When Bonomi fell, the King consulted with many minds. I too was called twice to the Quirinal, his official palace, where conferences are held. Obvious reasons of reserve forbid me to make known what I said to the Sovereign. This political crisis took on abnormal aspects. We groped in the dark. The number of men in the political field who were fit to fill a minority was very limited. They looked toward Orlando, then toward De Nicola, but nobody wanted to accept the responsibility of forming a ministry under the prevailing conditions. They were obliged to go back to Bonomi, who fell for the second time on the “via crucis” when he presented himself again at the chamber.
New consultations and new suggestions were made. Always the same names were given: Orlando, De Nicola, Bonomi. The picture presented that degree of helplessness which has afflicted so many democracies, and which has enabled many countries to vie with each other in the humiliating and derisive boast that they have had more governments and ministries than years of existence! The requirements for leadership were unchanged—the ability to compromise principles and sometimes even integrity, to barter and negotiate with palavering artistry in an effort to build another shaky structure which would perpetuate the whole depressing system. This system may be dear to the heart of doctrinaires. It was quite another affair in practice.
The “Popular” or “Catholic” party, following its bad political instinct, which caused it to be ultra conservative under cover and revolutionary in the street and in parliament, vetoed any return of Giolitti. The posture of the “popolari” was quite unique. Unfortunately they controlled a strong group in the chamber. While they refused to accept the responsibility of power, they blue-pencilled Giolitti and denied support to Bonomi. They rendered the composition of any ministry well-nigh impossible even as a makeshift.
In spite of repeated consultations the same names always came to the surface. It was such a stagnation as comes finally to weak democracies. It was tearing to pieces political logic, common sense, and, unfortunately, also Italy herself.
At last the Facta ministry was formed. This mediocre selection of a member of parliament, closely bound to Giolitti, was made as the only anchor of safety in an absurd extravaganza. Every day we went down one step on the stairs of dignity. Nevertheless, because of the conditions, and because Facta undertook a burden that nobody else wanted, I did not hesitate to declare in my paper that the new cabinet, colorless as it was, might function to some end. I was prepared to say that it could represent, if nothing else, a will to go on, at least in the affairs of ordinary routine administration. It is bad enough to suffer a government which creates nothing; it is even worse to suffer a system of politics which cannot of itself create even an administration!
Facta was an old veteran of parliament and I feel sure that he was a gentleman stamped out by the old die. Respectful of the third rate political morals of the men of his age, he had only one devotion. That was for his teacher, Giolitti. Facta had been a discreet Minister of the Treasury in other times. He had not, as even his friends admitted, the strength and authority needed to draw up a ministry at a serious moment. He had to face the gas and smoke of the struggle between parties, of the pretensions of the “popolari,” of the growing strength of Fascism, and, finally, a delicate international situation abroad.
It was in just such ways that the old “liberal” Italy with its petty dealing with problems, its little parliamentary pea-shooting, its unworthy plots in corridor and cloak rooms, ante-rooms and sidewalk cafes, for puny personal power, its recurring crises, its journalistic bickerings, was breaking the real Italy. Italy, with its struggling co-operatives, its inadequate rural banks, its mean and superficial measures of economy, its incapable and improvident charity! Italy, in its position of humble servant, with napkin on arm to wipe other mouths at international conferences! Italy, prolific and powerful! Italy, like a mother able to supply, even for foreign ingratitude, laborious sons to make fruitful other soils, other climates, other cities and other peoples! Such was her leadership; such was her plight!
Facta was the man who fully represented that old world. Facta was the first to be surprised that he had suddenly found so many admirers. He often said that he failed to understand why he should be at the head of the Italian government. This timid member of parliament forgot that all these people around him who gave him by their mouthings a sensation of strength and influence were only the survivors of an old Liberal-Democratic world, incapable of living, outdated, shipwrecked, clinging for safety to the last Liberal planks of compromise.
But the powerful machine of Fascism was already in motion. Nobody could step into its path to stop it, for it had one aim: to give a government to Italy.
In these days there were some attempts at Fascist secession and schism. I removed them with a few strokes of the pen and a few measures taken within. I was troubled less by mistaken disaffections than by a single grave incident in Fiume. There a renegade Italian, Zanella, nursed and nourished an ignoble anti-Italian plot. The Fascisti imposed banishment upon him. This evil representative of the autonomists and of the Jugo-Slavs was obliged to leave the unhappy city which without Italy would never have been able to put its lips to the cup of peace.