Transcriber’s Notes

Corrected text is marked with a dotted underline. A list of corrections can be found at the end of this eBook.

[Other notes] may be found at the end of this eBook.

From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan.

MUSSOLINI.

In his office at the Palazzo Chigi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When listening intently this is his attitude and expression.

My Autobiography

By

Benito Mussolini

With a Foreword by
Richard Washburn Child
Former Ambassador to Italy

Illustrated

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1928

COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Copyright, 1928, by Curtis Publishing Co.
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD
By RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD

It is far from my purpose to elaborate the material in this book, to interpret it, or to add to it.

With much of the drama it contains I, being Ambassador of the United States at the time, was intimately familiar; much of the extraordinary personality disclosed here was an open book to me long ago because I knew well the man who now, at last, has written characteristically, directly and simply of that self for which I have a deep affection.

For his autobiography I am responsible. Lives of Mussolini written by others have interests of sorts.

“But nothing can take the place of a book which you will write yourself,” I said to him.

“Write myself?” He leaned across his desk and repeated my phrase in amazement.

He is the busiest single individual in the world. He appeared hurt as if a friend had failed to understand.

“Yes,” I said and showed him a series of headings I had written on a few sheets of paper.

“All right,” he said in English. “I will.”

It was quite like him. He decides quickly and completely.

So he began. He dictated. I advised that method because when he attempts to write in longhand he corrects and corrects and corrects. It would have been too much for him. So he dictated. The copy came back and he interlined the manuscript in his own hand—a dash of red pencil, and a flowing rivulet of ink—here and there.

When the manuscripts began to come to me I was troubled because mere literal translators lose the vigor of the man himself.

“What editing may I do?” I asked him.

“Any that you like,” he said. “You know Italy, you understand Fascism, you see me, as clearly as any one.”

But there was nothing much to do. The story came through as it appears here. It is all his and—what luck for all of us—so like him! Approve of him or not, when one reads this book one may know Mussolini or at least, if one’s vision is clouded, know him better. Like the book or not, there is not an insincere line in it. I find none.

Of course there are many things which a man writing an autobiography cannot see about himself or will not say about himself.

He is unlikely to speak of his own size on the screen of history.

Perhaps when approval or disapproval, theories and isms, pros and cons, are all put aside the only true measure of a man’s greatness from a wholly unpartisan view-point may be found in the answer to this question:

“How deep and lasting has been the effect of a man upon the largest number of human beings—their hearts, their thoughts, their material welfare, their relation to the universe?”

In our time it may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent greatness equal to those of Mussolini.

Admire him or not, approve his philosophies or not, concede the permanence of his success or not, consider him superman or not, as you may, he has put to a working test, on great and growing numbers of mankind, programmes, unknown before, in applied spirituality, in applied plans, in applied leadership, in applied doctrines, in the applied principle that contents are more important than labels on bottles. He has not only been able to secure and hold an almost universal following; he has built a new state upon a new concept of a state. He has not only been able to change the lives of human beings but he has changed their minds, their hearts, their spirits. He has not merely ruled a house; he has built a new house.

He has not merely put it on paper or into orations; he has laid the bricks.

It is one thing to administer a state. The one who does this well is called statesman. It is quite another thing to make a state. Mussolini has made a state. That is super-statesmanship.

I knew him before the world at large, outside of Italy, had ever heard of him; I knew him before and after the moment he leaped into the saddle and in the days when he, almost single-handed, was clearing away chaos’ own junk pile from Italy.

But no man knows Mussolini. An Italian newspaper offered a prize for the best essay showing insight into the mystery of the man. Mussolini, so the story goes, stopped the contest by writing to the paper that such a competition was absurd, because he himself could not enter an opinion.

In spite of quick, firm decisions, in spite of grim determination, in spite of a well-ordered diagrammed pattern and plan of action fitted to any moment of time, Mussolini, first of all, above all and after all, is a personality always in a state of flux, adjusting its leadership to a world eternally in a state of flux.

Change the facts upon which Mussolini has acted and he will change his action. Change the hypotheses and he will change his conclusion.

And this perhaps is an attribute of greatness seldom recognized. Most of us are forever hoping to put our world in order and finish the job. Statesmen with some idea to make over into reality hope for a day when they can say: “Well, that’s done!” And when it is done,—often enough it is nothing. The bridges they have built are now useless, because the rivers have all changed their courses and humanity is already shrieking for new bridges. This is not an unhappy thought, says Mussolini. A finished world would be a stupid place—intolerably stupid.

The imagination of mere statesmen covers a static world.

The imagination of true greatness covers a dynamic world. Mussolini conceives a dynamic world. He is ready to go on the march with it, though it overturns all his structures, upsets all his theories, destroys all of yesterday and creates a screaming dawn of a to-morrow.

Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believes that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and programmes.

He has marched up several hills with the thousands and then marched down again. This strange creature of strange life and strange thoughts, with that almost psychopathic fire which was in saints and villains, in Napoleons, in Jeanne d’Arcs and in Tolstoys, in religious prophets and in Ingersolls, has been up the Socialist, the international, the liberal and the conservative hills and down again. He says: “The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow. The machine first of all must run!”

I have watched, with a curiosity that has never failed to creep in on me, the marked peculiarities, physical and mental, of this man. At moments he is quite relaxed, at ease; and yet the unknown gusts of his own personality play on him eternally. One sees in his eyes, or in a quick movement of his body, or in a sentence suddenly ejaculated, the effect of these gusts, just as one sees wind on the surface of the water.

There is in his walk something of a prowl, a faint suggestion of the tread of the cat. He likes cats—their independence, their decision, their sense of justice and their appreciation of the sanctity of the individual. He even likes lions and lionesses, and plays with them until those who guard his life protest against their social set. His principal pet is a Persian feline which, being of aristocratic lineage, nevertheless exhibits a pride not only of ancestry but, condescendingly, of belonging to Mussolini. And yet, in spite of his own prowl, as he walks along in his riding-boots, springy, active, ready to leap, it seems, there is little else feline about him. One quality is feline, however—it is the sense of his complete isolation. One feels that he must always have had this isolation—isolation as a boy, isolation as a young radical, adventurer, lover, worker, thinker.

There is no understudy of Mussolini. There is no man, woman, or child who stands anywhere in the inner orbit of his personality. No one. The only possible exception is his daughter Edda. All the tales of his alliances, his obligations, his ties, his predilections are arrant nonsense. There are none—no ties, no predilections, no alliances, no obligations unpaid.

Financially? Lying voices said that he had been personally financed and backed by the industrialists of Italy. This is ridiculous to those who know. His salary is almost nothing. His own family—wife, children, are poor.

Politically? Whom could he owe? He has made and can unmake them all. He is free to test every officeholder in the whole of Italy by the yardstick of service and fitness. Beyond that I know not one political debt that he owes. He has tried to pay those of the past; I believe that the cynicism in him is based upon the failure of some who have been rewarded to live up to the trust put in them.

“But I take the responsibility for all,” says he. He says it publicly with jaws firm; he says it privately with eyes somewhat saddened.

He takes responsibility for everything—for discipline, for censorship, for measures which, were less rigor required, would appear repressive and cruel. “Mine!” says he, and stands or falls on that. It is an admirable courage. I could, if I wished, quote instance after instance of this acceptance—sometimes when he is not to blame—of the whole responsibility of the machine.

“Mine!” says he.

And in spite of any disillusionment he has suffered since I knew him first, he has retained his laugh—often, one is bound to say, a scornful laugh—and he has kept his faith in an ability to build up a machine—the machine of Fascism—the machine built not on any fixed theory but one intended by Mussolini to run—above all, to run, to function, to do, to accomplish, to fill the bottles with wine first, unlike the other isms, and put the labels on after.

Mussolini has superstitious faith in himself. He has said it. Not a faith in himself to make a personal gain. An assassin’s bullet might wipe him out and leave his family in poverty. That would be that. His faith is in a kind of destiny which will allow him, before the last chapter, to finish the building of this new state, this new machine—“the machine which will run and has a soul.”

The first time I ever saw him he came to my residence sometime before the march on Rome and I asked him what would be his programme for Italy. His answer was immediate: “Work and discipline.”

I remember I thought at that time that the phrase sounded a little evangelical, a phrase of exhortation. But a mere demagogue would never choose it. Wilson’s slogans of Rights and Peace and Freedom are much more popular and gain easier currency than sterner phrases. It is easier even for a sincere preacher, to offer soft nests to one’s followers; it is more difficult to excite enthusiasm for stand-up doctrines. Any analysis and weighing of Mussolini’s greatness must include recognition that he has made popular throughout a race of people, and perhaps for others, a standard of obligation of the individual not only exacting but one which in the end will be accepted voluntarily. Not only is it accepted voluntarily but with an almost spiritual ecstasy which has held up miraculously in Italy during years, when all the so-called liberals in the world were hovering over it like vultures, croaking that if it were not dead it was about to die.

It is difficult to lead men at all. It is still more difficult to lead them away from self-indulgence. It is still more difficult to lead them so that a new generation, so that youth itself, appears as if born with a new spirit, a new virility bred in the bones. It is difficult to govern a state and difficult to deal cleanly and strongly with a static programme applied to a static world; but it is more difficult to build a new state and deal cleanly and strongly with a dynamic programme applied to a dynamic world.

This man, who looks up at me with that peculiar nodding of his head and raising of the eyebrows, has done it. There are few in the world’s history who have. I had considered the phrase “Work and discipline” as a worthy slogan, as a good label for an empty bottle. Within six years this man, with a professional opposition which first barked like Pomeranians at his heels and then ran away to bark abroad, has made the label good, has filled the bottle, has turned concept into reality.

It is quite possible for those who oppose the concept to say that the reality of the new spirit of Italy and its extent of full acceptance by the people may exist in the mind of Mussolini, but does not spring out of the people themselves but it is quite untrue as all know who really know.

He throws up his somewhat stubby, meaty, short-fingered hands, strong and yet rather ghostlike when one touches them, and laughs. Like Roosevelt. No one can spend much time with him without thinking that after all there are two kinds of leaders—outdoor and indoor leaders—and that the first are somewhat more magnetic, more lasting and more boyish and likable for their power than the indoor kind.

Mussolini, like Roosevelt, gives the impression of an energy which cannot be bottled, which bubbles up and over like an eternally effervescent, irrepressible fluid. At these moments one remembers his playing of the violin, his fencing, his playful, mischievous humour, the dash of his courage, his contact with animals, his success in making gay marching songs for the old drab struggles of mankind with the soil, with the elements, with ores in the earth, and the pathways of the seas. In the somber conclusions of the student statesman and in the sweetness of the sentimentalist statesman there is little joy; unexpected joy is found in the leadership of a Mussolini. Battle becomes a game. The game becomes a romp. It is absurd to say that Italy groans under discipline. Italy chortles with it! It is victory!

He is a Spartan too. Perhaps we need them in the world to-day; especially that type whose first interest is the development of the power and the happiness of a race.

The last time I took leave of Mussolini he came prowling across the room as I went toward the door. His scowl had gone. The evening had come. There had been a half hour of quiet conversation. The strained expression had fallen from his face. He came toward me and rubbed his shoulder against the wall. He was relaxed and quiet.

I remembered Lord Curzon’s impatience with him long ago, when Mussolini had first come into power, and Curzon used to refer to him as “that absurd man.”

Time has shown that he was neither violent nor absurd. Time has shown that he is both wise and humane.

It takes the world a long time to see what has been dropped into the pan of its old scales!

In terms of fundamental and permanent effect upon the largest number of human beings—whether one approves or detests him—the Duce is now the greatest figure of this sphere and time. One closes the door when one leaves him, feeling, as when Roosevelt was left, that one could squeeze something of him out of one’s clothes.

He is a mystic to himself.

I imagine, as he reaches forth to touch reality in himself, he finds that he himself has gone a little forward, isolated, determined, illusive, untouchable, just out of reach—onward!

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I
A SULPHUROUS LAND

ALMOST all the books published about me put squarely and logically on the first page that which may be called my birth certificate. It is usually taken from my own notes.

Well, then here it is again. I was born on July 29, 1883, at Varano di Costa. This is an old hamlet. It is on a hill. The houses are of stone, and sunlight and shade give these walls and roofs a variegated color which I well remember. The hamlet, where the air is pure and the view agreeable, overlooks the village of Dovia, and Dovia is in the commune, or county, of Predappio in the northeast of Italy.

It was at two o’clock Sunday afternoon when I came into the world. It was by chance the festival day of the patron saint of the old church and parish of Caminate. On the structure a ruined tower overlooks proudly and solemnly the whole plain of Forli—a plain which slopes gently down from the Apennines, with their snow-clad tops in winter, to the undulating bottoms of Ravaldino, where the mists gather in summer nights.

Let me add to the atmosphere of a country dear to me by bringing again to my memory the old district of Predappio. It was a country well known in the thirteenth century, giving birth to illustrious families during the Renaissance. It is a sulphurous land. From it the ripening grapes make a strong wine of fine perfume. There are many springs of iodine waters. And on that plain and those undulating foothills and mountain spurs, the ruins of mediæval castles and towers thrust up their gray-yellow walls toward the pale blue sky in testimony of the virility of centuries now gone.

Such was the land, dear to me because it was my soil. Race and soil are strong influences upon us all.

As for my race—my origin—many persons have studied and analyzed its hereditary aspects. There is nothing very difficult in tracing my genealogy, because from parish records it is very easy for friendly research to discover that I came from a lineage of honest people. They tilled the soil, and because of its fertility they earned the right to their share of comfort and ease.

Going further back, one finds that the Mussolini family was prominent in the city of Bologna in the thirteenth century. In 1270 Giovanni Mussolini was the leader of this warlike, aggressive commune. His partner in the rule of Bologna in the days of armored knights was Fulcieri Paolucci de Calboli, who belonged to a family from Predappio also, and even to-day that is one of the distinguished families.

The house at Varano di Costa, in Predappio, where Mussolini was born.

The destinies of Bologna and the internal struggles of its parties and factions, following the eternal conflicts and changes in all struggles for power, caused, at last, the exile of the Mussolinis to Argelato. From there they scattered into neighboring provinces. One may be sure that in that era their adventures were varied and sometimes in the flux of fortune brought them to hard times. I have never discovered news of my forbears in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century there was a Mussolini in London. Italians never hesitate to venture abroad with their genius or their labors. The London Mussolini was a composer of music of some note and perhaps it is from him that I inherit the love of the violin, which even to-day in my hands gives comfort to moments of relaxation and creates for me moments of release from the realities of my days.

Later, in the nineteenth century, the family tie became more clearly defined; my own grandfather was a lieutenant of the National Guard.

My father was a blacksmith—a heavy man with strong, large, fleshy hands. Alessandro the neighbors called him. Heart and mind were always filled and pulsing with socialistic theories. His intense sympathies mingled with doctrines and causes. He discussed them in the evening with his friends and his eyes filled with light. The international movement attracted him and he was closely associated with names known among the followers of social causes in Italy—Andrea Costa, Balducci, Amilcare, Cipriani and even the more tender and pastoral spirit of Giovanni Pascoli. So come and go men whose minds and souls are striving for good ends. Each conference seems to them to touch the fate of the world; each talisman seems to promise salvation; each theory pretends to immortality.

The Mussolinis had left some permanent marks. In Bologna there is still a street named for that family and not long ago a tower and a square bore the name. Somewhere in the heraldic records there is the Mussolini coat of arms. It has a rather pleasing and perhaps magnificent design. There are six black figures in a yellow field—symbols of valor, courage, force.

My childhood, now in the mists of distance, still yields those flashes of memory that come back with a familiar scene, an aroma which the nose associates with damp earth after a rain in the springtime, or the sound of footsteps in the corridor. A roll of thunder may bring back the recollection of the stone steps where a little child who seems no longer any part of oneself used to play in the afternoon.

Out of those distant memories I receive no assurance that I had the characteristics which are supposed traditionally to make parents overjoyed at the perfection of their offspring. I was not a good boy, nor did I stir the family pride or the dislike of my own young associates in school by standing at the head of my class.

I was then a restless being; I am still.

Then I could not understand why it is necessary to take time in order to act. Rest for restfulness meant nothing to me then any more than now.

I believe that in those youthful years, just as now, my day began and ended with an act of will—by will put into action.

Looking back, I cannot see my early childhood as being either praiseworthy or as being more than normal in every direction. I remember my father as a dark-haired, good-natured man, not slow to laugh, with strong features and steady eyes. I remember that near the house where I was born, with its stone wall with moss green in the crevices, there was a small brook and farther on a little river. Neither had much water in it, but in autumn and other seasons when there were unexpected heavy rains they swelled in fury and their torrents were joyous challenges to me. I remember them as my first play spots. With my brother, Arnaldo, who is now the publisher of the daily Popolo d’Italia, I used to try my skill as a builder of dams to regulate the current. When birds were in their nesting season I was a frantic hunter for their concealed and varied homes with their eggs or young birds. Vaguely I sensed in all this the rhythm of natural progress—a peep into a world of eternal wonder, of flux and change. I was passionately fond of young life; I wished to protect it then as I do now.

My greatest love was for my mother. She was so quiet, so tender, and yet so strong. Her name was Rosa. My mother not only reared us but she taught primary school. I often thought, even in my earliest appreciation of human beings, of how faithful and patient her work was. To displease her was my one fear. So, to hide from her my pranks, my naughtiness or some result of mischievous frolic, I used to enlist my grandmother and even the neighbors, for they understood my panic lest my mother should be disturbed.

The alphabet was my first practice in worldly affairs and I learned it in a rush of enthusiasm. Without knowing why, I found myself wishing to attend school—the school at Predappio, some two miles away. It was taught by Marani, a friend of my father. I walked to and fro and was not displeased that the boys of Predappio resented at first the coming of a stranger boy from another village. They flung stones at me and I returned their fire. I was all alone and against many. I was often beaten, but I enjoyed it with that universality of enjoyment with which boys the world around make friendship by battle and arrive at affection through missiles. Whatever was my courage, my body bore its imprints. I concealed the bruises from my mother to shelter her from the knowledge of the world in which I had begun to find expression and to which I supposed she was such a stranger. At the evening repast I probably often feared to stretch out my hand for the bread lest I expose a wound upon my young wrist.

After a while this all ended. War was over and the pretense of enmity—a form of play—faded into nothing and I had found fine schoolmates of my own age.

The call of old life foundations is strong. I felt it when only a few years ago a terrific avalanche endangered the lives of the inhabitants of Predappio. I took steps to found a new Predappio—Predappio Nuovo. My nature felt a stirring for my old home. And I remembered that as a child I had sometimes looked at the plain where the River Rabbi is crossed by the old highway to Mendola and imagined there a flourishing town. To-day that town—Predappio Nuovo—is in full process of development; on its masonry gate there is carved the symbol of Fascism and words expressing my clear will.

When I was graduated from the lower school I was sent to a boarding school. This was at Faenza, the town noted for its pottery of the fifteenth century. The school was directed by the Salesiani priests. I was about to enter into a period of routine, of learning the ways of the disciplined human herd. I studied, slept well and grew. I was awake at daylight and went to bed when the evening had settled down and the bats flew.

This was a period of bursting beyond the bounds of my own little town. I had begun to travel. I had begun to add length after length to that tether which binds one to the hearth and the village.

I saw the town of Forli—a considerable place which should have impressed me but failed to do so. But Ravenna! Some of my mother’s relatives lived in the plain of Ravenna and on one summer vacation we set out together to visit them. After all, it was not far away, but to my imagination it was a great journey—almost like a journey of Marco Polo—to go over hill and dale to the edge of the sea—the Adriatic!

I went with my mother to Ravenna and carefully visited every corner of that city steeped in the essences of antiquity. From the wealth of Ravenna’s artistic treasures there rose before me the beauty and fascination of her history and her name through the long centuries. Deep feelings remain now, impressed then upon me. I experienced a profound and significant enlarging of my concepts of life, beauty and the rise of civilizations. The tomb of Dante, inspiring in its quiet hour of noon; the basilica of San Apollinare; the Candiano canal, with the pointed sails of fishing-boats at its mouth; and then the beauty of the Adriatic moved me—touched something within me.

I went back with something new and undying. My mind and spirit were filled with expanding consciousness. And I took back also a present from my relatives. It was a wild duck, powerful in flight. My brother Arnaldo and I, on the little river at home, put forth patient efforts to tame the wild duck.

CHAPTER II
MY FATHER

MY father took a profound interest in my development. Perhaps I was much more observed by his paternal attention than I thought. We became much more knit together by common interests as my mind and body approached maturity. In the first place I became fascinated by the steam threshing machines which were just then for the first time being introduced into our agricultural life. With my father I went to work to learn the mechanism, and tasted, as I had never tasted before, the quiet joy of becoming a part of the working creative world. Machinery has its fascinations and I can understand how an engineer of a railway locomotive or an oiler in the hold of a ship may feel that a machine has a personality, sometimes irritating, sometimes friendly, with an inexhaustible generosity and helpfulness, power and wisdom.

But manual labor in my father’s blacksmith shop was not the only common interest we shared. It was inevitable that I should find a clearer understanding of those political and social questions which in the midst of discussions with the neighbors had appeared to me as unfathomable, and hence a stupid world of words. I could not follow as a child the arguments of lengthy debates around the table, nor did I grasp the reasons for the watchfulness and measures taken by the police. But now in an obscure way it all appeared as connected with the lives of strong men who not only dominate their own lives but also the lives of their fellow creatures. Slowly but fatally I was turning my spirit and my mind to new political ideals destined to flower for a time.

I began with young eyes to see that the tiny world about me was feeling uneasiness under the pinch of necessity. A deep and secret grudge was darkening the hearts of the common people. A country gentry of mediocrity in economic usefulness and of limited intellectual contribution were hanging upon the multitudes a weight of unjustified privileges. These were sad, dark years not only in my own province but for other parts of Italy. I must have the marks upon my memory of the resentful and furtive protests of those who came to talk with my father, some with bitterness of facts, some with a newly devised hope for some reform.

It was then, while I was still in my early teens, that my parents, after many serious talks, ending with a rapid family counsel, turned the rudder of my destiny in a new direction. They said that my manual work did not correspond to their ambitions for me, to their ability to aid me, nor did it fit my own capacities. My mother had a phrase which remains in my ears: “He promises something.”

From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan.

Mussolini’s mother and father, Rosa and Alessandro Mussolini.

At the time I was not very enthusiastic about that conclusion; I had no real hunger for scholastic endeavor. I did not feel that I would languish if I did not go to a normal school and did not prepare to become a teacher. But my family were right. I had developed some capacities as a student and could increase them.

I went to the normal school at a place called Forlimpopoli. I remember my arrival in that small city. The citizens were cheerful and industrious, good at bargaining—tradesmen and middlemen. The school, however, had a greater distinction; it was conducted by Valfredo Carducci, brother of the great writer Giosue Carducci, who at that time was harvesting his laurels because of his poetry and his inspiration drawn from Roman classicism.

There was a long stretch of study ahead of me; to become a master—to have a teacher’s diploma—meant six years of books and pencils, ink and paper. I confess that I was not very assiduous. The bright side of those years of preparation to be a teacher came from my interest in reforming educational methods, and even more in an interest begun at that time and maintained ever since, an intense interest in the psychology of human masses—the crowd.

I was, I believe, unruly; and I was sometimes indiscreet. Youth has its passing restlessness and follies. Somehow I succeeded in gaining forgiveness. My masters were understanding and on the whole generous. But I have never been able to make up my mind how much of the indulgence accorded to me came from any hope they had in me or how much came from the fact that my father had acquired an increasing reputation for his moral and political integrity.

So the diploma came to me at last. I was a teacher! Many are the men who have found activity in political life who began as teachers. But then I saw only the prospect of the hard road of job hunting, letters of recommendation, scraping up a backing of influential persons and so on.

In a competition for a teacher’s place at Gualtieri, in the province of Reggio Emilia, I was successful. I had my taste of it. I taught for a year. On the last day of the school year I dictated an essay. I remember its thesis. It was: “By Persevering You Arrive.” For that I obtained the praise of my superiors.

So school was closed. I did not want to go back to my family. There was a narrow world for me, with affection to be sure, but restricted. There in Predappio one could neither move nor think without feeling at the end of a short rope. I had become conscious of myself, sensitive to my future. I felt the urge to escape.

Money I had not—merely a little. Courage was my asset. I would be an exile. I crossed the frontier; I entered Switzerland.

It was in this wander-life, now full of difficulties, toil, hardship and restlessness, that developed something in me. It was the milestone which marked my maturity. I entered into this new era as a man and politician. My confident soul began to be my support. I conceded nothing to pious demagoguery. I allowed myself, humble as was my figure, to be guided by my innate proudness and I saw myself in my own mental dress.

To this day I thank difficulties. They were more numerous than the nice, happy incidents. But the latter gave me nothing. The difficulties of life have hardened my spirit. They have taught me how to live.

For me it would have been dreadful and fatal if on my journey forward I had by chance fallen permanently into the chains of comfortable bureaucratic employment. How could I have adapted myself to that smug existence in a world bristling with interest and significant horizons? How could I have tolerated the halting progress of promotions, comforted and yet irritated by the thoughts of an old-age pension at the end of the dull road? Any comfortable cranny would have sapped my energies. These energies which I enjoy were trained by obstacles and even by bitterness of soul. They were made by struggle, not by the joys of the pathway.

My stay in Switzerland was a welter of difficulties. It did not last long, but it was angular, with harsh points. I worked with skill as a laborer. I worked usually as a mason and felt the fierce, grim pleasure of construction. I made translations from Italian into French and vice versa. I did whatever came to hand. I looked upon my friends with interest or affection or amusement.

Above all, I threw myself headforemost into the politics of the emigrant—of refugees, of those who sought solutions.

In politics I never gained a penny. I detest those who live like parasites, sucking away at the edges of social struggles. I hate men who grow rich in politics.

I knew hunger—stark hunger—in those days. But I never bent myself to ask for loans and I never tried to inspire the pity of those around me, nor of my own political companions. I reduced my needs to a minimum and that minimum—and sometimes less—I received from home.

With a kind of passion, I studied social sciences. Pareto was giving a course of lectures in Lausanne on political economy. I looked forward to every one. The mental exercise was a change from manual labor. My mind leaped toward this change and I found pleasure in learning. For here was a teacher who was outlining the fundamental economic philosophy of the future.

Between one lesson and another I took part in political gatherings. I made speeches. Some intemperance in my words made me undesirable to the Swiss authorities. They expelled me from two cantons. The university courses were over. I was forced into new places, and not until 1922 at the Conference of Lausanne, after I was Premier of Italy, did I see again some of my old haunts, filled with memories colorful or drab.

To remain in Switzerland became impossible. There was the yearning for home which blossoms in the hearts of all Italians. Furthermore, the compulsory service in the army was calling me. I came back. There were greetings, questions, all the incidents of the return of an adventurer—and then I joined the regiment—a Bersaglieri regiment at the historic city of Verona. The Bersaglieri wear green cock feathers in their hats; they are famous for their fast pace, a kind of monotonous and ground-covering dogtrot, and for their discipline and spirit.

I liked the life of a soldier. The sense of willing subordination suited my temperament. I was preceded by a reputation of being restless, a fire eater, a radical, a revolutionist. Consider then the astonishment of the captain, the major, and my colonels, who were compelled to speak of me with praise! It was my opportunity to show serenity of spirit and strength of character.

Verona, where my regiment was garrisoned, was and always will remain a dear Venetian city, reverberating with the past, filled with suggestive beauties. It found in my own temperament an echo of infinite resonance. I enjoyed its aromas as a man, but also as a private soldier I entered with vim into all the drills and the most difficult exercises. I found an affectionate regard for the mass, for the whole, made up of individuals, for its maneuvers and the tactics, the practice of defense and attack.

My capacity was that of a simple soldier; but I used to weigh the character, abilities and individualities of those who commanded me. All Italian soldiers to a certain extent do this. I learned in that way how important it is for an officer to have a deep knowledge of military matters and to develop a fine sensitiveness to the ranks, and to appreciate in the masses of our men our stern Latin sense of discipline and to be susceptible to its enchantments.

I can say that in every regard I was an excellent soldier. I might have taken up the courses for noncommissioned officers. But destiny, which dragged me from my father’s blacksmith shop to teaching and from teaching to exile and from exile to discipline, now decreed that I should not become a professional soldier. I had to ask for leave. At the time I swallowed the greatest sorrow in my life; it was the death of my mother.

One day my captain took me aside. He was so considerate that I felt in advance something impending. He asked me to read a telegram. It was from my father. My mother was dying! He urged my return. I rushed to catch the first train.

I arrived too late. My mother was in death’s agony. But from an almost imperceptible nod of her head I realized that she knew I had come. I saw her endeavor to smile. Then her head slowly drooped and she had gone.

All the independent strength of my soul, all my intellectual or philosophical resources—even my deep religious beliefs—were helpless to comfort that great grief. For many days I was lost. From me had been taken the one dear and truly near living being, the one soul closest and eternally adherent to my own responses.

Words of condolence, letters from my friends, the attempt to comfort me by other members of the family, filled not one tiny corner of that great void, nor opened even one fraction of an inch of the closed door.

My mother had suffered for me—in so many ways. She had lived so many hours of anxiety for me because of my wandering and pugnacious life. She had predicted my ascent. She had toiled and hoped too much and died before she was yet forty-eight years old. She had, in her quiet manner, done superhuman labors.

She might be alive now. She might have lived and enjoyed, with the power of her maternal instinct, my political success. It was not to be. But to me it is a comfort to feel that she, even now, can see me and help me in my labors with her unequaled love.

I, alone, returned to the regiment. I finished my last months of military service. And then my life and my future were again distended with uncertainty.

I went to Opeglia as a teacher again, knowing all the time that teaching did not suit me. This time I was a master in a middle school. After a period, off I went with Cesare Battisti, then chief editor of the Popolo. Later he was destined to become one of the greatest of our national heroes—he who gave his life, he who was executed by the enemy Austrians in the war, he who then was giving his thought and will to obtaining freedom of the province of Trento from the rule of Austria. His nobility and proud soul are always in my memory. His aspirations as a socialist-patriot called to me.

One day I wrote an article maintaining that the Italian border was not at Ala, the little town which in those days stood on the old frontier between our kingdom and the old Austria. Whereupon I was expelled from Austria by the Imperial and Royal Government of Vienna.

I was becoming used to expulsions. Once more a wanderer, I went back to Forli.

The itch of journalism was in me. My opportunity was before me in the editorship of a local socialist newspaper. I understood now that the Gordian knot of Italian political life could only be undone by an act of violence.

Therefore I became the public crier of this basic, partisan, warlike conception. The time had come to shake the souls of men and fire their minds to thinking and acting. It was not long before I was proclaimed the mouthpiece of the intransigent revolutionary socialist faction. I was only twenty-nine years old when at Reggio Emilia at the Congress in 1912, two years before the World War began, I was nominated as director of the Avanti. It was the only daily of the socialist cause and was published in Milan.

I lost my father just before I left for my new office. He was only fifty-seven. Nearly forty of those years had been spent in politics. His was a rectangular mind, a wise spirit, a generous heart. He had looked into the eyes of the first internationalist agitators and philosophers. He had been in prison for his ideas.

The Romagna—that part of Italy from which we all came—a spirited district with traditions of a struggle for freedom against foreign oppressions—knew my father’s merit. He wrestled year in and year out with endless difficulties and he had lost the small family patrimony by helping friends who had gone beyond their depth in the political struggle.

Prestige he had among all those who came into contact with him. The best political men of his day liked him and respected him. He died poor. I believe his foremost desire was to live to see his sons correctly estimated by public opinion.

At the end he understood at last that the old eternal traditional forces such as capital could not be permanently overthrown by a political revolution. He turned his attention at the end toward bettering the souls of individuals. He wanted to make mankind true of heart and sensitive to fraternity. Many were the speeches and articles about him after his death; three thousand of the men and women he had known followed his body to the grave. My father’s death marked the end of family unity for us, the family.

CHAPTER III
THE BOOK OF LIFE

I PLUNGED forward into big politics when I settled in Milan at the head of the Avanti. My brother Arnaldo went on with his technical studies and my sister Edvige, having the offer of an excellent marriage, went to live with her husband in a little place in Romagna called Premilcuore. Each one of us took up for himself the torn threads of the family. We were separated, but in touch. We did not reunite again, however, until August 1914, when we met to discuss politics and war. War had come—war—that female of dreads and fascinations.

Up till then I had worked hard to build up the circulation, the influence and the prestige of the Avanti. After some months the circulation had increased to more than one hundred thousand.

I then had a dominant situation in the party. But I can say that I did not yield an inch to demagoguery. I have never flattered the crowd, nor wheedled any one; I spoke always of the costs of victories—sacrifice and sweat and blood.

I was living most modestly with my family, with my wife Rachele, wise and excellent woman who has followed me with patience and devotion across all the wide vicissitudes of my life. My daughter Edda was then the joy of our home. We had nothing to want. I saw myself in the midst of fierce struggle, but my family did represent and always has represented to me an oasis of security and refreshing calm.

Those years before the World War were filled by political twists and turns. Italian life was not easy. Difficulties were many for the people. The conquest of Tripolitania had exacted its toll of lives and money in a measure far beyond our expectation. Our lack of political understanding brought at least one riot a week. During one ministry of Giolitti I remember thirty-three. They had their harvest of killed and wounded and of corroding bitterness of heart. Riots and upheavals among day laborers, among the peasants in the valley of the Po, riots in the south—even separatist movements in our islands. And in the meantime, above all this atrophy of normal life, there went on the tournament and joust of political parties struggling for power.

I thought then, as I think now, that only the common denominator of a great sacrifice of blood could have restored to all the Italian nation an equalization of rights and duties. The attempt at revolution—the Red Week—was not revolution as much as it was chaos. No leaders! No means to go on! The middle class and the bourgeoisie gave us another picture of their insipid spirit.

We were in June then, picking over our own affairs with a microscope.

Suddenly the murder of Serajevo came from the blue.

In July—the war.

Up till that event my progress had been somewhat diverse, my growth of capacity somewhat varied. In looking back one has to weigh the effect upon one of various influences commonly supposed powerful.

It is a general conviction that good or bad friends can decisively alter the course of a personality. Perhaps it may be true for those fundamentally weak in spirit whose rudders are always in the hands of other steersmen. During my life, I believe, neither my school friends, my war friends, nor my political friends ever had the slightest influence upon me. I have listened always with intense interest to their words, their suggestions and sometimes to their advice, but I am sure that whenever I took an extreme decision I have obeyed only the firm commandment of will and conscience which came from within.

I do not believe in the supposed influence of books. I do not believe in the influence which comes from perusing the books about the lives and characters of men.

For myself, I have used only one big book.

For myself, I have had only one great teacher.

The book is life—lived.

The teacher is day-by-day experience.

The reality of experience is far more eloquent than all the theories and philosophies on all the tongues and on all the shelves.

I have never, with closed eyes, accepted the thoughts of others when they were estimating events and realities either in the normal course of things or when the situation appeared exceptional. I have searched, to be sure, with a spirit of analysis the whole ancient and modern history of my country. I have drawn parallels because I wanted to explore to the depths on the basis of historical fact the profound sources of our national life and of our character, and to compare our capacities with those of other people.

For my supreme aim I have had the public interest. If I spoke of life I did not speak of a concept of my own life, my family life or that of my friends. I spoke and thought and conceived of the whole Italian life taken as a synthesis—as an expression of a whole people.

I do not wish to be misunderstood, for I give a definite value to friendship, but it is more for sentimental reasons than for any logical necessity either in the realm of politics or that of reasoning and logic. I, perhaps more than most men, remember my school friends. I have followed their various careers. I keep in my memory all my war friends, and teachers and superiors and assistants. It makes little difference whether these friendships were with commanding officers or with typical workers of our soil.

On my soldier friends the life of trench warfare—hard and fascinating—has left, as it has upon me, a profound effect. Great friendships are not perfected on school benches, nor in political assemblies. Only in front of the magnitude and the suggestiveness of danger, only after having lived together in the anxieties and torments of war, can one weigh the soundness of a friendship or measure in advance how long it is destined to go on.

In politics, Italian life has had a rather short panorama of men. All know one another. I have not forgotten those who in other days were my companions in the socialistic struggle. Their friendship remains, provided they on their part acknowledge the need to make amends for many errors, and provided they have been able to understand that my political evolution has been the product of a constant expansion, of a flow from springs always nearer to the realities of living life and always further away from the rigid structures of sociological theorists.

My Fascist friends live always in my thoughts. I believe the younger ones have a special place there. The organization of Fascism was marked and stamped with youth. It has youth’s spirit and it gathered youth, which, like a young orchard, has many years of productiveness for the future.

Though it appears that the obligations of governing increase around me every day, I never forget those who were with me—the generous and wise builders, the unselfish and faithful collaborators, the devoted soldiers of a new Fascist Italy. I follow step by step their personal and public fortunes.

Some minds appear curious as to what territories my reading has explored. I have never attached my name or my mind to a certain school, and as I have already said, I never believed that books were absolute and sure viaticums of life.

I have read the Italian authors, old and new—thinkers, politicians, artists. I have always been attracted by the study of our Renaissance in all its aspects. The nineteenth century, with its artistic and spiritual contrasts, classicism and romanticism and their contrasts, has held my attention. I have studied thoroughly the period of our history called risorgimento in its moral and political essence.

I have analyzed with great care all the development of our intellectual life from 1870 up to this moment.

These studies have occupied the most serene hours of my day.

Among foreign writers, I have meditated much upon the work of the German thinkers. I have admired the French. One of the books that interested me most was the “Psychology of the Crowd” by Gustave Lebon. The intellectual life of the Anglo-Saxons interests me especially because of the organized character of its culture and its scholastic taste and flavor.

But all that I have read and am reading is only a picture that is unfolded before my eyes without giving me an impression strong enough to make an incision in me. I draw out only the cardinal points that give me above all and first of all the necessary elements for the comparison of the essence of the different nations.

I am desperately Italian. I believe in the function of Latinity.

I came to these conclusions after and through a critical study of the German, Anglo-Saxon and Slavonic history and that of the world; nor have I for obvious reasons neglected the history of the other continents.

The American people, by their sure and active creative lines of life, have touched, and touch, my sensibility. For I am a man of government and of party. I endlessly admire those who make out of creative work a law of life, those who win with the ability of their genius and not with the intrigue of their eloquence. I am for those who seek to make technic perfect in order to dominate the elements and give to men more sure footings for the future.

I do not respect—I even hate—those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others.

The American nation is a creative nation, sane, with straight-lined ideas. When I talk with men of the United States it does not occur to me to use diplomacy for winning or persuading them. The American spirit is crystalline. One has to know how to take it and possibly win it over with a watchful responsiveness rather than with cunning words. As the reserves of wealth are gone now from the continents to North America, it is right that a large part of the attention of the world should be concentrated upon the activity of this nation that has men of great value, economists of real wisdom and scholars that are outlining the basis of a new science and a new culture. I admire the discipline of the American people and their sense of organization. Certainly every nation has its periods. The United States is now in the golden age. It is necessary to study these tendencies and their results, and this is not only in the interest of America but in the interest of the world.

America, a land harboring so many of our emigrants, still calls to the spirit of new youth.

I look to her youth for her destinies and the preservation of her growing ideals, just as I look to the youth of Italy for the progress of the Fascist state. It is not easy to remember always the importance of youth. It is not easy to retain the spirit of youth.

It was fortunate for me that in the trenches of the Carso—one of the bloodiest and most terrible spots of all the Allied battle fronts and in the vicissitudes of difficult experiences in the struggle with life, I did not leave my own youth behind.

CHAPTER IV
WAR AND ITS EFFECT UPON A MAN

I WRITE of war and my experience in and with war. I write of popular misconceptions as to war. I write of my convictions as to war. And I write of war from two points of view—the politics of the world and the reality of the trenches, where I have been and have learned the torture of pain.

It is impossible for me to show my development and feelings from war without showing how my nation entered war, felt war and accepted war. My psychology was the Italian psychology. I lived it and I cannot suppress it.

It was nonsense to believe that war came unheralded and as a new experience.

The European war, which suddenly burst out in 1914 during a period of apparent economic and moral peacefulness, was not a sudden return to barbarism, as many optimistic socialists and believers in democracy wished—and still to this day wish—people to believe. One must not forget that in 1904 and 1905 Russia fought with Japan a long, disastrous and exhausting war. In 1911 there was the Libyan war. In 1912 and 1913 two Balkan Wars had kept the awakened attention of Europe on the destinies of these nations. These wars had in them the characteristics of an extraordinary drama, as in the incident of Lule-Burgas and in the siege of Adrianople.

The real truth of the matter was that an intense spirit of war was all over Europe—in the air—and everybody breathed it. It was the imponderable; we were at the dawn of a new tragic period of the history of mankind. The beginning of that hard historic event, the World War, was at hand. The gigantic development drew in peoples and continents. It compelled tens of millions of men to live in the trenches, to fight inch by inch for years over the bloody theatre of tragic conflict. Millions of dead and wounded, victories and defeats, complex interests—moral or immoral—spirit of resentment and hate, bonds of friendship and disillusionments—all that chaotic and passionate world which lived and made the Great War was part of a cyclopic ensemble which is difficult to grasp, to define, to circumscribe in mere autobiographic memoirs like these.

When one thinks that Germany alone has already published on the war sixty official books, and considers many that the other nations have published or will publish, one may lose himself in the labyrinth of speculative thoughts. This tremendous chaos gave birth among the defeated nations to the dissolving intellectual scepticism from which sprang the philosophy of realities.

Therefore I proceed by impression, by remembrances. I force my memory to build up, in a logical line running parallel to my thoughts and actions, the rich picture and the innumerable interlocking events which took place in the most tortured period that humanity ever knew. I was intimately entwined with it.

The tragedy of Serajevo, the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, created a panic in the public opinion of the whole of Europe. Remember that I was then editor of an internationalist-socialist daily. That which wounded the sensitiveness of the various nations was the lightning rapidity of the tragedy. I could see the mathematical efficiency of the organizations which made possible the plans and success of the murder in spite of all the exceptional precautions taken by the police of Austria-Hungary. I realized that Europe was in sympathy with the restlessness of Serbia against the old Hapsburg monarchy. After the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, that region never had a minute’s peace. The Serbian mentality, which worked—and still does—itself along the subterranean tunnels of secret societies, gave from time to time unpleasant surprises to Austria-Hungary, and the large empire was suffering from it. But no more than a thoroughbred is disturbed by flies.

The tragedy of Serajevo, however, appeared to me to be the last straw. Every one understood that Austria would act. Strong measures! All the embassies, all the different political parties of Europe, realized the gravity of the case and its terrible consequences. They went feverishly to work to find a possible solution. And we looked on!

In Italy the echo of the murder of Serajevo aroused only curiosity and a thirst for more news. Even when the corpses of the archduke and his wife were taken into the Gulf of Triest, which was lighted up the whole night with tremendous torches, the impression on Italians, even those still under Austrian rule, was no deeper than it would have been in the presence of a spectacular epilogue of a theatrical tragedy.

Francis Ferdinand was an enemy of Italy. I thought that he always underestimated our race. He was not able to sense the heart throbs of the people of Italian blood still under his flag. He could not weigh the power of race consciousness. He was cherishing the dream of a monarchy melting three races together. Races, I knew, are difficult to melt. Francis Ferdinand enjoyed the display of his antipathy toward Italy. He took interest in the affairs of Italy only to seek a possible solution for the question of the temporal power of the Pope. It was said that in the secrecy of his court and among his religious advisers he contemplated the creation of a papal city in Rome with an outlet on the sea.

Though deeply a Catholic, like myself, he accepted of Christianity only the hard, familiar, autocratic ideals which were the base of the old despotism forming the platform of autocratic government, but were incapable of speaking to souls. In psychological makeup, this small, snarling archduke believed himself to be specially anointed by God to rule over subjects. He put fear in the hearts of smaller nations bordering his domain. His death gave surprise; it gave no sadness to us. For obvious reasons the pathetic end of the archduchess created feelings of a more sympathetic nature. We Italians are responsive, sympathetic.

The telegram of the Kaiser to the bereaved children fed the already dramatic tune and tempo of our impressions. I saw that Germany intended steadfastly to stand back of Austria for whatever action this nation was going to take toward Serbia. It was thought that Vienna would make a formal protest to Belgrade, but no one anticipated an ultimatum of such deadliness as fatally to wound the sensibility and the honor, as well as the very freedom, of that nation. All these currents I had to watch as the young editor of the Avanti.

The dictatorial form of the ultimatum, the style in which it was written, brought home to the world the shocking realization that war hung in the sky. We, in Italy, had to ask whether internationalism was having a success or whether it was an unreality. I wondered and reached a conclusion.

Embassies went feverishly to work; the political parties added the pressure of their weight to the diplomatic activities. The call to arms and the clamor of gathering armies put into second line the theoretical protests of socialist and international forces.

All of us in Italy who faced hard facts rather than mouthy theories heard the call of our country—a call of loneliness. Illusions burst like bubbles. Even the convention of French and German Socialists and the murder of Jaurès in Paris were but secondary episodes. To me they appeared as fringes of the mighty and dramatic conflict toward which day by day the various nations were being drawn by destiny.

I must not forget that a few months previous to the Great War I had heard and noted a voice raised in the French parliament painting with pessimistic colors the inefficiency of the French Army, both from the view-point of economic war and the lack of modern means of defense and offense. Clemenceau, foaming at the mouth, was present at this discussion. He said afterward that never in his career as a politician since 1871 had he witnessed a more dramatic séance than this one in which the French nation was compelled fully to realize the insufficiency of its army, lacking the very means needed for a great conflict. That was a lesson. We do not forget it.

War was ripe. The tardy and weak intervention, both known and secret, of the Pope and of the benevolent nations outside the circle of the Allies had no weight. They could not stop the procession of events. War began the first of August, 1914. It was the full bloom of summer. Under the deep shadow of the cloud the people of old Europe stood in awe, but fascinated as one is fascinated by a snake.

Italy a few years previously had renewed the Triple Alliance Treaty. It had been a marriage without respect and without trust, brought about more in order to counterbalance military power than by political necessity. There is small difference between security and military alliance.

The alliance with Austria and Germany gave, however, to Italy a certain latitude and a certain freedom of movement. The Marchese of San Giuliano, who was at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, faced by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia and by the scheming to bring about war at all costs, had to play fast to keep Italy neutral. As a matter of fact, the treaty called only for action if one or more of the nations of the Triple Alliance was assaulted by a nation outside that alliance. We were kept in the dark, as I well knew. That was enough to break the pact—to free us from further obligations to that alliance.

One of the first courageous actions in which Italy showed the measure of her independence and strength was recognition of this. Meanwhile the intervention of Russia in behalf of Serbia called also France against Germany, the ally of Austria-Hungary.

I watched England. She was pondering deeply upon the step to take; and then, in order to keep her supremacy, and also for the sake of her pride and the sake of humanity, she moved her formidable war machinery and quickened the organization of new armies to snatch from Germany’s grip the control of the old Continent.

Public opinion in Italy was deeply moved, facing war, with its German invasion of East France. There was the description, with horrid details, of German methods, and above all the invasion of Belgium in spite of every sense of right and humanity. The French Army was helplessly forced back. The future, not of one nation but of many nations, was in the scale. Of this, in my editorial office, I was always conscious. There was also the feeling of a common culture which was compelling us to forget past and present quarrels. I could not bear the idea that my country might abandon those who were crushed under the weight of war and unwarranted misfortune.

Germany began to influence Italian public opinion with methods of propaganda that irritated the sensitiveness of our race. That enraged me. To direct this propaganda, a great diplomat, Prince von Bülow, who knew the Italian and Roman world intimately, was sent. His aim in Italy was to ensure its neutrality for good and all.

But our nation was turning toward war. I was helping. The Socialist party, which at that time had a certain weight in Italian life, due more to weakness of other political parties than to its own strength, was uncertain what attitude to take. There it wabbled. The majority in that party stood for an absolute neutrality—a neutrality without limit of time, pledge or dignity. In that party there were many who stood openly in sympathy with Germany. I did not. A handful of intelligent and strong-willed men began to ask themselves if it was really right for Italians to lend themselves to the political aims of the King of Prussia, and if that was good for the future of Italy and of the world. I, myself, asked that question in the newspaper Avanti. For obvious reasons it was read avidly by every class of citizens. The putting of that question was my most distinguished effort at journalism.

It was sufficient to cause a part of public opinion to turn toward the possibility of our standing side by side with France and England in the war. We could not, and should not, forget that there were certain sentimental reasons, besides the practical reasons, advising us to review in this general conflict the old decision concerning our eastern border, which had remained open since our war with Austria in 1886.

At night I walked to my family, to my home, with pregnant questions in my mind, with deepening determination, with hardening resolution. Above all, there was my own country. I saw that internationalism was crumbling. The unit of loyalty was too large. I wrote an editorial in which I said also how utterly foolish was the idea that even if a socialist state were created, the old barriers of race and historical contentions would not go on causing wars.

Italy’s borders on the eastern side reached the Judrio, but the region of Trentino illegally held by Austria entered as a wedge between Lombardy and the Venetian provinces. Our deal with the empire of Austria-Hungary was still to be closed, because the borders prophesied by Dante were dear to every Italian heart. They were still and always would be along the line of the Brenner and of the Giulian and Illyrian Alps, including Fiume and Dalmatia.

Facing this new situation, every political man, including myself, began to examine his conscience. The mere mention of this problem was sufficient to make clear and evident the hidden travail of national consciousness. I was transformed in my thought.

“Now or never!” was the war cry of Cesare Battisti, whose noble spirit and final martyrdom by Austrian execution has made him immortal in Italian hearts. Then there was the prophetic vision of that fiery revolutionary spirit, Filippo Corridoni. With their inspiration I began to drag with me a fraction of the Socialists in favor of war. I had with me rebels of many schools, who through the dregs of their struggles would in the end now stand once more upon the indestructible vitality of our race.

The Socialist Senedrium, seeing where I was going, took the Avanti out of my control. I could no longer preach, by that means, intervention of Italy in the war. I faced the Socialists in our conventions. I was expelled. I held public gatherings.

I created the Fasciti—a group of daring youths who believed that intervention could be forced. Do not doubt that their actions shook deeply our political framework, existing from the time of the independence of Italy up till 1914. I was their leader.

It is interesting to-day when democracy is challenged to recall that the Liberal Democratic pacifist group, headed by Giovanni Giolitti, a man of great influence in parliament and also a shrewd organizer of political schemes, was busy in the attempt to find a formula which would solve the problem of righting the borders of Italy, but which would save our country from the burden, the sacrifice and the loss of life that every war imposes. Giolitti promised that, even without war, Italy could obtain a great deal. This “great deal” awakened a feeling of sarcasm in the generous hearts of Italians. Naturally they are realists and the enemies of all forms of political bargaining.

Italians were looking beyond those peaceful concessions and those petty betterings of the borders. They did not believe in the sincerity of this scheming. I considered it weak statesmanship—the statesmanship of compromise. There were seers who saw in the European conflict not only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race. In the cycle of time, again a dramatic period had come which was making it possible for Italy by the weight of its army to deal as an equal with the leading nations of the world.

That was our chance. I wanted to seize it. It became my one thought of intensity.

The World War began on July 28, 1914. Within sixty days I severed my official connection with the Socialist party. I had already ceased to be editor of the Avanti.

I felt lighter, fresher. I was free! I was better prepared to fight my battles than when I was bound by the dogmas of any political organization. But I understood that I could not use with efficient strength my convictions if I was without that modern weapon, capable of all possibilities, ready to arm and to help, good for offense and defense—the newspaper.

I needed a daily paper. I hungered for one. I gathered together a few of my political friends who had followed me in the last hard struggle and we held a war council. When money alone is concerned, I am anything but a wizard. When it is a question of means or of capital to start a project, or how to finance a newspaper, I grasp only the abstract side, the political value, the spiritual essence of the thing. To me, money is detestable; what it may do is sometimes beautiful and sometimes noble.

A few friends, bristling with ideas and ardent with faith, almost immediately found small rooms, garret-like, in the narrow street of Paolo da Cannobio, near the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. Near by there was a printing establishment. Its owner agreed to publish our newspaper at a small cost. I was mad to tell Italy and Italians the truth—their opportunity!

We had no need for great means. We wanted a newspaper that would hold the city of Milan like a fortress, with editorial articles of such value that they would be reprinted or quoted by every Italian newspaper.

Thus—and how dramatically!—the number of our readers would be multiplied. That was my passion. Our offices were quickly furnished with a desk and a few chairs. I can never cease to have affection for that intellectual dugout, the journalistic trenches from which I began to fight. A contract was signed with the printing establishment—a contract that every week was in danger of smashing for the lack of the few thousand lire needed to pay our weekly expense. But we were living on an idea.

On November 15, 1914, the first number of the Popolo d’Italia appeared. Even now I call this new paper my most cherished child. It was only through it, small as was its beginning, that I was able to win all the battles of my political life. I am still its director.

I could write and I may write a thousand memories of this newspaper which was born in 1914 and remained my platform up to 1922. It was an instrument for the making of me. The name of the Popolo d’Italia will occur over and over again. Its story in any case may be told through my personality as a political man, as a newspaper man, as a believer in this war, as a soldier, as an Italian and as a Fascist.

My first article in the Popolo d’Italia turned a large part of public opinion toward the intervention of Italy in the war, side by side with France and England.

Standing by me and helping my work as newspaper man were the Fascisti. They were composed of revolutionary spirits who believed in intervention. They were youths—the students of the universities, the socialist syndicalists—destroying faith in Karl Marx by their ideals. There were professional men too—and the workingmen who could still hear the real voice of the country.

And now, while Italy remained out of the war, our first legions of volunteers were organized and went to France to fight. In the Argonne fell the two sons of Ricciotti Garibaldi, Bruno and Costante, nephews of the great Garibaldi, who conquered North Sicily and Naples for United Italy. The funeral of the two heroes took place in Rome and had solemn echoes all over Italy. Again the red shirts, once distinguished as the saviors of Italy, now in the land of France, testified to the indestructibility of Latinity.

The first offices, in Milan, of the Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s paper.

The past quarrels—not long past—of Mediterranean interests were wiped out. The hostilities of the French during the time of our war in Libya were put aside. No one remembered the episode of the French ships Manouba and Carthage, which brought help to the Turks, who were fighting against us, in January, 1912. Everything was off. France was in danger, assaulted and invaded after the tragic rape of Belgium. This I preached and set forth. France was in danger!

Gabriele d’Annunzio, on the fifth of May, made his speech at Quarto dei Mille, near Genoa. Quarto dei Mille was the starting point of Garibaldi and his thousand northerners and other patriots who went down to Sicily to deliver Southern Italy from the yoke of the Bourbons. He, with superb eloquence, exhorted Italy to enter the war.

The spirit of the country was tuned up. The opposition of Giolitti brought about a quick decision. The crown, bound by parliamentary formulas and by the advice of its counsellors, wanting to follow strictly the literal and orthodox interpretation of the constitution, told the personal representative of the Kaiser that Italy as an old ally had been kept in the dark and thus betrayed.

The insurrection in Milan in favor of war, the strong feelings of the same flavor in Rome, Padua, Genoa and Naples, decided His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III to exclude Giovanni Giolitti and to reconfide to Salandra, who had tendered his resignation, the task of reconstituting a new ministry. I felt that I had had a part in winning this battle. Still a young unproved man, I had already a record of untrammeled freedom and power.

The new ministry spelled war. Thrown aside was the “great deal” of His Excellency Giolitti; the question now was to choose the right moment and the right way to jump into the war. We were breathing hard, our hearts were ready, we were awaiting the great hour. It came May 24, 1915. Can any one say what were my emotions at this moment of triumph?

I cannot try to narrate in one chapter all the events of the war on the Italian front. It is impossible. The war moulded me. I was forced into its dramatic unfolding in the circumscribed view-point of a mere soldier of the war. I will tell what touched me most as a soldier and indirectly as a political man.

I made up my mind to be the best soldier possible from the very day that I wore again the glorious uniform of gray-green of the regiment of Bersaglieri—the best shock troops of Italy—in which regiment I had already served during the time of my compulsory military service. I wanted to be a soldier, obedient, faithful to discipline, stretching myself with all my might to the fulfilment of my duty.

In this I felt that I succeeded. My political position brought me plenty of offers of privileges and sheltered places. I turned them down.

I wanted to create the impression of a complete and rigid consistence with an ideal. This was not a scheming on my part for personal gain; it was a deep need in my nature of what I believed and still hold on to as my life’s dedication—namely, that once a man sets up to be the expounder of an idea or of a new school of thought, he must consistently and intensively live the daily life and fight battles for the doctrines that he teaches at any cost until victory—to the end!

Time has effaced many things; the easy spirit of forgetfulness has erased so much. Victory, which came after forty-one months of hard fighting, has awakened many deep resentments.

As soon as war was declared, as I have said, I asked the military authorities to accept my services as a volunteer. They answered that I could not be a volunteer. That was a tragedy. They said that they refused on the ground that an article of the military by-laws considered as possible volunteers only those who had been rejected for physical unfitness, or were exonerated for other reasons from compulsory military service. I could not be accepted as a volunteer. I was to wait my turn to be called to arms until the order from my superiors should be sent me. I was disconsolate.

Happily, my turn came quickly. On September first, only three months after Italy declared war, I donned the simple uniform of a private Bersagliere. I was sent to Brescia, in Lombardy, not far from the raids of airplanes, to drill.

Almost at once I was, to my great relief, despatched to the thick of the fighting on the high Alps. For a few months I underwent the hardest trials of my life in mountain trenches. We still had nothing to soften our hardships in the trenches or in the barracks. We were simply stumbling along. Short of everything—carrying on—muddling through! What we suffered the first months—cold, rain, mud, hunger! They did not succeed in dampening in the slightest degree my enthusiasm and my conviction as to the necessity and the inevitableness of war. They did not change the direction of one hair of my head, one thought in it.

I was chosen to be the amanuensis of headquarters. That I refused. I refused flatly. I amused myself instead by joining the most dangerous reconnoitering expeditions. It was my will and my wish. I gained through that. Within a few months I was promoted corporal by merit of war action, with a citation from my superior in these words: “Benito Mussolini, ever the first in operations of courage and audacity;”

My political past, with the suspicions of cautious and sometimes unseeing authorities, still followed me; it was enough to keep my superiors from sending me to the training school for officers at Vernezzo. After one week of leave I went back to the trenches, where I remained for months. The same life, feverish, adventurous, desperate—and then typhoid fever sent me to the military hospital at Cividale. When I was better I was packed off to Ferrara for a brief, stupid period of convalescence. From there I again took my place on the high pinnacles of the Alps where at night one looking into the dark sky with its shimmering stars felt nearer to the great dome above.

My battalion was ordered to an advance post on the Carso—Section 144—to take up the offensive. I was then made one of the company of soldiers who had specialized in hand grenades. We lived only a few dozen yards from the enemy, in a perpetual and, it sometimes seemed, an eternal atmosphere of shell fire and mortal danger that would be our life forever.

After the first period of hardship I became perfectly and almost comfortably accustomed to all the terrible elements that life in the trenches involves. I read with hungry eagerness the Popolo d’Italia—my newspaper. I had left it in the hands of a few friends. Precipitously separated from it, as one leaves suddenly a beloved relative, I had given orders to keep alight the lamp of Italy’s duty and destiny.

I commanded: “Continue always to call for war to the end.”

I wrote often to my friends. Never did I let myself indulge in writing all my true feelings and opinions, because I was first of all a soldier, obeying. I found my recreation in the trenches studying the psychology of officers and troops. Later on that practice in observation became invaluable to me.

In my rough heart I held a persistent admiration for the soldiers from all corners of Italy. Many ordered to the eastern front were not convinced of the historical basis for the war; yet they knew how to obey their commanding officers with admirable discipline. Many of those officers were students of the colleges and universities. It was fine to see them striving to emulate the regulars and to prove that the old-time valor was still alive in the new Italian generation.

The fact was that war, with its heavy toll of man and materials, and with its terrific hardships, surprised us. It was far away from our Garibaldian conception of what war was. We were compelled, in breakneck haste, to modify our ideas, to change our systems of fighting and our methods of offense and defense. My heart was gladdened to see that the capacity for adaptability of our race brought marvellous and quick returns. The headquarters and all the auxiliary military organizations, particularly the medical, worked with a precision which I never have forgotten. But often, as I went over the political situation back of our armies, dark doubts were in my mind. The work and actions of the men in power and of the political organizations centred in Rome caused me deep fears. The parliamentary world seemed unable to free itself from its old faults.

The poisonous currents of non-intervention and neutrality were still spending their last strength upon us. They would not fairly face their defeat. I knew they were doing their utmost to minimize the energy and elasticity of our fighting efforts.

The foolish babblings and fears of the coffeehouse strategists, the slackers whose presence offended the families whose sons were in the war, contributed to depress the spirit of resistance. As a plain soldier, I could not understand how, for instance, Rumania could be dragged into the war with a few hundred machine guns. How could Greece be persuaded to march against the Turks, influenced by a classic dance that Isadora Duncan performed at the Piræus?

I was following, day by day, the movement of our army—the Battle of the Isonzo in 1916, the fights on the Alps. With less interest, I followed the fortunes of war in France, the unfortunate failure at the Dardanelles and the developments in the eastern section. As for Italy, never for a minute did I doubt that victory would finally come to us. Though war were to last longer than the longest estimate, though our economic power might totter under the effort and weight of the conflict, nevertheless I was sure of a final victory.

The Italian army in its various actions was led by a method of successive assaults, to shake the efficiency of the enemy. In spite of all the hardship, discipline remained intact throughout our lines. The invasion attempted on the plateaus of the Alps in 1916 was soon thrown back. The soldiers of the Carso, where I was, had all the appearance of seasoned veterans.

In such a gigantic drama, when thousands of our brothers fell, it is absurd to speak of oneself.

However, to prove once more what miseries were woven into the Italian life of politics, I was compelled from time to time to give out in the newspapers news concerning myself. This was in order to smash the suspicions of those persons who thought me hidden in some office, distributing mail and entertaining in my mind doubts of the possibility of our winning the war. I was compelled to offset this slander and to state over and over what I had done and what I was doing. I was then major corporal of the Bersaglieri and had been in the front line trenches from the beginning of the war up to February, 1917, always under arms, always facing the enemy without my faith being shaken or my convictions wavering an inch. From time to time I sent articles to the Popolo d’Italia exhorting to endless resistance. I pleaded for unshaken faith in final victory. For reasons of military discipline I used a nom de plume. Thus I found myself fighting in two ways—against the enemy without and in front of me and against the enemy of weak spirit within and behind me.

On the morning of February 22, 1917, during a bombardment of the enemy trenches in Sector 144—the sector of the hard-pressed Carso under the heaviest shellfire—there happened one of those incidents which was a daily occurrence in trench life. One of our own grenades burst in our trench among about twenty of us soldiers. We were covered with dirt and smoke, and torn by metal. Four died. Various others were fatally wounded.

I was rushed to the hospital of Ronchi, a few miles from the enemy trenches. Doctor Piccagnoni and other surgeons took care of me with the greatest zeal. My wounds were serious. The patience and ability of the physicians succeeded in taking out of my body forty-four pieces of the grenade. Flesh was torn, bones broken. I faced atrocious pain; my suffering was indescribable. I underwent practically all my operations without the aid of an anæsthetic. I had twenty-seven operations in one month; all except two were without anæsthetics.

This infernal life of pain lasted until a furious bombardment burst into pieces one wing and part of the central building of my hospital at Ronchi. All the wounded were rushed to a far-away refuge, but my condition would not permit my removal. Unable to move, I remained for days under the intermittent fire of the enemy guns among the dirty, jagged ruins of the building. I was absolutely defenseless.

From a photograph by A. Badodi, Milan.

A photograph of Mussolini in the war, published in the Popola d’Italia

Translation: The most recent snapshot of our editor and his captain taken at a point of the extreme lines on the Carso.

In spite of all, my wounds began to heal. Better days and relief came. I received numberless telegrams of solicitude and once His Majesty the King called; his warm sense of humanity toward all soldiers and toward the victims of the war will never be forgotten by me or by Italy.

After some months I found myself in a war hospital in Milan. In August I began to walk with crutches, on which I swung about for many months. My limbs were too weak to support my weight.

I took my place as a fighter in my newspaper office. The acute situation created by the incredible and inconceivable failure of the Russian front was putting upon us new duties. It was necessary to face them. To all this there was added a subtle propaganda in the land. That despicable poison had as a slogan the vile sentence of a Socialist member of parliament: “We will desert the trenches before the winter comes.”

There was need to fight to a finish these mysterious forces which were playing upon the sentiments and sufferings of the people. Soldiers, after a fortnight’s furlough, were returning to the trenches in a sullen frame of mind. Life in the cities had all the characteristics of revelry. It was the psychological moment in which it was necessary to have the people feel highly the strength of authority. It was necessary that the government should stand up in its shoes.

I do not choose to make posthumous recriminations. The weakness of internal politics in 1917, the feeble parliamentary situation, the hateful socialistic propaganda, were certainly preparing the ground for events that could prove to be ruinous. And the blow came in October, 1917; it took the name of Caporetto.

Never in my life as an Italian and as a politician have I experienced a sorrow equal to that which I suffered after news of the defeat of Caporetto.

This episode, compared with other defeats in the various theatres of the Great War, certainly did not have an exceptional importance, but it was a terrific blow for Italians. This sudden breaking down of our front let a wedge of the enemy army penetrate into the high valley of the Isonzo. In the first rush of the war we had gone over the borders into old Austria, carrying on our warfare on enemy ground. We had withstood in 1916 the attack on the Alps of Asiago. We had conquered the plateau of Bainsizza. We had been ten times victorious on the Isonzo. Our sensitiveness and tormented souls were now shaken to the depths.

The moment was fearful. The Third Army, surrounded on the other side of the Isonzo, must be saved. It was imperative to stand at all costs on the Piave and to resist like stone on Mount Grappa to save the north of the Venetian provinces from being cut off from the rest of Italy. The rally of the army, followed by quick action, took place in almost no time. On Mount Grappa the Army of Iron withstood. On the Piave the enemy could not pass by. A new strength entered into play. One could feel it coming. A new spirit of war took its unfaltering stand. Once more we saw the enemy face to face, after losing Gorizia and two provinces, Belluno and Udine. We were deeply wounded, and we lived dramatic moments which seared my heart. But we may now be sure that Italy did not go through the tragic hours that many armies and other countries underwent. Compare with our disaster the general picture of the Great War—the loss of three provinces with the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, the invasion of Königsberg, the fourteen invaded departments of France and the flooding of Belgium.

I am proud that during that year of desperate moments my paper gave a higher note to the political life of the country. We raised the fighting spirit of the soldiers.

Helped by the mutilated, the wounded and the pro-war veterans, I began an active campaign of “Stand to a Finish.” With fiery style I demanded on the part of the central government severe action against slackers and whosoever undermined the spirit of war. I called for the organization of a volunteer army. I asked for military rule in the north of Italy. I insisted on the suppression of socialist newspapers. I asked for a more humane treatment of the soldiers. I campaigned for war discipline—first behind us and all over the land, then at the front. This campaign developed by degrees in the newspaper, then in public meetings, in gatherings at the front. It brought results far beyond my highest hopes. The government seemed to be tugged after us by our efforts, toward resistance and victory.

Thus the winter went by. With the coming of the spring the whole Italian people stretched out their energies toward the front on the Piave and that on the Grappa.

At last! A spirit of national solidarity, deep and alive, had become the common property both of the soldiers and of their families. A high spirit of duty and sacrifice was the rule of life in our Italy!

We were ready in 1918 on the Piave with a heroic army. The Arditi, the first shock troops, composed of volunteers who went over the top with hand grenades and daggers, was giving a unique dramatic appeal to our aggressive spirit. In every one there was the deep desire to efface the memory of the days of Caporetto. We were to go back—back to where our brothers, dead and alive, were waiting for us! The remembrance of our dead, above all, was calling to us. Surely the wish of our adversaries to cross the Piave could never be; it was an idle hope, to be met and crushed by our own offensive.

Aviation continued to give service of reconnoitering and bombardment. I could feel the soul of Italy stretching toward victory. Necessity had sharpened the more brilliant minds. June came and with it the dawn of the enemy’s attack.

Our secret service succeeded in learning exactly the time that the enemy would start his drive. Following sound war strategy, our supreme command decided to surprise the enemy, and just a few hours before the enemy was ready to move a deluge of every description fell on his front lines as well as the supporting lines behind. His plans were smashed. He threw bridges across the Piave, but every one was destroyed. The Montello, which was once the key of that front and which the enemy intended to take and use as a pincher against our army, we held with dogged tenacity. There were oscillations for a few miles, but the battle raged on without a stop. Our counter attacks came back always, again and again and again. Thus after the first three days the enemy felt that this time the Italians were like an unbreakable wall which they could not scale or batter down!

Near Zenzon the adversary succeeded in crossing the river as far as Monastie of Treviso, but a rapid counter attack of a few of our brigades threw him back on the Piave again. It turned into a disaster for the enemy, as the river, flooded, washed away bridges and soldiers toward the sea. On the twenty-third of June, five days after the beginning of the big battle, our supreme command assured Italy that our resistance was bound to hold. I felt that it was a sure sign that victory was at hand. I believe to this day that the Battle of the Piave was one of the most decisive of the whole World War.

The enemy suffered loss beyond reckoning. About 100,000 Hungarians were sacrificed on the Piave. That brought about deep resentment in Budapest. Among the people of the various races in the Austrian Empire there began discussions about the burdens that each nationality in that empire had to suffer. From them—the enemies—each nationality felt that its treatment was becoming intolerable.

News leaked out to us from Austria-Hungary. It was clear that internal difficulties there were growing every moment. The enemy’s army, however, was still holding together and under the goad of necessity was sharpening the work of oppression on our two provinces which still remained under the weight of occupation and misfortune.

It was at this time, right after the spirit of exhilaration of victory, that I observed strange tendencies in the Italian political world. Evil activity was at hand. It needed to be exposed and suppressed. It was cloaked under the appearance of humanitarianism. It was planning to give a series of national rights to peoples who never had the consciousness and the dignity of nations—to peoples who had been for more than a century instruments of oppressing the Italian elements under Austria, under the instigation of the despotic empire. The sun of our victory was rising, but to be a complete victory, a victory that would carry our soldiers on the road to Vienna, it must not falter through false sentimentality.

This crisis was sufficient to inspire many great men still under the influence of antiquated and rusted democratic ideas to start discussions about the problems of racial differences. They always tended to favor our worst enemies. The spirit of our nationalism was attacked and dwarfed by sophisticated and pernicious applications of sentiment, irritating to our deepest feelings and to our most legitimate susceptibilities. Voices of the Italians began to say that every time Italy was on the verge of living its hour of joy, glory and victory there were always those who soiled the moment, and this often not in good faith.

Summer went by, and in October, 1918, our supreme command, with fifty-one Italian divisions—to which were added three British, two French divisions, one American regiment and a few Czecho-Slovakian volunteers—determined to make a decisive and final drive on the Austrian front.

The strategic plan was a very wise one. The enemy’s front was pierced at Sernaglia; our army rushed through the break. We started a surrounding movement, one to the left toward Trento, and one to the right toward Udine and the lower Piave. The ardent dash of our soldiers and the ability of our officers brought these movements to full success and crumbled to pieces the whole front of the enemy. The War Bulletin states the enormous number of prisoners, guns and war material that fell into our hands.

The army of Austria-Hungary was defeated. Its navy had suffered tremendous losses. We landed at Triest. We occupied Trento.

The final victory was not only a victory of a war. I saw more than that. It was a victory for the whole Italian race. After a thousand years we, awakened, were again giving a tangible proof of our moral and spiritual valor. We were living again on warlike tradition. Our love of country had bloomed again. We felt our formidable weight in the future of a new Europe. New generations of Italians rejoiced, for the Italian cities were once again rejoined to the country. Trento and Triest, as our race had wished so long, now were within the borders—the natural borders which Dante had prophesied and defined in the fourteenth century.