Strikes were characterized by violent, disgraceful clashes between police and soldiers and the citizens; the interminable parliamentary discussions were marked by fist fights on the floor of the chamber. These were pitiful spectacles, humiliating not only to citizenship and to government itself but to the whole fabric of our political life.
In the short cycle of a few months there had been three ministerial crises, but Nitti always came back to power. The question, as always in a democracy gone drunk with compromise of principles, was one of mutual concessions, and very heavy ones. Miserable. Useless. Nobody was thinking of the rebuilding of social order in a nation which had won a bloody war and which had to face the fact that it was living in the presence of a world of moving realities.
Fascism, unique lighthouse in a sea of cowardice, of compromise and of foggy, plum-colored idealism, had engaged itself in battles; it was overpowered by mere blind multitudes. I was the bull’s-eye of the target of the government of Nitti. He unloosed against me all his hounds, while his journalists tired themselves in vain to note down my contradictions in political matters. The Socialists, mindful of my moral and physical strength, covered me with their vengeance and their ostracism. At least, they roamed at a distance. They were cautious and far off the trail of real things.
During one of the many evenings when Milan was at the mercy of these scoundrels, I found myself surrounded and isolated in a café of the Piazza del Duomo, the central hub of the Lombardian metropolis. While I was sipping a drink, waiting for Michele Bianchi, a hundred Socialists and loafers hemmed in the café and began hurling abuses and insults at me. I had been recognized. Perhaps they intended, in their collective wrath, to give me a beating in order to place on my person the vengeance they had long since had in mind. The crowd, growing in numbers, became more and more menacing, and so the owner of the café and the female cashier hastened to pull down the shutters. She invited me, according to the fashion of those disorderly times, to go out because I was endangering their interests. I did not wait for a second invitation. I am used to facing the rabble without fear. The more there are of them, the more a man can move toward them with a sure courage which, to some, may appear as an affectation. I cannot say that there was any reluctance on my part to face these cowards.
I looked at the leaders and said, “What do you want of me? To strike me? Well, begin. Then be thereafter on guard. For any insult of yours, any blow, you will pay for dearly.”
I remember the picture of that wolf pack. They were silent. They looked furtively at one another. The nearest withdrew, and then suddenly fear, which is as contagious as courage in any crowd of people, spread among the group. They backed away; they dispersed and only from a distance flung their last insults.
I recite this incident because it was typical of the usual occurrence in the life of a Fascist. But it must be remembered that in other cases the end was quite different—beatings, knife thrusts, bullets, assassinations, atrocities, torture and death.
In these days there began to develop a contest between General Diaz, victor of our last campaign, and Nitti.
The London pact, which had given Italy certain promises, broke down. The Adriatic coast-line was in a state of complete insecurity. Absurd rumors spread in the diplomatic clubs. The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settled along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. There was an appeal from all the groups representative of the best Italian life in behalf of Dalmatia. All these forces of righteousness, on the occasion of the anniversary of Italy’s entry into war, organized a Dalmatian parade, with the object of dedicating, in the name of the fatherland, their indestructible loyalty to their country.
Then, in the capital, came about an episode which is still vivid in our memories. It raised general indignation. The Royal Guards, a new police corps, created exclusively to serve the designs of the Nittian régime, took the parade by storm. They fired gunshot volleys. Many victims dropped and some fifty were wounded. This was the most unworthy episode that ever happened under the sky of Rome within any memory. And as if this assault and outrage were not sufficient, the Dalmatians living in Rome were arrested, including the women. Very few dared to raise their protests. Supine victims and bullying authorities were the fashion. In the chamber certain deputies, among whom were the nationalist writer, Luigi Siciliani, and Egilberto Martire, moved interpellations which found no echo. From the columns of the Popolo d’Italia I spread far and wide my contempt. I hurled anathema against the system by which a whole people were disgraced. My cry had some echoes in the senate—in that senate where in historic hours some great name always rose up to defend the dignity, the right and the nobility of the Italian people.