To-morrow, if Italy does not make war, a revolutionary position will be inevitably decided, and discontent will spring up everywhere. Those same men who to-day are in favour of neutrality, when they feel themselves humiliated as men and Italians, will ask the responsible powers to account for it, and then will be our chance. Then we shall have our war. Then we shall say to the dominant classes: “You have not proved yourselves capable of fulfilling your task; you have deceived us and destroyed our aspirations. Your first care should have been the completion of the unity of the country, and you have ignored it. You have been warned about it by democracy in general and by the Republican Party particularly.” This will be a case which will surely end in condemnation; in condemnation which cannot be other than capital. And then perhaps we shall issue from this harassing period of history. Every day we feel that there is something in Italy which does not work, that there is a cog missing in the gear, or a wheel that does not go round. The country is young, but its institutions are old; and when—if I may be allowed to quote once more from Karl Marx, the old Pangermanist—a conflict between new forces and old institutions begins to shape itself, that means that the new wine cannot any longer be kept in the old skins, or the inevitable will occur. The old forces of the political and social life of Italy will fall into fragments. (Loud applause.) “TO THE COMPLETE VANQUISHING OF THE HUNS” Speech delivered at Sesto San Giovanni, 1st December 1917. After the Caporetto disaster the patriotic organisations of Milan had consolidated their union, previously undermined by the opponents of war, who, thanks to the leniency of the Government, had been able to work in the interest of the enemy. They developed the existing sphere of propaganda, advocating resistance within the country. One of the centres most infected by neutralist opposition was undoubtedly Sesto San Giovanni, a large borough of the working classes at the gates of Milan, completely controlled by Social-Communist administration. Mussolini, having just left the military hospital, where he had been lying ill as a result of many wounds received when a “bersagliere” of the 11th Regiment, spoke in this hostile citadel as only he could speak; and it is certainly beyond question that his frank and incisive eloquence was mainly instrumental in dispersing the bitter anti-war feelings fomented by stubborn and impudent Socialist neutralism. Workmen and citizens! The other evening, after three years’ silence, I spoke to the audience of the Scala; an imposing audience and a large hall; but I prefer this friendly gathering of workmen and soldiers, because, in spite of everything, I am, and shall always remain, one with the masses which produce and work, and the implacable adversary of every parasite.