Berneri, a World War I veteran, University of Florence professor of humanities, and a member of the Unione Anarchica Italiana, fought always Fascists, and he started to fight fascism until 1926, when he was forced to escape from Italy and he went in France, then Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and finally the Netherlands. In all these countries, Berneri was frequently placed under arrest, and then often expelled, because he was an anarchist. When he was in these countries he wrote lot of anti-clerical and anti-fascist articles.