There was little time to spare for dwelling upon these highbrow controversies. Events were tumbling over themselves in a most troubled way. In the month of January, after harsh discussion, it appeared impossible to avoid a threatened railway strike. Soon after, the general strike of the post and telephone employees burst out and lasted six days. It disorganized not only the private interests of citizens but also state communications. It cut off the shuttle of thoughts in a moment made even more delicate by the international situation. The Avanti, the official newspaper of the Socialist party, of which I had once been editor, wrote on that occasion that the post, telegraph and telephone offices were a luxury of modern times; that the ancient peoples had been great even without telegraphic apparatus. Who knows whether this gibberish came from a mocking spirit or from the kind of confirmed idiocy with which extremists are afflicted?
The stated cause of the agitations was always economic, but in truth the end was wholly political; the real intention was to strike a blow full in the face of the state’s authority, against the middle classes and against disciplined order, with a view to establishing the soviets in Italy. That was the plain purpose behind all the ornaments and masks. It is little realized how easily a combination of disorders can put a whole nation—by control of its exchanges and its communications and cities—in the hands of a tyrannous minority.
In the midst of general hardships and of cowardice, of grumbling of impotents, of the vaporings of dull critics, I, almost alone, had the courage to write that the state’s employees, if they were right in view of the feebleness of the government, were wrong, in any case, toward the nation. To inflict upon a people the mortification of an ill-advised strike, to trample upon the rights of the whole, meant to lead men from modern civil life back again to tribal conflict.
“These dissensions,” I wrote in my paper on January 15, 1920, “are between function and government. The sufferer who suffers after having paid, the sufferer, with the inevitable prospect of paying more, is the Italian nation—the word ‘nation’ understood in the sense of human collectivity.” And further on I added: “The material damages of a strike of this kind are enormous, incalculable. But the moral damages at home and abroad are still greater. The moment chosen for the strike gives to the strike itself the true and proper character of a support to Allied imperialism. This is the culminating moment of the negotiations in Paris. This is the moment in which there is the one question—to get, finally, a peace. Why didn’t the postal, the telegraph and telephone operators wait two weeks more, until the return of Nitti from Paris? Was it just ‘written,’ was it just ‘fatal,’ that the ultimatum to the government should fall due on the thirteenth? All this confirms the sinister political character of the act.”
As God pleased, on January twenty-first, the post and telegraph strike was ended, but already there had begun, on the nineteenth of January, a railway strike. It was a useless strike. The leaders of red syndicalism had been willing to proclaim it at any price, even when it was against both the sentiment and the interest of the workmen themselves. I defined this strike as “an enormous crime against the nation.” The country was in desolation. Italy was in the claws of disorder and violence; the foreigners left our charming resorts and byways; the withholding of credit grew general among bankers, while catastrophic rumors held sway over the international world, entangling more and more our diplomatic negotiations.
In the midst of the most unbridled egoism, the Fascists firmly held their places during the strikes of the public services. I will not forget that some groups of our men, inspired by faith, thoroughly did their duty during these agitations. They faced with firm boldness the insults and threats of their striking fellow countrymen.
Meanwhile, in the face of the righteous indignation of public opinion, some Socialists began to feel timid. They tried to separate their responsibility from that of the leaders who had proclaimed the strike. On that occasion, in the Popolo d’Italia of January twenty-first, I published an article entitled “Too Late!” I thrust into the light—with words that later on revealed themselves prophetic—the real situation of socialism.
“The Turatians,” I wrote—“and by this word we intend all those who in Filippo Turati, the leader of the Right, recognize their chief—should have been awakened before. Now the car is thrown upon the steep slope and the reformist’s brake is creaking, but it does not hold; nay, it exhausts the strength of those who are dragging on the lever. At the bottom there is the impregnable massive wall against which the car will break to pieces. Out of the ruin will come wisdom. This was said also by the French fabulist, La Fontaine:
À quelque chose malheur est bon: à mettre un sot à la raison.
“It would be preferable, nevertheless, that the blockheads might restore their reason without plunging the nation into destruction and misery.”