If the idea of Fascismo had not contained in itself great potentiality, nobility and beauty, do you think that it would have spread with this tremendous impetus! Do you think that seven lives would have been given for it, lives which point out to us the path of perseverance and victory? A short time ago I went to your cemetery. One by one we visited the graves and threw our flowers upon them. Those seconds of silence which we passed there were pregnant with feeling. Each one of us felt that within those graves were the bodies of young men in the flower of their days, men who were certainly loved and who had before them all the possibilities of life. They are dead; they have fallen. But we, in this great hour of your history, O people of Ferrara, will recall them one by one in the orders of the day; and since they are not dead, because their mortal clay is transformed in the infinite play of the possibilities of the universe, we ask of the pure, bright blood of the youth of Ferrara the inspiration to be true to our ideals, to be faithful to our nation. And so we are content that our flags, after having saluted the dead, smile on life, because the working people of Ferrara, and of all Italy, have found the true path that had been forgotten, have cast off all those ignoble politicians who had filled their heads with lying fables. We, O Italians of Ferrara, have no need to go beyond our boundaries, beyond the seas, in order to find the word of wisdom and of life. We do not need to go to Russia in order to see how a great people may be massacred. We do not need to turn the pages of the Muscovite gospels; gospels which the prophets themselves are reviling since, overwhelmed by the reality of life, they are denying them. We have no need to imitate others, because brilliant original minds are to be found in Italy in all branches of civilisation and learning. And if there is to be Socialism, it cannot be the bestial, tyrannical Socialism of yesterday, it can only be the Socialism of Carlo Pisacane, of Giuseppe Ferrari and Giuseppe Mazzini. Here, O people of Ferrara, is your history, your life and your future. And we, who have undertaken this hard battle, which has cost us tens and hundreds of lives, we do not ask you for salaries, we do not ask you for votes. We only ask you for one thing, and that is that you shall shout with us “Long live Italy!” (Loud applause.) “MY FATHER WAS A BLACKSMITH AND I HAVE WORKED WITH HIM; HE BENT IRON, BUT I HAVE THE HARDER TASK OF BENDING SOULS” Speech delivered at Milan, 6th December 1922, before the workmen of the iron foundries, in answer to Engineer Vanzetti, the manager.