After various parliamentary ups and downs, the Giolitti ministry fell and was followed by that of Bonomi—a Socialist who arrived at being a Democrat through varied captious reasonings. He tried to set up a policy of internal pacification. He was interested in the truce between Fascists and Socialists, of which I have already told the meagre results. Just at the moment when Bonomi was developing this political fabric came the tragic episode of the massacre of Sarzana. There not less than eighteen Fascists fell. Then came the butchery of Modena, where the Royal Guards shot into a parade of Fascists, leaving some ten dead and many wounded. The home policy had not found as yet, one could mildly say, any perch of stability. I constantly was unfolding my active task as leader of the party, as journalist and politician.
I had a duel of some consequence with Ciccotti Scozzese, a mean figure of a journalist. He was the long hand of our Italian political Masonry. Among other various imperfections, one might say he had that of physical cowardice. Our duel was proof of it. After several assaults the physicians were obliged to stop the encounter because of the claim that my opponent had a heart attack. In other words, fear had set him all aflutter. Shortly before that duel I had another with Major Baseggio over some parliamentary squabble.
I think I have some good qualities as a swordsman—at least I possess some qualities of courage, and thanks to both, I always have come out of combat rather well. In those combats having a chivalrous character, I endeavor to acquit myself in a worthy manner.
Finally in November, 1921, I convoked in Rome a large congress of the Fascists of the whole of Italy. The moment had arrived to emerge from the first phase, in which Fascism had had the character of a movement outside the usual political divisions, into a new phase, in which the organic structure of a party, which had been made strong both by firm political intrenchment and by the growth of central and local organization, should be crystallized.
The Italian Bundles of Fight had been inspired by an impetuous spirit. They possessed therefore an organization of battle rather than a true and proper organization of party. It was now necessary to come to this second phase in order to be prepared to be a successor of the old parties in the command and direction of public affairs. The congress at the Augusteo—the tomb of Augustus and now a concert hall in Rome—had to agree on the terms for the creation of the new party. It had to fix both the organization and the programme.
That was a memorable meeting. Thanks to the number of the followers and the quickness and solidity of the discussions, it showed the virility of Fascism. My point of view won an overwhelming victory in that meeting. The Italian Bundles of Fight were now transforming themselves. They were to receive the new denomination of Fascist National party, with a central directory and supreme council over the provincial organizations and the lesser Fascist sections which were to be created in every locality. On that occasion I wanted with all my desire to strip from our party the personal character which the Fascist movement had assumed because of the stamp of my will. But the more I wished to give the party an autonomous organization and the more I tried, the more I received the conviction from the evidence of the facts that the party could not have existed and lived and could not be triumphant except under my command, my guidance, my support and my spurs.
The meeting in Rome gave a deep insight into the fundamental strength of Fascism, but especially for me it was a revelation of my personal strength. But there were several unpleasant incidents. There had been some men killed in Rome. The workers’ quarter of Rome was hostile to us. The work of the congress had, however, its full and normal development, and the parade of Fascists at last filed off in battle array through the streets of Rome. It served notice to everybody that Fascism was ripe as a party, and as an instrumentality with the heart and the means to battle and to defend itself.
The Bonomi ministry developed its pacification policy in the midst of difficulties of all kinds. The time and the moment were rather murky. The year 1921 presented difficulties which would have made any politician shiver. On the horizon a line of clarification was to be discerned, but the sky was nevertheless still heavy with old clouds.
About the end of this formless, gray year, awaiting a great dawn, occurred an event in the financial world which threw a shadow of sorrow over the whole land. This was the crash of the Banca Italiana di Sconto. The collapse was felt particularly in the southern part of Italy by the humble classes who had deposited their savings in that bank. This great banking institution had been born during the war and had done notable service for the organization of our efficiency, but in the postwar period it could not bear the burden of its engagements. The big banking organization, in which the laboring populations of the South and of Upper Italy were interested so deeply, crumbled on itself, giving all the postwar Italian financial policy a sensation of dismay and failure. Ignorance, foolishness, fault, levity? Who knows?
Certainly our credit as a power and as a rebuilding force in comparison with foreign countries diminished enormously. To the faults of our domestic policy was added now, in the eyes of the world, a plutocratic and financial insufficiency.