But I did not give up. I repeated my flights. I flew over Mantua with the staff of the Popolo d’Italia. I was determined to show in action that aviation ought not to disappear from our vision of Italian possibilities and progress, to be won, if necessary, at the cost of hardships. I gave an example personally every time I had the chance, and my friends did likewise.
The growing exaltation of the bewitched masses and the incredible weakness of the government culminated at the beginning of September with the occupation of the factories on the part of the metal workers. The occupation of the factories was to be an example of Bolshevism in action. The doctrine to be illustrated was the taking possession of the means of production. The workmen, with their childish understanding, and much more the chiefs who were betraying them—and well aware of their treachery as they did so—pretended that they were able to administer directly, without an order from any one planned beforehand, all the workshops, all the processes, and even the sales of the output. In truth, though it is not commonly realized, they did nothing but make some side arms, such as daggers and swords. They lost not less than twenty-one days in forced leisure and childish manifestations of hatred and impotence.
The occupation once begun, the managers, the owners, and the employes of the establishments were sequestered by the workmen. The trade-marks and factory signs were taken away, while upon the roofs and the doors of the factories the red banners with the sickle and hammer, symbol of the soviets, were hoisted with cheers. In every establishment a committee was formed subject to a socialist-communist set of by-laws. Telephones were used to threaten all who were keeping out of the movement and who, like us of the Popolo d’Italia, were setting out to war against this grotesque sovietist parody.
The seizure of the factories was accompanied by the most ferocious acts. At Turin, the old capital of Piedmont, which had such glorious monarchical and military traditions, the red court of justice worked with all its might. Mario Sonzini, a nationalist and patriot, who had gone over to Fascism among the first, was arrested by the workmen and given a cruel and grotesque revolutionary trial. He was riddled by bullets and his body was then thrown into a ditch. Somebody had a kind Christian thought and threw him into the smelter ovens, but, as these were extinguished and as cold as industry itself, somebody else thought to put an end to the poor martyr by beating and kicking out what remained of life. Sonzini’s guilt was only that he was a Fascist. The same fate befell others. To this kind of inhuman brutality not even the women were strangers. Apparently a bestial type of cruelty had taken hold of men and women drunk with licentiousness.
The newspaper Avanti on that occasion reported this barbarous murder as follows:
It may happen in life for one to be nationalist, to pass to Fascism, to reflect the tendencies of order and to be, nevertheless, arrested and shot to death; this is an average stroke of destiny.
The occupation of the factories in several Italian towns was merely an opportunity for violent demonstrations. There were dead at Monfalcone, there were dead in Milan and there were dead in other towns on the peninsula.
Our credit abroad had been extinguished like a puffed-out candle. Even after the conclusion of peace, there was little thought any longer devoted to a rehabilitation of our nation. One could feel a clear sensation of collapse. The printing press began to spew out paper money. It was necessary to increase circulation; it was necessary to have recourse to inflation to prevent our economic life from going into complete ruin. After ten years, we are still feeling the burden of the consequences of that inauspicious period.
The exigencies of such artificial finance hastened the wreck. I denounced the peril in a series of articles in a debate with Meda, a member of the chamber, a man believed to be erudite in public finance. I can say now that nobody in that murky time had the ability to indicate any clear course to the Italian people; in financial matters we were going straight toward utter ruin—and playing an accompaniment on the strings of his foreign policy, Sforza was continuing his series of renunciations. He arrived at Rapallo and from that moment Fiume was doomed to become a detached, exiled city lying on a bed of thorns.
On November fourth the celebration of the anniversary of our victory gave opportunity for slight symptoms of reawakening. Rome and Milan both had extensive patriotic demonstrations. All Italy celebrated. I did.