Mussolini as revealed in his political speeches (November 1914-August 1923)Mussolini, Benito
History
Mussolini as revealed in his political speeches (November 1914-August 1923)
Mussolini, Benito
Fascism -- Italy; Italy -- Politics and government -- 1914-1945; Mussolini, Benito, 1883-1945; Partito nazionale fascista (Italy)
Fascismo neither practises nor preaches anti-Clericalism. It can also be
said that it is not in any way tied to Freemasonry; this, however,
should not be the cause of alarm which it is to some members of the
Popular Party, as to my mind Freemasonry is an enormous screen behind
which there are generally small things and small men. (Comments and
laughter.) But let us come to concrete problems.
The question of divorce has been touched on here. I am not, at bottom,
in favour of divorce, because I do not believe that questions of the
sentimental order can be settled by juridical formulæ; but I ask the
Popular Party to consider if it is just that the rich can obtain divorce
by going into Hungary, while the poor are sometimes obliged to be tied
all their lives.
We are one with the Popular Party as regards the liberty of schools. We
are very near them as regards the agrarian problem, for we think that
where small properties exist it is useless to destroy them; that where
it is possible to create them, they ought to be created; that where they
cannot be created, because they would be unproductive, other methods
must be adopted, not excluding more or less collective co-operation. We
agree about administrative decentralisation, provided, necessarily, that
autonomy and federation are not spoken of, because regional federation
would lead to provincial federation, and so on till Italy returned to
what she was a century ago.
But there is another problem more important than these incidental
questions to which I wish to draw the attention of the Popular Party,
and that is the historical problem of the relations between Italy and
the Vatican. (Signs of attention.)
All of us, who from fifteen to twenty-five drank deep at the fountain of
Carduccian literature, learned to hate “una vecchia vaticana lupa
cruenta” of which Carducci speaks, I think, in the ode _To Ferrara_; we
heard talk of “a pontificate dark with mystery” on the one hand, and on
the other of the sublime truth and the future in the words of the
poet-prophet. Now all this, confined to literature, may be most
brilliant, but to us Fascisti, who are eminently practical, it seems
to-day more than a little out of date.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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