Let us then, with minds pure and free from animosity, lift up our thoughts towards Rome, which is one of the few spiritual cities which exist in the world; because at Rome, among those seven hills so pregnant with history, occurred one of the greatest spiritual miracles which have ever taken place—that is, the transformation of an Eastern religion, not understood by us, into a universal one, and which has succeeded, under another form, to the Empire that the Roman legions had carried to the extreme ends of the earth. And we want to make Rome the city of our ideals, a city cleaned and purified of all those elements which corrupt and defile her; we wish to make Rome the throbbing heart, the living spirit of the Italy of which we dream. Somebody might object, saying: “Are you worthy of Rome? Are you capable of inheriting and transmitting the ideals and glories of an Empire?” And then surly critics busy themselves with trying to find signs of uncertainty in our young, exuberant organisation! _Fascista Discipline._ People speak to us of Fascista _autonomy_. I tell the Fascisti and citizens that this autonomy has no importance whatsoever. It is not an autonomy of ideas and prejudice. Fascismo has no prejudices; they are the sad privilege of the old parties, associations scattered over all countries, whose members, having nothing better to do or to say, end by imitating those sordid priests of the East who discussed all the questions of the world while the Byzantine Empire perished. The few and sporadic attempts on the part of Fascisti to establish autonomy are either frustrated or nearly so, because they represent only revenge of a personal nature. We come to another question: _discipline_. I am in favour of the most rigid discipline. We must first sternly discipline ourselves, otherwise we shall not have the right to discipline the nation. And it is only by the discipline of the nation that Italy can make herself heard in the councils of the other countries. Discipline must be accepted. If it is not, it must be imposed. We put aside the democratic dogma that one must for ever proceed by sermonising and lecturing in a more or less liberal manner. At a given moment discipline must show itself under the form of a command or of an act of force.