CHAPTER 31

IN ROME, ON THE morning of October 3, the people were still sleeping after the compulsory Fascist celebration the previous evening. Mussolini had decided to proclaim the invasion before it happened and had planned a Fascist mobilization. Restaurants and shops throughout the country were closed so that people in every community could assemble in the public squares to hear Mussolini’s speech.

Mussolini had spoken from his own balcony hanging over the crowded Piazza Venezia, the huge piazza in downtown Rome, down the street from the Forum and the Coliseum. Pope Paul II built the Palazzo Venezia in the fifteenth century so that he could watch the excitement of elaborate carnival celebrations a custom he had brought with him from his native Venice and there was surely something carnivalesque about the meeting of October 2, 1935.

Il Duce had thought of summoning the crowds by having all the church bells in Rome toll at the same time, but the church bells in Rome all toll together only when a pope dies, and the present Pope, Pius XI, said it was inappropriate. Mussolini used whistles.

The focal point of the celebration was the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia that adjoined the Duce’s office. By the time Mussolini was ready to appear on his balcony, the Piazza Venezia and all the streets leading to it were packed. After the cheering diminished, after he had satisfied the cameras with his posturing, he began shouting into the microphones:

“Black Shirts of the Revolution! Men and women of all Italy! Italians scattered the world over, beyond the mountains and beyond the seas, listen!

“A solemn hour is about to strike in the history of the Fatherland. Some twenty million men at this moment fill the public squares of Italy. Never was there beheld in the history of mankind a more gigantic spectacle. The twenty million men: one heart, one will, one decision. Their demonstration must show and does show the world that Italy and Fascism are one and a perfect, absolute, unalterable whole . . .

“For many months the wheels of destiny moved toward this goal: Now their movement becomes swifter and can no longer be stayed!

“It is not just an army that strains toward its objectives, but an entire people of forty-four million souls, against whom an attempt is made to perform the most hideous of injustices: that of snatching from us a small place in the sun.

“To economic sanctions we shall oppose our discipline, our sobriety, our spirit of sacrifice.

“To military sanctions we shall reply with military measures.

“To acts of war we shall reply with acts of war!

“Let no one think of subduing us without a hard fight. . . .

“Proletariat and Fascist Italy! Let the shout of your decision fill the heavens and bear solace to the soldiers waiting in Africa, an incitement to friends and a warning to enemies in every part of the world. A cry of justice, a cry of victory!”

As he finished, there was none of the earth-shattering din of applause, none of the mob’s unlimited enthusiasm. The three hundred thousand people in the square were not impressed. Those he called ‘one heart, one will, one decision’ left the square immediately, disdaining the remainder of the four hour program.

At this critical moment, while Il Duce’s exhortations on the valor of the Italian Fascist army may have impressed the British and French, they did not convince the Italians. They were certainly far less united than Mussolini would like to admit, but these forty-four million people had given Mussolini absolute power and whether they liked his war or not, they were in it.