Yes, Mussolini wanted a war. Any war, as stated by Emilio Gentile, the leading historian of fascism alive today.

The decision to let Italy enter the Second World War was a precise and absolutely conscious choice of the dictator, taken against the advice of the armed forces, the Crown and the fascists themselves. Warning: all these had gladly supported the aggressive and warmongering policy held by the regime in the thirties, but they were aware of the pitiful state of the Italian armed forces, also due to the omnipresent fascist corruption, and that it was one thing to gas Ethiopian civilians and another thing face the leading colonial and naval power in the Mediterranean.

For all the eight months that separate the invasion of Poland from Italy's entry into the war, Mussolini continues to waver between the realism recommended to him by those around him and a profound desire to engage the regime in war. Why did he want war? To pursue megalomaniacal policies of greatness, but above all because Mussolini loved war. He saw it, we read in his speeches, "the supreme proof that forges a people and marks it for eternity". And all the rhetoric of the regime had been aimed at glorifying war and death in battle, see the children immediately placed in military uniforms and toy rifles within the state youth organization of the "balilla".

Moreover, when France falls, two things come to Mussolini. The first is a hurry to go to war, convinced that England too would soon make peace. With great love for the life of his fellow citizens, he declared: "I need a few thousand dead to sit next to the victors." The second is the fear of Germany. During the 1930s, the dictator became one of Hitler's most fanatical admirers and became convinced that the German victory was inevitable. In his words, he is convinced that "the future Europe will be made up of Germany, its protectorates and its colonies. We must by all means put ourselves in a position to be its favorite protectorate and any hostile action would bring us down to the rank of colony". The haste to enter the war and the conviction that it will be a matter of a few months is such that Mussolini declares it without even giving an order to the merchant navy to return the ships to Italy. A large chunk of Italian merchant shipping, so vital to the war in North Africa, will be stranded throughout the war outside the Mediterranean.

Final note: be careful not to exaggerate consensus towards a dictatorship, being artificially pumped up while dissent is systematically repressed. It is true, after the proclamation of victory in Ethiopia, the consent of the regime is at its maximum and Mussolini has a popularity superior to even the King and the Pope for the period 1937-1940. But pockets of dissent remained in Italy until the end, especially in those social categories (mostly workers and peasants) who most had disadvantages from the regime's policies.

Source: Alfassio Grimaldi & Bozzetti "10 giugno 1940. Il giorno della follia" Laterza 1974