Speech delivered on 25th November 1914, at Milan, before the meeting of the Milanese Socialist Section, which had decreed Mussolini’s expulsion from the official Socialist Party. In the fearless militarism of the dramatic speech with which this volume begins, the Socialistic activity of Benito Mussolini ends—of Benito Mussolini, who from the autumn of 1914 could have been considered the recognised and acclaimed leader of the Italian Socialist Party. He had attained with giant strides the highest rank in the party’s hierarchy, namely the editorship of the _Avanti_, the chief organ of the political and syndicalist movement. He had been a clever and aggressive writer in a weekly provincial paper of Forli, called _La lotta di classe_,[1] and an ardent Sunday orator for the “ville” of Romagna. He had revealed himself a “comrade” of tremendous power at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, held in the summer of 1912, where he delivered a memorable speech bitterly criticising the flaccid mentality of Reformism then dominating the party. Footnote 1: Class struggle. It was within two months of his success at Reggio Emilia that the revolutionary leaders, feeling the need of strong men, entrusted to Benito Mussolini the editorship of the _Avanti_, which was the most powerful weapon of the party. The following speech was delivered before a furious crowd of not less than three thousand holders of membership cards, who hastened from other centres adjacent to Milan, amid a diabolical tumult in an atmosphere of organised hostility, which was the more violent by contrast with the fanatical devotion which Benito Mussolini had evoked during the two years in which he had been the undisputed mouthpiece of the party. This atmosphere of intolerance and hatred had been fostered by the neutralist adversaries who had succeeded to the management of the _Avanti_ after the present head of the Italian Government had left the party. As is known, the excited meeting held in the spacious hall of the Casa del Popolo closed with a resolution for the expulsion of the new heretic, which was passed, except by a negligible minority of about fifty supporters, who afterwards stood by Mussolini in the victorious campaign for intervention. My fate is decided, and it seems as if the sentence were to be executed with a certain solemnity. (Voices: “Louder! Louder!”)