I felt it necessary to disclose my own hopes and faiths: