The events of July 25th, that brought about the  
fall of Mussolini and Fascism were no improvisation, nor  
were they influenced by any popular movement or inter-  
vention of the anti-fascist parties which were to appear on the political   
scene only after July 25th. Our action, long meditated and prepared, was   
the consequence of an attitude maintained for twenty years in front of   
               Mussolini and his supporters.                
 
                                                            
 
 
As you perhaps remember, I was dismissed in July 1932,  
as Minister for Foreign Affairs, immediately after a speech I made at   
Geneva, when, unhesitatingly and alone among all foreign representatives   
at the Disarmament Conference, I accepted fully and inconditionally for   
Italy, and on my personal responsibility, the plan proposed by the   
President of the United States for disarmament and general peace. I   
thought in fact that that was the last chance offered by the United States   
to the Nations of the world to join willingly their forces, and put into   
operations those high principles of international peace and cooperation   
which would have spared to the world the danger of a war. A few months   
before (January 1932), I had succeeded in opposing a meeting between the   
Italian Prime Minister and Herr Hitler, head of the new and already strong   
                 Nazi movement in Germany.                  
 
                                                            
 
 
The swift rise of the Nazi movement in Germany made Mussolini think that   
the time was ripe for getting rid of me, and with me of the policy he had   
tolerated but never shared. So my dismissal came at the very moment when I   
was reaching with M. Herriot (head of the merely-formed radico-socialist   
Government in France) the full understanding for which I had worked so   
hard and which was to remove once and for all the age-old difficulties   
between France and Italy. Mussolini disavowed the action taken by me at   
Geneva and sent me as Ambassador to London, resuming himself the full   
control of the Italian foreign policy. The Italian coBperation with the   
other fellow-members of the League of Nations was practically interrupted   
at that time, the anti-Geneva attitude reasserted itself once more, and   
the Italian policy followed more and more the German pattern
 
                                                            
 
 
During my seven years in London as Italian Ambassador, whenever official   
duties compelled me to act according to distasteful instructions, I always   
did my best follow them in such a way as not to endanger the policy of  
close collaboration and friendship with Great Britain and full indipendence   
of Germany. Very often, however, I had to run counter those instructions.   
During the Abissynian war I made every effort in order to avoid a  
final split between Great Britain and Italy, and afterwards to reach   
(April 1938) that Gentlemen's Agreement which secured the withdrawal of   
Italian volunteers from Spain, and should have meant a new start in the   
Italian foreign policy. It gratifies me to remember that the British Prime   
Minister gave me credit in the House of Commons for all the work done in   
order to reach the agreement, and to assure the restauration of the old   
                          friendly                          
 
                         relations