THE MARCH ON ROME 247
Turin, Genoa (for the sailors' organizations), Leghorn,
Ravenna, Andria (for the whole of Apulia).
In addition the party organized great regional adunate,
where tens of thousands of blackshirts assembled—Septem-
ber 20 in Udine, Novara, Piacenza, on the 24th in Cremona,
the 2gth at Ancona.
All these demonstrations served as useful training for the
militia and increased the pressure on the government. In
the meantime the fascists had other and more definite aims
in the territorial as well as the political sphere. There were
two regions still exempt from fascist control : the south,
except Apulia, and the part that the Italians call Alto Adige
and the Austrian South Tyrol. The question of fascist
penetration into the south was raised at the National
Council in Milan (August 14), when it was decided to hold
a special meeting to form a ' complete political, economic
and military plan of action' for this part of the country.
In an interview with the Mattino of Naples Mussolini praised
the workers of the south as being c less infected with the
germ of subversiveness ', and the south itself as c the nation's
storehouse of man power, an inexhaustible reserve of soldiers'.
He also stated that the next National Congress of the
National Fascist Party would be held in Naples on
October 24. A conference of delegates from the south,
arranged by the National Council, took place in Rome
on September 6 and 7. In this part of Italy fascism had to
contend with political forces of some strength and importance,
contributing a great number of deputies to various e demo-
cratic * groups under leaders ranging from Nitti to Amendola.
Backed by strong local influence these forces were firmly
entrenched., and in certain regions, such as Sardinia, they
developed autonomous tendencies, harnessing the ex-
servicemen's movement and certain sections of the petty
bourgeois to new parties (c Sardinian Party of Action') far
removed from fascism.
In thec redeemed 3 country of the Adige valley the majority
of the population were German born. The South Tyrol had
returned four deputies, all German, in the March 1931
elections. Where the Italian element prevailed, as in
Trent, the whole administration was in the hands of the