Mothers and Daughters

The Piazza Venezia was thronged with thousands of people carrying crude caricatures and hand-lettered banners. Men in Black Shirt uniforms walked in tight groups down the center of the Corso Umberto toward the square. The students of Rome University had left their classrooms and combined in noisy groups, parading through the city, marching past the United States Consulate on the Via Vittorio Veneto, picking up the frenzy that had begun in the Chamber of Deputies the day before, demanding Italian rights to Corsica, and Nice, and Savoy, and Tunisia. Black-shirted, black-tunicked, their bright silk scarves flapping about their throats, they surrounded the French Embassy and pushed against the restraining lines of the carabinieri, and then converged on the square where il Duce’s balcony was hung with the Italian flag and the Fascist flag, where Renato and Julia tried to find space for themselves against the crush of people.

She glanced up at the balcony, caught in the press of sweating humans, saw the microphone awaiting il Duce, felt an electric excitement in the air, something quite apart from the excitement she ordinarily felt with Renato. There were men in shabby suits and caps, women in house dresses with sweaters thrown over them, students in their brightly colored Pied Piper hats covered with insignia, “Il Gruppo Universitario Fascista,” Renato explained, and men selling ices, and over it all the current in the air. It could have been this way when Caesar spoke to the people of ancient Rome, she thought, it could have been this.

“Duce! Duce! Duce! Duce!” the crowd began to chant.

They carried banners with il Duce’s image, the familiar black-and-white drawing that stared down from every vacant wall in the nation, the leader in his black eagled helmet, wearing epaulets on his shoulder, the strong jaw, the eyes in deep shadow beneath the helmet, the mouth firm and sensuous, the words CREDERE, OBBEDIRE, COMBATTERE beneath the drawing. They milled noisily in the square, and those in the black shirts began clapping, and the applause spread to the rest of the crowd as they turned their eyes and their faces toward the balcony, applauding the microphone there. “Duce, Duce, Duce, Duce,” they chanted, and suddenly he appeared! A tumultuous welcome went up from the crowd, the applause rose wildly. The cheering deafened Julia. She put both hands over her ears, lowered them only when it seemed he was ready to speak. He was wearing the uniform of a corporal of honor in the Black Shirt Militia. A field hat was tilted at a rakish angle over his forehead. He raised his arms and the crowd fell silent.

“Duce! Duce!” a lone Black Shirt voice cried, and then was still.

“Officers,” he began, “noncommissioned officers, soldiers, Black Shirts, and people of Rome,” and his voice was drowned out by renewed shouting.

“Tunisia!” a group of students yelled.

“Corsica!” from across the square.

“Savoia!”

Il Duce held up his hands, and the square was silent again. He leaned into the microphone. “Tomorrow,” he said, “on the plains of Volturara, before His Majesty, Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia, will pass more than sixty thousand men, two hundred tanks, four hundred pieces of heavy artillery, three thousand machine guns, and twenty-eight hundred armored cars. This aggregation of men and means is imposing, but it represents, at most, a modest and almost insignificant total compared with the total of men and means on which Italy can surely count.

“I invite Italians to take absolutely to heart this declaration of mine. Not despite the African war, but as a consequence of the African war, all the armed forces of Italy today are more efficient than ever. At any time, in the course of a few hours and after a simple order, we can mobilize eight million men. The Italian people should know that their internal peace will be protected and with it the peace of the world.”

The students and the Black Shirts were restless. They had come here for amplification of Ciano’s statement, had come here to learn whether or not Italy truly attempted to press claims on French lands, of whether the uproar yesterday had all been staged. So far, il Duce had told them nothing they did not already know.

“With the most crushing of victories,” il Duce said, “in one of the most just wars, Italy’s with war in Africa, has acquired an immense, rich, imperial territory where for many decades she will be able to carry out the achievements of her labors and of her creative ability. For this reason, but only for this reason, will we reject the absurdity of eternal peace, which is foreign to our creed and to our temperament.”