“Gentlemen:
“From further communications you will know the Fascist programme in its details. I do not want, so long as I can avoid it, to rule against the Chamber; but the Chamber must feel its own position. That position opens the possibility that it may be dissolved in two days or in two years. We ask full powers because we want to assume full responsibility. Without full powers you know very well that we couldn’t save one lira—I say one lira. We do not want to exclude the possibility of voluntary co-operation, for we will cordially accept it, if it comes from deputies, senators, or even from competent private citizens. Every one of us has a religious sense of our difficult task. The Country cheers us and waits. We will give it not words but facts. We formally and solemnly promise to restore the budget to health. And we will restore it. We want to make a foreign policy of peace, but at the same time one of dignity and steadiness. We will do it. We intend to give the Nation a discipline. We will give it. Let none of our enemies of yesterday, of to-day, of to-morrow cherish illusions in regard to our permanence in power. Foolish and childish illusions, like those of yesterday!
“Our Government has a formidable foundation in the conscience of the Nation. It is supported by the best, the newest Italian generations. There is no doubt that in these last years a great step toward the unification of spirit has been made. The Fatherland has again found itself bound together from north to south, from the continent to the generous islands, which will never be forgotten, from the metropolis of the active colonies of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. Do not, Gentlemen, address more vain words to the Nation. Fifty-two applications to speak upon my message to Parliament are too many. Let us, instead of talking, work with pure heart and ready mind to assure the prosperity and the greatness of the Country.
“May God assist me in bringing to a triumphant end my hard labor.”
I do not believe that, since 1870, the hall of Montecitoro had heard energetic and clear words. They burned with a passion deep in my being. In that speech there was the essence of my old and my recent wrestling with my own mind and my own soul. More than one deputy had to repress the rancour generated by my deserved reproaches; but my exposition in parliament was rewarded by the approval of the whole of Italy. I was looking beyond that old hall of parties of petty power and of politicians. I was speaking to the entire nation. It listened to me and it understood me!
My political instinct told me that from that moment there would rise, with increasing truth and with increasing expansion of Fascist activity, the dawn of new history for Italy.
And perhaps dawn on a new path of civilization....
CHAPTER X
FIVE YEARS OF GOVERNMENT
MY revolutionary method and the power of the Black Shirts had brought me to tremendous responsibility of power. My task, as I have pointed out, was neither simple nor easy; it required large vision, it gathered to it continually more and more duties.
An existence wholly new began for me. To speak about it makes it necessary for me to abandon the usual form of autobiographic style; I must consider the organic whole of my governmental activity. From now on my life identifies itself almost exclusively with thousands of acts of government. Individuality disappears. Instead, my person expresses, I sometimes feel, only measures and acts of concrete character; these do not concern a single person; they concern the multitudes, they concern and permeate an entire people. So one’s entire life is lost in the whole.