It should nevertheless be remembered that while Mussolini and IL Popolo d’ltalia provided a point of reference for the fasci interventionists, Mussolini was not the key inspiration for the pro-war movement. He was present as a participant at the 5 May demonstration in Quarto, a coastal town in Genoa, while the central figure, D’Annunzio, spoke at the unveiling of a statue sculpted by Enrico Baroni and dedicated to the departure of Giuseppe Garibaldi and 1,000 redshirts from that town in 1860, an event which would lead to the conquest of Sicily by late July and, by October that same year, to the annexation of the whole of the Italian south to Piedmont. The figure of Garibaldi had long since lost its solely democratic and republican implications. These could certainly play their part in culturally mobilizing disparate forces for intervention: Garibaldi signified war when war was called for; he signified energetic voluntary action in pursuit of the completion of national unity in the context of internationalist and humanitarian ideals. But Garibaldi was also readily identifiable with other themes such as patriotism and with the obedience to the Monarchy that he himself had expressed when ordered to halt his and his volunteers’ advance in the Trentino in 1866 (Isnenghi, 1982). Originally designed to represent solely Garibaldi, Baroni’s monument was later reworked to incorporate the strength, muscularity and masculinity of a hefty working man. The finished product was a composite of labour, Risorgimental values and national aggrandizement which together evoked a productive myth in which the proletariat was absorbed into the nation. All it needed was the poetic word to bring it to life, and this D’Annunzio provided in a spectacular display of individual charisma and gestures combined with the religious terminology of fire, water and faith to forge a cross-class community ready to push abroad in a poetically charged harmony (D’Annunzio, 1915: 18; Gibelli, 1999: 54-64).
Like D’Annunzio, Mussolini was capable of dabbling in terminology which could weave together symbols of blood, death and resurrection into a nationalist, imperialist and anti-socialist discourse. He could also rework the symbol of Garibaldi so that it conformed to an imperialist strategy. He claimed on 31 December 1914, in an article entitled ‘Blood which unites’, that the Garibaldine volunteers fighting in the Argonne showed ‘socialist and neutral Italy’ the way of ‘duty and sacrifice’ (OO, VII: 112). On 8 January the death in the Argonne of Bruno Garibaldi, grandson of the Risorgimento revolutionary, was said to have ‘annihilated’ the PSI’s authority. The dead Bruno was still living and ‘when the dead come back to life, there are those living who must die’. Hence ‘your time is up, oh socialists of Italy’ (OO, VII: 120-22). With the death of Costante Garibaldi, another grandson, again in the Argonne, Mussolini argued in March 1915 that the ‘holocaust of blood’ had ‘sealed a fraternity of spirits and of sentiments which remains unaltered, profound and immutable’. With reference to the fact that, following the dissolution of the Garibaldine Legion in France, Peppino Garibaldi, yet another grandson of Garibaldi’s, and other Garibaldine volunteers had enrolled in the fasci d’azione rivoluzionaria, Mussolini proclaimed: ‘Garibaldine volunteers, your task in France is over. We await you in Italy. The Nation recalls you. It recalls you to fight the internal and the external enemies’ (OO, VII: 250-51). And as regards speaking in front of statues of Garibaldi, Mussolini had done so on 31 March in Milan at an interventionist demonstration, declaring that ‘at the foot of this Monument we reaffirm, yet again, our will for war’ (OO, VII: 297).
An examination of IL Popolo d’ltalia shows that a lot of space was given over to D’Annunzio’s Quarto speech and to the pro-war demonstration in general. Yet Mussolini’s short 6 May article on the event dedicated not one word to D’Annunzio. Mussolini, rather, was awaiting ‘the word from Rome’ (OO, VII: 366). The same can be noted of the previous day’s article: Mussolini focused on Salandra’s decision not to go to Quarto (OO, VII: 364-5). Again, not a word about the poet. Jealousy and rivalry? Perhaps. But it is clear that Mussolini placed emphasis on politics and State authority, whereas D’Annunzio, according to George Mosse, was somewhat blind to political reality since he subordinated politics to symbols and beauty, and to a mystical understanding of his own powers (Mosse, 1987: Ch. 4). What if Mussolini could further invert the D’Annunzian hierarchy of myth and politics in order to project a new type of State-society rapport from within the national experience of war? As the cannons opened fire, Mussolini’s chance came.