ABSTRACT
"Every leader is an individual response to a collective demand". Thus Leon Trotsky on the subject of Adolf Hitler. But when there was a collective demand for a leader in the Italy of 1919 the response was two fold: Gabriele D'Annunzio and Benito Mussolini. The Carteggio, the uncensored collection of letters exchanged between Mussolini and D'Annunzio which has just been published, will contribute nothing to the objective assessment of the poet. On 25 September Mussolini advises D'Annunzio to march on Trieste, to declare the monarchy deposed and put himself at the head of a junta, in other words, to stage a republican revolution. In March 1924, D'Annunzio was up in arms over the persecution of the writer Miguel de Unamuno by the Spanish dictator, Primo de Rivera. D'Annunzio, writing in French, composed an appeal to the French people in the name of their common hatred of "the abominable England of Jonathan Swift".
