ABSTRACT
Mussolini said that 'Fascism should be the watchful guardian of our foreign policy', and he stressed the importance of enhancing Italy's position in Europe and the world. Mussolini's role at Locarno was small, but it shows that the Fascist leader had achieved a degree of respectability in Europe. In practice, his foreign policy in the 1920s mixed Fascist adventurism with traditional diplomatic caution. As always with Mussolini, perception was as important as reality. One of his first acts on coming to power in 1922 was to move the Foreign Office away from its traditional home in the Palazzo della Consulta in Rome, to the smaller Palazzo Chigi. Mussolini could be cautious in his management of foreign policy, but it is perilous to take the first decade of Fascist foreign policy out of context. The fact that Mussolini was unable to pursue ideological foreign policy goals in those years does not mean that he did not have such goals.
