CHAPTER VII
THE GARDEN OF FASCISM
IN certain contingencies violence has a deep moral significance.
In our land a leading class was neither present nor living. The Liberal party had abdicated everything to the Socialists. There was no solid, modern, national unity.
Ignorance was still astride the workmen and peasant masses. It was useless to attempt to blaze a trail by fine words, by sermons from chairs. It was necessary to give timely, genial recognition to chivalrous violence. The only straight road was to beat the violent forces of evil on the very ground they had chosen.
With us were elements who knew what war meant. From them was born the organization of Italian Bundles of Fight. Many also volunteered from our universities. They were students, touched by the inspiration of idealism, who left their studies to run to our call.
We knew that we must win this war too—throw into yesterday the period of cowardice and treachery. It was necessary to make our way by violence, by sacrifice, by blood; it was necessary to establish the order and discipline wanted by the masses, but impossible to obtain them through milk-and-water propaganda and through words, words and more words—parliamentary and journalistic sham battles.
We began our period of rescue and resurrection. Dead there were, but on the horizon all eyes saw the dawn of Italian rebirth.
The unhappy year of 1921 was closed with the tragic dissolution of the Fiume drama. After the Treaty of Rapallo, by which Fiume was doomed to be a separate body, the Italian resistance in Fiume made itself more decided than ever. D’Annunzio declared that, whatever the cost, he would not abandon the city which had suffered so long and painfully to keep alive and keep pure its Italian soul.
I, too, had been living this drama, day by day. D’Annunzio and I had been close together since the first days of the campaign. Now for more than a year I had been accustomed to receive his brotherly letters. They brought to me the breath of the passion of Fiume. Since the first moment of the occupation of the holocaust city the poet had disclosed to me his firm will to fight. Significant evidence is found in a letter which D’Annunzio had sent me on September 14, 1919, transmitting to me, for my newspaper, one of his most virile messages. He wrote:
My dear Mussolini: Here are two lines in a hurry. I have been working for hours. My hand and my eyes are aching. I send my son, Gabriellino, brave companion, to bring you this manuscript. Look out for any needed correction, and thank you. This is only the first act of a struggle that I will see to the end after my own style. In the event that the censorship should be bold enough to interfere, please publish the letter with the white intervals showing where words are omitted. Then we will see what we shall see.