by Roberto Olla
But for all its emphasis and show of resolve, Mussolini’s line was not especially effective as a political move, given that the Church had also come out against the war, the Italian government had immediately declared neutrality, and the socialist International was utterly divided on the issue, with the Belgians against the Germans, the French determined to defend their country, and the Austrians ready to come in to support them. In Italy too, positions began to shift. Bissolati publicly demanded a change in the view that a policy of strict neutrality was the only option for the country’s workers; at best it was a tactical move, intended to preserve military strength before entering the conflict in the defence of democracy. Salvemini too came out against a hard-line policy of neutrality, arguing that in order to combat the rising tide of nationalism Italy needed to take part in a conflict of national interests and should not let the war play itself out without resolving the problem of the Italian population of Trento and Trieste who were still under Austro-Hungarian rule. Even the revolutionary trade-unionist Alceste De Ambris, speaking on behalf of many in the trade-union movement, openly asserted that the socialism represented by the International had failed in the face of the war; what was needed now was to prevent the victory of Austria and Germany. These were men of impeccable socialist credentials; their outspoken views caused an outcry. On 6th September yet another prominent socialist, Filippo Corridoni, who had just been released from prison, announced that neutrality was a policy of the weak; Italian socialism could not be seen to ally itself with a government secretly intent on supporting the Austrian side.
On 12th August Cesare Battisti arrived in Italy from Trento; he was a member of the Austrian Socialist Party but his influence was strong among Italian socialists, including the man who had formerly worked for his newspaper and was now the editor-in-chief of Avanti! – Mussolini. Once in Milan Battisti began a campaign to persuade the Italian public to come out in favour of entering the war against Austria. In public Mussolini held to his policy of strict neutrality, although he allowed differing points of view to be expressed in the newspaper, but in private his thinking started to waver. In various private meetings, including with French and Belgian socialists, he commented that a change in the party line was possible, and his remarks, which contrasted with the official position, were noticed in wider circles. He had a long meeting with Cesare Battisti in the headquarters of the regional journalists’ association in Milan, not the most appropriate place to hold a private conversation. Many of the journalists who were there that day overheard him saying that neutrality was nonsensical, that the Italian Socialist Party couldn’t allow itself to give complicit support to the imperial powers in the pursuit of their own interests, that the Italian Risorgimento needed to be completed. Battisti publicly reported how pleased he was to hear the editor of Avanti! expressing such views, even if only in conversation.
Angelica Balabanoff’s misgivings were aroused. In an alliance with one of the senior editors on the paper, Eugenio Guarino, she made sure that the public pronouncements of the man who had been her protégé were kept under control. Some other socialist magazines started to talk of “two Mussolinis” and asked themselves which one would come out on top. Leda Rafanelli was opposed to the war and wrote a series of articles in support of the policy of maintaining strict neutrality. Mussolini told her she had his “unconditional” support and asked her for an opinion on the articles he was writing. All the time, as part of a spreading breakaway movement, the number of Socialist Party members who were coming out in favour of Italy entering the war was growing; in many newspapers and journals there were frequent calls to fight alongside the French and the Belgians. The situation must have been tormenting for Mussolini; he was a step away from his main political goal of being recognized as the leader of the Socialist Party. He confided his concerns in a letter to Rafanelli (which also included a ploy to get her to meet him):
I am feeling sad and downcast. It’s as if everyone around me is drunk. Even men who never used to drink, now they too are like this. I soon won’t be able to trust you, or even myself. […] It’s terrible – Ciardi, Corridoni, Rygier coming out in support of the war! It’s like a kind of contagion affecting everyone. But I’m determined to fight to the finish. I’ll come and visit you next week – it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. I know no one in Milan – I could almost say no one in Italy – whom I feel I can confide in. I need encouragement. The proletariat seems to me deaf and confused and remote…23
Mussolini was losing his grip on the party, which a few months earlier had seemed so firm. The increasing number of those who were advocating Italian intervention left him without room to manoeuvre, as if he were a prisoner of the neutralist approach he’d adopted even though there were better and more convincing spokesmen for it in the likes of Treves, Turati and Balabanoff herself. He was trying to find a way of escaping the impasse which would otherwise wear him down. It wasn’t just a matter of airing different views in private conversations held in bars or in clubs. Sarfatti writes that he referred to his growing doubts in a public speech he gave:
One evening in September, the Socialist Party in Milan decided to debate the choice between absolute and relative neutrality. Mussolini was asked to speak as the – hitherto – leading proponent of maintaining a position of absolute neutrality. So it came as a bolt from the blue when he spoke frankly to the audience of his tormenting doubts. […] His usual eloquent flow of speech was halting, anguished, hesitant with introspective anxiety, now that it was a question of general ideas, a problem of conscience, a position which would have grave implications for the future. At one point he exclaimed: “Yes, the poet’s words have now become ours: We who loved you, O France.”24
That Mussolini was in difficulties did not escape the notice of Filippo Naldi, the editor of the Bologna daily newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, which was financed by major landowners and had come out on the side of intervention in the war. When Leda Rafanelli went to the Avanti! offices one day to hand in yet another article she had written opposing the conflict, she found all the editorial staff in uproar. Naldi had laid a trap for Mussolini. One of the journalists showed Rafanelli an article which had been published in Il Resto del Carlino criticizing Mussolini. The headline left the reader in no doubt as to its contents: “The editor of Avanti! is a man of straw!” On 7th October 1914 Naldi, in agreement with the newspaper’s owners, had published an open letter from Massimo Rocca, writing under the pseudonym of Libero Tancredi, in which Mussolini was attacked for duplicity, bad faith and betraying his own country. Rocca-Tancredi presented himself as an outspoken outsider who couldn’t prevent himself saying exactly what he thought. He addressed Mussolini in these words: “You are the only person among the small group who lead the Socialist Party today who is capable of making a stand. I have already told you, in private conversation, how saddened I am to see a party representing a vital force in Italian politics led today, at such a tragic time, by people who are not up to the job – Lazzari, Vella, Ratti and Balabanoff, a Russian proponent of German socialism…” The author mentions the widespread reports in socialist circles in Milan of Mussolini’s remark that he would willingly support going to war against the Austrians and continues:
Let’s put our cards on the table. The line adopted by your newspaper went against your own feelings and your own private opinions on the matter. […] It’s now an open secret. […] The truth is that, under the pretext that Italy was militarily unprepared, you began to hand over control of the paper to the journalists who worked for you and your fellow members of the party’s executive; then, when Italy was ready to go to war and you could not go on using the excuse that it wasn’t, you no longer could or would change the newspaper’s line so as not to contradict the stance it had previously been taking or admit that up until then you’d been a mere front man for the opinions of others. […] All along you’ve been discreet with the truth, which, in journalism, is tantamount to lying. Come on, call a halt to it! since in any ca
se the mediocrities who surround you will kick you out now that they’ve been able to use you, with the excuse you’re willing to say anything as long as you get paid at the end of the month. […] You know better than I do that it’s no longer a question of choosing between war and revolution, but between war and a disastrous peace that will lead to German domination. […] Your behaviour at present is an act of political dishonesty.
Leda Rafanelli read the article carefully as the tense and worried journalist who had given it to her looked on. Then she handed it back to him: Tancredi was lying, she reassured him, she herself had spoken to Mussolini only the day before about all this and he had shown no signs of wavering. He would need to be a consummate actor to play a double game like the one of which Tancredi accused him. The journalist didn’t seem convinced. Rafanelli decided to accept Mussolini’s invitation in his letter to meet up so that she could get to the bottom of what he was really thinking. Many years later, she told the story of their encounter in her memoirs. Mussolini said to her:
“I know you’re loyal – Muslims value loyalty. But you must promise me that you won’t take part in the debate, at least at the outset. It’s true that your contribution would add a note of dignity, as it always does, but I don’t want to see you mentioned… will you promise me?”
“I promise you.”
“Thank you, Leda. Now please leave.”
He let go of my hands and stayed leaning against the wall, looking down at the ground. I said, “You’re not feeling well… come with me, let’s go back to the offices. Or at least go back home. Get a taxi… Where is your home? Shall I call a taxi?”
“No… I’ll walk home… but you go… and remember what you’ve promised me.”25
It wasn’t clear to Rafanelli what debate she should keep out of, given that Mussolini’s reply to Tancredi, published on the following day in both Avanti! and Il Resto del Carlino was an unruffled denial of all the accusations which had been made against him. This reply opened up a volley of articles urging Mussolini to have the courage of his real convictions, to inject vigour into the editorship of Avanti!, to clear the road ahead for socialism by sweeping away the deadweight of its official policy of neutrality. In various articles published in several different newspapers, including first and foremost Il Resto del Carlino, Cesare Battisti also revealed the indiscreet remarks Mussolini had made to him.
One day in the offices of Avanti!, Balabanoff and Guarino, the editor-in-chief, came across Filippo Naldi deep in conversation with Mussolini, much to their alarm, which was perhaps the effect Mussolini wanted the scene to have on them. There were, after all, dozens of places in Milan where he could have arranged to have a private conversation with Naldi; to meet him in such a public way could only mean that Mussolini wanted to send a strong signal to the newspaper and to the party: the image of Mussolini as a “man of straw”, an indecisive Hamlet-like figure, was wrong; on the contrary, he was the one who was in control of the game and moving the pieces. De Felice’s comment on Mussolini’s character in this respect is relevant here: “There was little of the hero, in the Emersonian sense, about Mussolini – even a populist hero – just as there was very little of the statesman, though he was undoubtedly a remarkable politician. At all the crucial moments in his life he proved incapable of coming to a decision; it could be said that all his important decisions were either imposed on him by circumstances or achieved tactically, by degrees, by adapting himself to reality – which more or less amounts to the same thing.”26
So circumstances forced Mussolini to follow a high-risk strategy; he had to remain the target for increasingly ferocious criticism until he found the political solution which seemed to him to work best. A real political solution required a detailed ground plan, adequate means for its implementation and a sufficiently strong dose of cynicism to enable him to abandon ties of affection, of habit, of old alliances. He took the party’s executive committee by surprise when they met in Bologna on 18th October by leaving copies of that day’s Avanti! on the table as they came into the room: it contained a long article by him entitled ‘The Choice: Uncompromising Neutrality or Engaged Neutrality?’. The committee members were completely taken aback; the article was long, and some complained that they had not been told about it in advance. In setting out his new position, Mussolini started by attacking the weak points in the party’s adherence to a neutralist position. For example, the fact that none of the leading members of the party had replied when Mussolini had declared in Avanti!: “If the Italian government is intent on breaking its neutrality in order to come to the aid the central empires, then – let there be no misunderstanding about this – the Italian working class have one duty, and one duty alone: to rise up in opposition!” Mussolini tabled a motion before the executive committee to amend the party’s line, using the arguments he had set out in the article:
As socialists we have condemned warfare, understood as a universal phenomenon, but this has never prevented us from distinguishing – logically and historically and in terms of socialism itself – between different individual instances of war. […] The Socialist Party has given its tacit approval to the call from those classes who would guarantee Italian neutrality in the face of possible reprisals following an Austro-Hungarian victory. […] A policy of uncompromising neutrality has threatened to leave the party without any other options, to restrict all its possibilities of manoeuvre in the future. […] A refusal to examine wars on a case-by-case basis, an insistence on opposing them all on identical grounds – if this is a sign of “political intelligence”, then it’s indistinguishable from stupidity. […] The question of the Trentino region must make even the most diehard advocate of neutrality think again. If the “Italian people” in that region had risen up against Austria, how on earth could we as socialists – who have declared our solidarity with the uprisings among the Armenians or in Crete – have had the temerity to prevent Italy from military intervention? […] If the idea of “the nation” has been superseded as well as that of the working masses coming to the defence of the nation – since there would be nothing for them to defend – then why don’t we have the courage of our convictions and condemn the socialists in Belgium and in France for coming to the defence of their nations? […] If we want to keep our freedom of movement, we must not allow ourselves to be chained to a formula. Reality is moving – and moving fast.
Mussolini was confronted by a chorus of criticism from the committee, none angrier than Balabanoff. At this point, the other woman in his life, Leda Rafanelli, with whom he’d spent so many evenings, simply disappears. She continued to write, but the years of Fascism saw her reduced to earning money by fortune-telling and giving Arabic lessons to ward off poverty.
Mussolini’s reaction to the attacks of the leaders on the party’s committee was swift and harsh. After the meeting had lasted well into the night, one of its members, Arturo Vella, suggested that he should take three months off as sickness leave; in the meantime a solution would be found. Mussolini brusquely refused: “I’m not going to report sick.” The meeting continued the following morning when a vote was taken on Mussolini’s motion: it was rejected, with one vote in favour, his own. He immediately offered his resignation, which was accepted. They offered him a severance payment, which he refused, before leaving Bologna immediately. He returned home tired and depressed but also, according to Rachele, burning with rage. He told his wife brutally that it was all over and they would have to start again because the Socialist Party had sacked him from the editorship and shown him the door. Rachele was worried for the future of the family. Mussolini spoke about money, but not about the money they would need to survive so much as the money he would try to find in order to set up another newspaper. The time had come, he told Rachele, to have a newspaper of his own where he could write what he wanted, independently of anyone else.
But Mussolini had already found the money he required. No one can set up a newspaper in less than a month, and Mussolini’s was already being sold in
the newsagents in Milan and other major Italian cities on 15th November. It was a great success: on the first morning all copies had sold out by ten o’clock. Naldi’s manoeuvring – with, it seems, the backing of certain government politicians – had paid off: the two men had clashed, not without provocation on both sides, but in the end the ebullient editor of Avanti! found it impossible to resist the prospect of having his own newspaper. Filippo Naldi had given him the money for all the immediate expenses involved, had arranged for the transfer of various journalists over from Il Resto del Carlino to the new title, and had even made sure that there was a supply of paper at the same printers his own newspaper used in Bologna. Once the immediately available money ensured that the new paper could be rapidly launched on the market, Naldi had taken Mussolini over to Switzerland to sign a contract with a well-known advertising agency. Mussolini wrote to his sister:
Dear Edvige, I’ve come to Switzerland for a day to arrange publicity with the firm of Haasenstein and Vogler. Perhaps it’ll work out. But in any case, as you’ll have seen from the announcements in other papers, the first issue of Il Popolo d’Italia [The Italian People] will come out next Sunday. People are waiting for it. You know what I think: it’s time to put an end to this idiotic stance of neutrality which will only prolong the massacre indefinitely and make us all die of hunger and shame. Affectionately, your Benito.27
Whatever the size of the sums involved, there was no shortage of finance to back the new paper.