Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/27

 last factory which was occupied in 1920 was left at the end of September, 1920.

I will tell you another thing—I left Italy in March, 1921 and the red flags were still on all the factories. In July, 1922, we had a cabinet crisis which lasted more than ten days. Nobody wanted to take hold of the government. Mr. Giolitti was asked to do it, and he said he wouldn't even take the trouble to come to Rome in the present situation. He wrote a letter to Mr. Malagodi, Editor of the Tribuna, of which this is a part:

"While the danger for the country is the march toward bankruptcy, nobody seems to care. A strong cabinet is necessary and it will consist unfortunately of men thoroughly out of sympathy with each other. If they will be strong men, they will use their strength to fight among themselves."

Now, that was the statement of Mr. Giolitti on July 26, 1922. The general strike in the north took place in the middle of July, 1922. The general strike in all Italy took place August 1 and 2, 1922.

About finances, Professor Salvemini expressed his opinion. Other men here in America also expressed their opinion. There is a bank downtown which has very good auditors and which gave a loan to Italy of $100,000,000. I refer to J. P. Morgan & Co. There is another man, the greatest Secretary of the Treasury that America has ever had, Mr. Mellon, who examined Italy's budget, and owing to the sacrifice Italy had made and owing to the tremendous financial progress in Italy's budget, he gave Italy, Fascist Italy, conditions for settlement of her debt to this country for which Italy will always be grateful to America.

Let us speak of the railroads. I am not very strong on statistics, but I think there was a deficit of either 1,300,000,000 or 1,700,000,000 lire before the Fascist government came into power. Today, there is a profit of 300,000,000 in running the Italian railways. The same thing is true of the postal and telegraphic service.

Professor Salvemini has spoken of anti-Fascisti martyrs. We never speak of our dead because we think that they are still living with us. But for every anti-Fascist who has been murdered, we have five Fascists who have been murdered by the anti-Fascists. Here is a book that you can buy. It is called Pagine Eroiche del Fascismo and has the photograph of every Fascist who has been murdered. These are not statistics; these are facts.

As to the victorious war—Professor Salvemini and his friends remind us of the Italy that we have known in our youth, the Italy of Caporetto. The Professor has no right to speak of the victory of Vittorio Vento. It is because of the betrayal of Italy by himself and his friends that with a victorious war, Italy was obliged to accept a disastrous peace.

Fascist Italy is realizing the dreams of our youth. We want to forget