Well, you need to give them something!

Both things are true, even if... Let's say that the "land to the veterans" thing was, to use our contemporary terms, almost a meme. The attitude of the political groups which were, often out of necessity, forced to address certain themes of social equality (at the time Italy had yet to introduce progressive taxation) and ended up making promises of dubious realization was often stigmatized by those more discerning observers - but was also a consequence of the serious concern with how to manage the masses called to the front, both during the war and after.

See for instance L. Einaudi in the Corriere della Sera of November 16^th 1918 - (in La condotta economica, 1933)

The leadership of the nation, more and more with the passing years, thought convenient to make recourse to large promises of future rewards for the actual sacrifices: to bring to the people's attention a budget review, where the passives column was the ongoing war […] but the actives one was going to largely exceed the former. The very idea of the war for those democratic forces which had supported it was imbued of these themes. It was, they proclaimed, the last war, fought for freedom and justice […] to which universal brotherhood and thus universal bliss would follow. […] To little avail […] M. Pantaleoni tried to shake the foundations of the myth: “Every citizen carrying their bills to the state, demanding compensation for one of the many effects of the war. Alas, the bill one brings to the state, is in the end just carried over to some neighbor of his, who holds onto a bill of their own. If each one wants to be paid by the war, or with the results […] of the war, almost as if the war had not been done for the interests and well being of each one and all together; then of course, any credit of war was balanced by the debts of each one, except for those whose credits were no longer redeemable, since they were gone with their limbs and their lives.”

Thus the war had inspired claims and hopes of social and political palingenesis. And those hopes had spread to the masses, translating into the most basic, most appealing of promises, the material ownership of the land.

There was still their hunger for land; made more acute by the consciousness of ancient rights that the population thought eternal. In the trenches, in the eve of the great battles, the peasants had heard propagandists, at times renown representatives, inspire them to sacrifice their lives in order to secure the ownership of land for their children, twice sacred with toil and spilled blood. When the peasants went back to their homes, they believed they had the right to their portion of land. The phrase, “land to the peasants” sparked a large widespread fire after the war, a confuse movement, of different character within each region, depending on the social and agrarian structure, on cultivation methods, feeding on century old memories of communal customs, on the echo of Russian ideologies, on the promises of well being after the war, on the general interest to an improvement of the use of the few viable lands.

One of these projects had been listed for discussion during the Parliament session of mid November 1918 - the law project “in favor of the military combatants” developed by the socialist interventionist Ettore Ciccotti had been sustained by the nationalist Luigi Federzoni, the liberal Edoardo Giretti, the demo-social Giovanni Antonio Colonna di Cesarò. It granted favorable conditions for purchasing or renting land portions to either “cooperatives of workers” or “individual workers” according to the “relative duration of their of military service” and eventual “acts of valor”. It also allowed the state to enact “compulsory purchases of portions that had been left untouched for at least a decade” that would then be entrusted to a “Credit Institute in favor of the land workers” for the purposes previously stated. Furthermore to ensure occupation, “the State, public institutions […] employing the services of subjects of enemy states, would have to replace them, according preference […] to war veterans”. Also “veterans, whenever employed in the public sector, would have their months of military service count towards seniority and pension privileges”. “War prisoners that had not been wounded”, unless otherwise established “by the relative inquest” would not be “eligible for any privileges”. The discussion of the law project was to take place on the 21^st of November.

Ciccotti, who had authored it, apparently had a falling out with members of his coalition - which may or may not have been the reason for the abandonment of it.

The traditional liberal criticism of those designs of land distributions, which usually went to encourage small ownership or long term leasing, was based on the realization that there wasn't enough land - or at least that the land available was too poor to sustain a family without substantial improvements which a small owner would not have been able to afford.

Steps in favor of the enlisted men and then for the veterans were taken - even if they might have appeared insufficient. By decree, on December 10^th 1917, the Opera Nazionale Combattenti (National Combatants Project) was created, under personal initiative of the socialist reformer (of Bissolati area), interventionist and volunteer Aurelio Beneduce, who worked in close contact with Finance Minister F.S. Nitti. The purpose of the institute was twofold: improve the conditions of the combatants during the war and establish a pathway for their re-entering into civil society through state sponsored works (in the following months the Government will grant the ONC the right to purchase land portions at a favorable price for that purpose) and professional education.

It would take some time for the Institute to begin its activity, so that its operations would be limited to post war – and mostly focused on the agrarian problem, as the re-entering of veterans into the working force would be taken up by the National Veterans and Combatants Association. Later on the ONC would be reformed (1926) and became the core of the land clearing program of the Fascist Regime.

The Italian government had also introduced a new insurance destined to enlisted men - which also covered the families of the soldiers (for the small sum of 500 or 1,000 lire – for example the hefty American insurance was equivalent to about 50,000 lire), that could be paid off in full after the war for the purchase of land or working instruments.

The sodiers remained quite suspicious of these initiatives, if we trust the reports that many of them refused to sign up for the insurance plan (which was strongly encouraged by theri officers) for fear that the fee was going to be taken from their salary (which it was not).

As for the other thing, Italy had introduced universal (male) suffrage in 1913 - from 21 years of age and passably literate (the criteria were very, very loose). The pro-veteran sentiment called for an extension of voting rights to those who had served in the army. For this reason the new proportional electoral law – introduced with Royal Decree n. 1495 of September 2^nd 1919 – had rounded up the electoral body with the inclusion of all males 21 years old (by May 31^st 1919) and of those younger than 21 who had served (“active service”) in the Army or in the Navy. To give a very rough estimate of the amount of people who benefited from the expansion, the 1919 elections had a total of registered voters of 11,115,441, of which 10,239,326 with the right to vote - while the total had been of 8,672,249 in 1913. This is likely an overstimation though, given the tendency of many local administrations not to revise the electoral lists periodically - a tendency which I doubt had been corrected during the six years of war and administrative disarray.

More informations can be found in general literature on the Italian war:

Melograni, P. - Storia politica della Grande Guerra

Leoni, F. – Storia dei partiti politici Italiani

Vivarelli, R. - Storia delle origini del Fascismo

Alatri, P. - D'Annunzio, Nitti e la questione Adriatica

Rochat, G ; Isnenghi, M. - La grande guerra