Already I have told how, after the electoral defeat of November 16, 1919, some of my friends were terrified and others asserted how useless it was to go against the stream. They said—for there are always minds of this type—that it was much better to come to an agreement with the opposition, which in those days held all strategic political positions and dominated the parliament. Compromise, negotiation and agreements were offered me.
I rejected flatly any agreement whatever. I did not admit even one moment’s thought of coming to a covenant with those who had repudiated our Italy in war and now were betraying her in peace. Not many understood me—not even those close to me. Two of my editors on the Popolo d’Italia, my newspaper, asked permission to leave. They made their excuses on the grounds that they had moved from their political streets and house numbers. They even accused me of having helped myself—during the electoral fight—with funds gathered by the Popolo d’Italia in the cause of smarting Fiume. So I have seen myself—a bitter experience—obliged to defend myself from those who had been my friends.
I appeared before the convention of the Lombardian journalists, demanding opportunity to hear and be heard as to the charges made. My justification was ample and precise. The board was forced by the facts to do me justice. And afterward, without waiting for the hour of my triumphs, the self-same slanderers, it is fair to say, made honorable amends for their errors.
But meanwhile, taking a pretext from this episode, there was launched against me the furious wrath of the Socialists and of the members of the Popular party, led by the priests. Ferrets were sent to smell into my life. Soldiers and police were bribed. Secret inquiries were made into my every-day routine, into all my acts, all my beliefs. The deluded, the rejected, the unmindful—all whom my upright and fierce soul had fired at in some way or another—gathered against me. They could do nothing. In spite of the length and breadth of the investigation, up high and down low, no dragon was dredged out of my pool. As for the disposition of the funds for the Fiume campaign, and other unworthy calumnies, I published in my newspaper documents and testimony which could never be refuted.
The conclusion arrived at then has been and always will be the same until I cease to exist: on the score of integrity there is no assault to be made upon me. My political work may be valued more or less, this way or that, and people may shout me up or howl me down, but in the moral field it is another matter. Men must live in harmony with the faith by which they are pushed on; they must be inspired by the most absolute disinterestedness. True men, in politics, must be animated by the humane and devout sense; they must have a regard, a love toward and a deep vision regarding their own fellow creatures. And all these qualities must not be defiled by dissimulations or rhetoric or flatteries or compromises or servile concessions. On this ground, at least, I am proud to know myself as one not to be suspected—even by myself—and feeling that my inmost moral fiber is invincible.
I believe that this, above all else, has been the stuff and fabric of my strength and of my success.
The beginning of 1920 found Italy engaged with a most difficult international situation. While in Paris the diplomats were sordidly debating, the bleeding wound of Dalmatia was yet open, and in it was D’Annunzio at Fiume. The Socialists, to be sure, had obtained a boisterous electoral victory, but they proved from day to day more and more impotent and incapable of maintaining their positions in government with dignity. The most temperate were overturned by the extremists. There was the gorgeous myth of Lenin! The Italian Liberal party had resigned all its prerogatives. The ministry was living from day to day, at the mercy of political extortions, of blackmail, of those who wanted special favors. There was turbulence in parliament and uproars of political nature on the streets.
Under such conditions it was necessary to struggle, even though sometimes victory seemed very difficult and almost unattainable. I started the year by an article entitled “Let’s Navigate.” I said: “Two religions are to-day contending with each other for the sway over the world—the black and the red. From two vaticans depart to-day encyclical letters—from that of Rome and from that of Moscow. We declare ourselves the heretics of these two expressions. We are exempt from contagion. The issue of the battle is of secondary importance to us. To us the fight has the prize in itself, though it be not crowned by victory. The world now has some strange analogy with that of Julian the Apostate. The Galileo with the red hair! Will he be a winner again? Or will the winner be the Mongol Galileo of the Kremlin? Will there be realized the upsetting of all valiant and virile thought?
“These questions weigh upon the uneasy spirits of our contemporaries.
“But in the meantime it is necessary to steer the ship! Even against the stream. Even against the flow. Even if shipwreck is waiting for the solitary and haughty bearers of heresy.”