Il Piccolo
- Absolute Calm Throughout Italy
- From Naples to New York in 5 Days
- Clashes Between English Fascists and Subversives
Il Piccolo's page of 11 November 1926 carried the Stefani agency's assurance that Italy was perfectly calm, printed beside the news that the offices of the anti-fascist parties and associations dissolved under the new public security law had been occupied and closed overnight, with searches said to have turned up results in some places. Under a heading promising a Naples–New York crossing in five days, the paper quoted Mussolini crediting a mystical force for his survival, invoking the dictators of the Roman Republic to justify dictatorship, and listing railways, the Apulian Aqueduct, electrification and land reclamation as its fruits. A report from Britain described British fascist women and men brawling with hecklers at a youth league meeting, where the speaking MP left the platform to help expel a resisting man.
Translation
Absolute Calm Throughout Italy
10 The Stefani Agency reports that this morning the Head of Government received General di San Marzano, commander general of the Royal Carabinieri, with whom he had a conversation of more than an hour on the situation, which is one of perfect calm in every part of Italy. Another communiqué from the same agency says that, in execution of the new consolidated text of the Public Security law, the premises of the anti-fascist parties and associations, which the law itself has dissolved, were occupied and closed last night. In some places the searches yielded positive results. The premises thus occupied will be returned to residential use as soon as possible.
From Naples to New York in 5 Days
"Perhaps it is a mystical force that protects me," Mussolini replied with a smile, "perhaps it is the benevolence of some particular saint or deity. What I know for certain is that I feel with absolute certainty that no harm will strike me down until I have put the word 'end' to my programme." Mussolini then recalled some phases of Roman history. "The Roman Republic," he said, "had several dozen dictators. We too today need dictatorship in order to reorganize the country and to give back to it the blood it lost in the democratic experiment. It is the only method to put us on the right track and make us march towards more concrete goals. And it is with this method, which leads to maximum efficiency in production, that we have undertaken and are about to complete grandiose works, such as the Bologna–Florence and Rome–Naples direct railway lines, the Apulian Aqueduct, the electrification of numerous lines, and the land reclamation in Emilia and southern Italy."
Clashes Between English Fascists and Subversives
A meeting of the Imperial Youth League came to a tumultuous end last night. For some time, as the leaders of the association confirm, the meetings they called in public places had been disturbed by continual interruptions from outside elements, evidently subversive. Last night it was decided to remove the disturbers by any means, in order to restore freedom of speech. Twenty women enrolled in the British fascist special patrols confronted roughly the same number of persons of their own sex, and at the same time about a hundred British fascists engaged in a large-scale fistfight with members of the stronger sex. The MP Herbert Williams, who was speaking, left the speakers' table to help his friends expel an individual who was resisting desperately.
Context
Why anti-fascist offices were shut overnight in November 1926
The two Stefani bulletins record the night on which the regime's new legal order reached the opposition's own premises. The so-called 'leggi fascistissime' were issued between 1925 and 1926; under them the Fascist party became the only one permitted and all the others were dissolved, while the same body of laws imposed police confinement on anti-fascists and created the OVRA secret police and a special tribunal for state security. The immediate trigger was the shot fired at Mussolini as he rode through Bologna in an open car on 31 October 1926, which ended with the lynching of a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni; that attempt led to the laws creating the secret police. In this setting, the bulletin's 'perfect calm in every part of Italy', announced after Mussolini's hour-long meeting with the commander of the Carabinieri, is the government's own description of a country whose organised opposition was being closed down overnight. The bulletin says only that searches 'yielded positive results' in some places, without naming the places or what was found, and the sources gathered here do not describe how the Carabinieri and prefects conducted the closures locally.
Four attempts on Mussolini's life behind the 'mystical force'
Mussolini's remark that a mystical force protected him came after four attempts on his life in less than a year. The former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested on 4 November 1925 for planning to shoot him; historians believe that plot was engineered by the administration itself as a pretext to consolidate power, and laws enacted in late 1925 enabled the suppression of any oppositional political organisation. On 7 April 1926 Violet Gibson fired a pistol that grazed his nose; on 11 September 1926 the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his car at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four others; and on 31 October came the Bologna shooting. By claiming that no harm would strike him down until he had finished his programme, Mussolini turned his survival into a sign of destiny, and by citing the many dictators of the Roman Republic he presented dictatorship as a classical, purposeful remedy for what he called the democratic experiment. The railways, aqueduct, electrification and reclamation he listed appear in the paper as his own evidence that dictatorship delivered efficiency.
Italy's new liners and the promise of a five-day Atlantic crossing
The headline promised a Naples–New York crossing in five days, though the selected passage itself deals with dictatorship and does not explain the figure. Italy's newest large liners were the pair Navigazione Generale Italiana had ordered from the Ansaldo shipyard, each of some 30,000 tons. The first, Roma, was launched in 1926 and could reach a maximum speed of 22 knots. Her sister Augustus was launched only in December 1926, a month after this issue, and did not make her maiden voyage until 10 November 1927; once both were in service, Augustus worked the South American route while Roma ran the North Atlantic. A later account still says only that Augustus could 'reportedly' reach South America from Italy in five days at an average of 22 knots, a figure given for the South American route rather than for New York. When this page was printed, Augustus, one of the two ships, had not yet been launched.
The British Fascists, their women's section and meeting stewarding
The first British organisation to borrow Mussolini's label, the British Fascisti (later British Fascists), was formed on 6 May 1923 by Rotha Lintorn-Orman in the aftermath of the March on Rome. It largely confined itself to stewarding Conservative Party meetings and canvassing for the party, which is the pattern the Italian report describes: fascists clearing hecklers from a meeting at which an MP was speaking, presented by the organisers as restoring free speech. The group had a sizeable female membership organised in a separate structure along similar lines, which fits the report's detachment of twenty women, and its rank-and-file young men spent much of their time in violent confrontations with Communists. Its claim of 200,000 members in 1926 was inflated; at its 1925–26 peak it had several thousand, and many prominent members drifted away after the General Strike of 1926. The paper does not name the group behind the 'special patrols', and it relays without comment the organisers' description of the hecklers as 'evidently subversive'.
Original
Tranquillità assoluta in tutta Italia
10 L'Agenzia Stefani comunica che stamane il Capo del Governo ha ricevuto il generale di San Marzano, comandante generale dell'arma dei RR. CC., col quale ha avuto un colloquio di oltre un'ora sulla situazione, che è di perfetta tranquillità in ogni parte d'Italia. Un altro comunicato della stessa agenzia dice che in esecuzione del nuovo testo unico della legge di P. S., sono state la scorsa notte occupate e chiuse le sedi dei partiti e delle associazioni antifascisti, che la legge stessa ha sciolto. Le perquisizioni hanno in qualche località dato esito positivo. I locali così occupati saranno quanto prima restituiti ad uso di abitazione.
Da Napoli a New York in 5 giorni
«Forse è una forza mistica che mi protegge - rispose Mussolini sorridendo - forse è la benignità di qualche santo o nume particolare. Quello che so di certo è, che sento con assoluta certezza che nessun male mi abbatterà finchè non avrò posto la parola fine al mio programma. Mussolini ricordò quindi alcune fasi della storia romana. «La Repubblica romana - egli disse - ebbe parecchie decine di dittatori. Anche noi oggi abbiamo bisogno della dittatura per riorganizzare il Paese e per ridargli il sangue perduto nell'esperimento democratico. E ' il solo metodo per metterci in carreggiata e farci marciare verso mete più concrete. E con questo metodo, che porta alla massima efficienza nella produzione, che abbiamo intrapreso e stiamo per portare a compimento opere grandiose, quali le direttissime Bologna-Firenze e RomaNapoli, l'Acquedotto Pugliese, l'elettrificazione di numerose linee, le bonifiche nell'Emilia e nell'Italia meridionale».
Incidenti tra fascisti inglesi e sovversivi
Un tumultuoso epilogo ha avuto ieri sera [?] na riunione della Lega imperiale giova - [?] ile. Da tempo, a quanto confermano i di - [?] enti del sodalizio, le riunioni da essi in - [?] ette in luoghi pubblici venivano disturbate [?] a continue interruzioni di elementi estra - [?] ei, evidentemente sovversivi. Ieri sera fu [?] eciso di allontanare con qualsiasi mezzo i [?] erturbatori, per ristabilire la libertà di [?] arola. Venti donne iscritte alle pattuglie [?] peciali fasciste britanniche, affrontarono [?] n numero press'a poco eguale di persone [?] el loro sesso, e contemporaneamente un [?] entinaio di fascisti britannici impegnavano [?] n pugilato su vasta scala con elementi di [?] esso forte. Il deputato Herbert Williams [?] he stava parlando, lasciò il tavolo degli [?] ratori per aiutare i suoi amici ad espellere [?] n individuo che resisteva disperatamente.
Source: Source: Internet Archive