ABSTRACT
In the Benito Mussolinis' home, as in many other Italian homes, there was one dish for the evening meal, polenta—maize flour—cooked in water: meat was a rarity, almost unknown. Alessandro Mussolini aptly epitomized all the idle talk, the generosity of spirit, the anarchy, and the confusion that co-existed in the ancestors of Italian Socialism. Young Mussolini was then at the opposite extreme from the deferential Socialism. After his military service—during which his mother died—with the Tenth Bersaglieri of Verona, from 1904 to 1906, Benito Mussolini obtained another teaching position. Mussolini threatened a landowner with his stick and he was sentenced to three months in prison, but after two weeks he was set free on probation. Mussolini took that literally. He led the proletariat of Forli in an attack on the railway station to prevent troop trains from moving. Mussolini entered his candidacy from the Forli district. He carried on a vigorous anti-militarist campaign, citing his agitation against the Libyan war.
