>>17890316
TRVTH

Gentlemen!

The speech I am about to deliver before you perhaps cannot be, strictly speaking, classified as a parliamentary speech. It may be that some of you will find, in the end, that this speech ties back—though some time has passed—to the one I gave in this very hall on November 16.
A speech of this kind may or may not lead to a political vote. Let it be known, in any case, that I do not seek such a vote. I do not desire it: I’ve had too many.
Article 47 of the Statute says: “The Chamber of Deputies has the right to accuse the Ministers of the King and to bring them before the High Court of Justice.”
I formally ask whether anyone in this Chamber, or outside of it, wishes to invoke Article 47.

My speech will therefore be very clear—so clear as to bring about complete clarification.
You understand that, after having walked for a long time with travel companions to whom, by the way, our gratitude is always due for what they did, it is now necessary to pause and ask whether the same path, with the same companions, can still be traveled in the future.

It is I, gentlemen, who raise the charge against myself in this Chamber.

They have said that I founded a Cheka [a secret police force, like the Soviet one].
Where? When? How? No one can say. There was certainly a Cheka in Russia, which executed between 150,000 and 160,000 people without trial, according to nearly official statistics. There was a Cheka in Russia that systematically terrorized the bourgeoisie and its individuals—a Cheka that called itself the red sword of the revolution. But an Italian Cheka never existed.