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A National Demonstration of feeling followed the announcement of the detection of the plot. Premier Mussolini appeared on the "fatal" balcony before a crowd of at least 100,000 Fascists, packed so tightly that it was impossible to lift hands to clap. He cried: "You are here in such numbers that it is clear that, if I had fallen under the assassin's blow, not a tyrant would have died but a humble servant of the nation who daily gives his whole self to the cause of his country!"
Amid loud cheers he announced that "stern measures" would be taken against those responsible for the plot, and against the Opposition. Then he asked the Fascists to promise that they would not take reprisals into their own hands. Roared the crowd: "No! Revenge! Justice! We shall bring you Zaniboni's head!"
Bellowed Mussolini, fearless even of his friends: "You will obey! You will take no revenge because I wish it!"
Frenzied, the crowd cheered him until their shouts echoed almost across Rome. For hours "all citizens with Italian hearts" remained outside his windows, call-ing him by name, "begging him to come forth and talk to them forever."
The Italian Press scored and stigmatized the plot almost without regard to party lines. Said II Tribuno, usually markedly antiFascist: The attempt rouses not only among the Fascisti but among all Italians the greatest indignation. Whatever party one may belong to, whatever reasons one may have to oppose the present Government, one must admit Mussolini is something more than a political symbol.
Nobody can deny his passionate love for his country, his daily struggles on the behalf of Italy in the face of every kind of danger and opposition with an energy which is often prodigious. At home and abroad Mussolini is considered a kind of national emblem working with a kind of mystical exaltation, which may be criticized in its details, but whose loftiness of spirit and the nobility of whose ends cannot be denied.
Punitive Measures to be taken were vigorously sketched in a circular letter despatched to all the Prefects of Italy:
"The Government will occupy all Masonic Lodges, arrest all culpable persons, dissolve the Unified Socialist Party, [to which Zaniboni belonged] and suspend the publication of Giustizia [its organ], . . .
"Order must not be disturbed in any way. This I demand with the utmost severity . . . All Fascists will obey, as always.—MUSSOLINI"
The Armistice Day Speech, delivered by Premier Mussolini before details of the plot were allowed to leak out, was in part as follows: "Italy's victory over the Central Empires gave us our present sacred inviolable boundaries. Woe unto anyone who would attempt to violate them!....I believe we are confronted with a long period of peace . . . not with the possibility of peace for centuries. . . . The Italian people must not rest on their laurels . . . must be taught how sublime it is to sacrifice one's self for one's country."