Il Piccolo
- Preparations for the Council of Ministers
- Franco-German talks resumed in Paris
- The Veterans' Association's instructions for 28 October and 4 November
This issue of Il Piccolo reported that Italy's ministries were busy drafting legislation for a Council of Ministers expected in the first days of November, although no formal convocation had yet been issued; ministers were to report first to the Head of Government. From Paris it described a morning meeting between Foreign Minister Briand and the German ambassador von Hoesch, just back from Berlin with Stresemann's instructions. The paper asked whether talks to turn the Thoiry conversation into concrete results had begun, but found the meeting short, the ambassador without any precise proposal and Briand apparently disappointed. The veterans' association set out rules for 4 November: local, austere ceremonies arranged with the military, the war-disabled, mothers and widows, ending with the reading of the Victory Bulletin at the war memorial and followed by frugal mess meals rather than banquets.
Translation
Preparations for the Council of Ministers
With the next Council of Ministers in view, the various ministries are hard at work preparing a range of legislative measures. No official notice of convocation has yet been issued for that meeting, but it is in any case expected to take place in the first days of next November. Over the coming days the ministers will report to the Head of Government on the various questions under examination, and the measures concerned will be examined by the Council of Ministers at its next session.
Franco-German talks resumed in Paris
Have the Franco-German negotiations to draw a concrete conclusion from the historic conversation at Thoiry perhaps begun? One might think so, judging by the importance attached to the meeting held this morning between Foreign Minister Briand and the young German ambassador von Hoesch, who has returned from Berlin with Stresemann's instructions. Von Hoesch had arrived yesterday and had at once met the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Berthelot. The promptness with which Briand received him could have supported the idea that negotiations were getting under way, but the meeting was shorter than expected, and Briand seems to have felt a certain disappointment. The German ambassador had brought no precise proposal from Berlin, and so the conversation could not get beyond generalities.
The Veterans' Association's instructions for 28 October and 4 November
4 November. — The two dates are so close together that rallies cannot be organized at such short intervals. The demonstrations must therefore keep a local character. 1. Section leaders will place themselves at the disposal of the military authorities and will make arrangements with the war-disabled and with mothers and widows for the ceremony of 4 November. 2. Leaders and rank and file must bear in mind that the glories of the war are to be celebrated not with speeches but with deeds. 3. Every ceremony must therefore be kept to a solemn and austere form, as befits men of the trenches, and must close with the reading of the Victory Bulletin before the monument to the fallen. 4. After the demonstration, it will be the leaders' task to gather the members at mess tables that are not banquets, and that must have the flavor and color of war in their frugality, made up for by the frank brotherhood of old comrades in arms.
Context
The November cabinet and the emergency laws of late 1926
Il Piccolo reported only that ministries were readying measures for a cabinet expected in early November; the selected passage does not name any of them. Events a week later reshaped what that session became. After the young Anteo Zamboni attempted to assassinate Mussolini in Bologna on 31 October 1926, a swath of repressive legislation was swiftly enacted, and all political parties, associations and organizations opposed to Fascist Italy were dissolved. On 25 November 1926 the State Defense Law instituted a Special Tribunal to try alleged enemies of the state; this tribunal was part of Mussolini's so-called leggi fascistissime, which consolidated the regime. The public-security code enacted in 1926 also specified a department of political police as a special division of the force, which later came to be known as OVRA, whose existence remained secret until December 1930. The excerpt cannot show whether the ministers' files already contained these texts on 23 October, but it captures the government machinery in motion just before the regime's decisive turn.
What Briand and Stresemann had agreed at Thoiry
The 'historic conversation at Thoiry' that the Paris report invokes took place in September 1926, during the ceremonies marking Germany's admission to the League of Nations, when Briand and Stresemann met in the French village of Thoiry. There Stresemann pledged material support to stabilize the franc, while Briand agreed to return the Saar Basin to Germany ahead of schedule and to put an early end to Allied military control and the occupation of the Rhineland. The scope of these resolutions was soon reduced because of objections raised by both the German and the French governments, and scholars often describe Thoiry as both the peak and the endpoint of the Locarno policy. Il Piccolo's account of 23 October, with von Hoesch arriving from Berlin with no precise proposal, a meeting shorter than expected and a disappointed Briand, fits that pattern of a sweeping bargain stalling in both capitals once officials had to turn it into terms.
Allied military control of German disarmament
One concrete item on the Thoiry agenda, the early end of military control, referred to a system set up by the peace treaties. Those treaties were concluded between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, which included Italy alongside the United States, the British Empire, France and Japan, and each defeated Central Power. A Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control oversaw the conversion of war production and, among other tasks, was to receive information from the defeated state on the location of munitions stocks and depots. In Germany the commission ceased to function on 28 February 1927, roughly four months after this report, followed by Hungary on 31 March and Bulgaria on 1 June. The Paris excerpt does not mention disarmament directly, but the question of when Allied inspectors would leave Germany was among the practical stakes behind the Briand–Hoesch conversation that Il Piccolo found disappointingly vague.
How Fascism absorbed 4 November into its own calendar
The veterans' instructions belong to a struggle over who owned the memory of Italy's victory in the Great War. The last liberal government had declared 4 November a national holiday shortly before the Fascists came to power in October 1922, and the regime's claim to that legacy was at first contested: in 1923 the national association of war-disabled invited antifascist politicians to the Milan victory-anniversary parade. As the regime hardened, the repression of the opposition went hand in hand with a tighter link between 28 October, the founding myth of Fascism, and 4 November, and the cult of Fascist 'martyrs' was in effect equated with the soldiers who had fallen for the country. The Associazione Combattenti's 1926 notice shows that pairing in practice: one set of orders covers both dates, local ceremonies are coordinated with the military, the war-disabled, mothers and widows, and members are told to honor the war with deeds rather than speeches. The selected excerpt reproduces only the 4 November part of those orders.
Original
La preparazione del Consiglio dei ministri
In previsione del prossimo Consiglio dei ministri, per cui nessun avviso ufficiale di convocazione è stato ancora diramato, ma che in ogni modo si ritiene che debba riunirsi nei primi giorni del prossimo novembre, ferve il lavoro di preparazione dei vari provvedimenti legislativi da parte dei diversi dicasteri. Sulle varie questioni in corso di esame riferiranno nei prossimi giorni i ministri al Capo del Governo e i relativi provvedimenti verranno esaminati dal Consiglio dei ministri nella prossima sessione.
Le conversazioni franco-tedesche riprese a Parigi
Le trattative franco-tedesche per trarre una conclusione concreta dalla storica conversazione di Thoiry sono forse cominciate? Lo si potrebbe credere giudicando dall'importanza attribuita al colloquio avvenuto stamane tra il ministro degli Esteri Briand ed il giovane ambasciatore germanico con Hoesch, reduce da Berlino con le istruzioni di Stresemann. Von Hoesch era arrivato ieri ed aveva avuto subito un convegno col segretario agli Esteri Berthellot. La sollecitudine con cui è stato ricevuto da Briand poteva corroborare l'ipotesi di un avviamento delle trattative, ma il colloquio è stato più breve di quanto si prevedeva, e pare che Briand abbia provato un certo disinganno. L'ambasciatore tedesco non ha recato da Berlino alcuna proposta precisa e la conversazione non ha potuto quindi sciogliersi dalle linee generiche.
Le disposizioni dell'Associazione combattenti per il 28 ottobre ed il 4 novembre
4. novembre. - La vicinanza delle due date non consente di organizzare a così breve distanza di tempo delle adunate. Le manifestazioni dovranno perciò serbare carattere locale. 1. o I dirigenti sezionali si metteranno a disposizione delle autorità militari e prenderanno accordi con i mutilati e madri e vedove per la cerimonia del 4 novembre. 2. o Capi e gregari dovranno tener presente che non è con i discorsi ma con le opere che si debbono celebrare i fasti della guerra. 3. o Ogni cerimonia dovrà perciò essere contenuta in una forma solenne e austera come si conviene a trinceristi e dovrà concludersi con la lettura del Bollettino della Vittoria davanti al monumento dei caduti. 4. o Sarà compito dei dirigenti di riunire dopo la manifestazione i soci in mense che non siano banchetti, e che dovranno avere sapore e colore di guerra per la frugalità compensata dalla schietta fraternità di vecchi compagni di armi.
Source: Source: Internet Archive