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In my conscience I feel I have done all in my power to be of some service   
to my country, to save it from anarchy, end the total disaster connected   
with a military collapse, and to resume, some day in the future and within   
the reality of a military defeat, the position of a respectable member of   
the community of countries which will arise from this war. Someone said   
that I struck out too late, and someone else that I struck too soon. The   
fact is that I struck when I could. How great the difficulties were that I   
had to dispose of has been proved by the course events have subsequently   
taken. But events have also shown that opposition to Fascist   
dictatorship from without was powerless. I chose to work from within,  
keeping alive there an opposition which proved to be at last successful.   
My policy involved difficulties, risks, setbacks, even mistakes and   
temporary compromises. But I still believe that that was the only way to a   
                       final success.                       
 
                                                            
 
 
It was clear that, even had we not acted on July 25th, Mussolini ts regime   
would have been destroyed by the armed forces of the United Nations.   
Everyone realizes that. But the problem was to shorten a war which the   
Italian people had not wanted, to weaken Germany's military strength by  
withdrawing its ally, to bring the Italians themselves to regain their   
constitutional liberties, and as the Allies had always asked us to do, to   
oust Mussolini, breaking the chains holding us, so that the cooperation of   
the great majority of the Italian people might be willingly and con-  
        fidently assured to the cause of Democracy.         
 
                                                            
 
 
Somebody has said afterwards that in doing what we did on July 25th, we   
intended to get rid of Mussolini's dictatorship, but to save the Fascist   
regime. This is utterly untrue. For too many years Fascism had identified   
itself with Mussolini's dictatorship, and both had to be destroyed in   
order to save Monarchy and Constitution which we believed and still   
believe today are the supreme guarantees for our national unity, for   
establishing a true democracy in Italy, and preserving our country from   
danger of going back either to anarchy or to dictatorship ag
 
                                                            
 
 
I feel sure you will forgive for going into the story of Italian events   
and the part I played in themx I truly think it difficult to understand   
Italian events if some light is not thrown on what appears to be only a  
personal case, but is rather the case of the many Italians whose ideas I   
tried to interpret and represent. Mussolini wants today, through terror,   
murders, and falsehood, to create his historical alibi and vainly to   
strengthen in Northern Italy a position which is obviously doomed.   
Falsifying facts and documents, he tries to prove that the military defeat   
that the Fascist dictatorship has met is nothing but the result of   
military plots which supposedly have found a complacent instrunent in the   
Grand Council. Nothing could be more false. My hope is that some day the   
entire truth will be told, if in the meantime the Gestapo agents will not   
have succeeded in suppressing one of the few witnesses of events as they   
                     did really happen.                     
 
                            You