united yet-only war which was and remains the biological remedy of racial decadence, could cure the malady of smug and unambitious materialism rapidly becoming an acknowledged principle of government under the Liberal "dictator Giolitti. A bold colonial policy was advocated, not in terms of "the white man's burden" or of wealth, but for the stimulating effect of death and war on the national character. Democracy, aristocracy, autocracy are all appearances under cover of which at all times strong and able men have managed" the people or the monarch. Away with pretences then. Government will be no more one-sided and far more efficient nationally if exercised by an aristocratic self-constituted governing class composed of those most likely to have the requisite qualities-the old nobility, that is, rejuvenated by admixture with the rich and powerful among the middle class and the exceptionally gifted from the common people."

"

1

>This panacea the Nationalists commended in a cloud of impassioned verbiage to the youth of the nation, and one outcome of their activities was the war in Tripoli, 1911-1912. Giolitti has explained his motives for the adventure in his Memoirs; they are political and good as far as they go. France had absorbed Algeria and Tunis, Great Britain, Egypt. They recognized Italy's prior claim on the reversion of Tripoli and successive Italian premiers had encouraged Italian economic activity in Tripolitana. The advent of the Young Turks to power at Constantinople was followed by the growth of antiItalian feeling in Turkey, manifested in a hostile diplomatic attitude. Italy felt that her Allies, in view of their considered Turcophil policy, were not backing her sufficiently and that she must act for herself and so both clear up her relations with Turkey, and improve her position in the Triple Alliance. The moment seemed favourable. France, Great Britain, and Germany were deeply entangled in the Moroccan web, and far too occupied to be able to spare time to thwart Italy's expansion. Such a favourable conjuncture was not likely to recur-the Young Turk provocation and the pre-occupation of the Powers. Though France had recognized Italy's claims, her occupation of Tunis had filled Italian public opinion with an incurable fear that the French Colonial Expansionists would somehow and sometime force the hands of their Government and round off the French North African Empire with Tripoli. . The moment had to come, and from 1 Mowrer," Immortal Italy," pp. 157-8

my point of view had come, when we would find ourselves faced by this alternative: either to assert our rights or to

renounce them." 1

Giolitti does not tell us that the country, or rather the young and ardent elements in it, were growing tired of his benevolent and corrupt dictatorship, and that he was always ready to throw sops to Cerberus when he could afford them. The State finances under the Italian Walpole were in admirable condition, the Nationalists clamoured that the national prosperity should be manifested in great deeds, and that Italy should vindicate with high gestures the grandeur of her "Roman past."

The national weakness of the Italians is to become intoxicated with alarming ease on mere words. "We Italians," observed Signor Nitti to a group of American correspondents, "do not make revolutions, we make speeches." 2 66 "2 For all his shrewdness, the average Italian is completely taken in by praise and hyperbole. Tell him he is a good fellow and you like him; he remains cold. But call him a noble Roman, the legitimate child of Latin virtue and civilization, the younger brother of Dante-announce that his country, his army, his customs, his women, his intelligence, his nobility of soul outshine those of other countries as the sun the moonand he's yours." "3

The people that counted wanted war, but the masses were pacific and indifferent, as they usually are. So the selfappointed task of the Nationalists was to conjure up a mirage of more than Babylonian glory and wealth. Libya, a miserable country, became, in their words, a land of riches, running with mythological springs amid garden scenery. It could, they said, be made the second home of Southern Italians, the real answer to the problem how the surplus population could continue to emigrate and not be lost. Naturally, Southern Italians were enthusiastic." And the end of it all was that much rich Italian blood was poured out on the sand of an African desert.

Only the Socialists remained aloof and scornful of an adventure that brought Italy some prestige but more disappointments. Equally they stood out against the rising tempest of nationalism in 1914-15.

1 Giolitti, "Memoirs," p. 254, also see generally cap. xi.

2 Quoted Mowrer, Immortal Italy," p. 40.

3 Mowrer, Immortal Italy," p. 39.

Mowrer, p. 160.

Before the war the Italian Socialist party had been one of the most consistently radical in Europe. Since its official organization in 1892 however, when the anarchists were expelled, it has like other Socialist parties contained two sections, a radical group, later syndicalist in tendency, standing for a root and branch destruction of the existing social order, and a body of evolutionary Marxians ("Reformists," as Lenin contemptuously called them), who took an active part in national life and, under the influence of Giolitti, seemed likely to be converted to a monarchical Socialism resembling that of the followers of Scheidemann in Germany. The expedition to Tripoli did much to injure the Reformists, and as a result the Party Congress in 1912 declared that "on account of its revolutionary essence, the Socialist party can be only a party of agitation and education, not a governing party." 1

The Radical tendencies of the Italian official Socialist party were clearly revealed on the outbreak of the war. Alone of the powerful European Socialist parties it endeavoured to act in the spirit of the many resolutions of the Second International as to the attitude of Socialists to international war. On Italian intervention it announced its official formula to be "neither to help nor to hinder the war." The significance of this cannot be exaggerated. From the '90's onwards Italian Socialism had been steadily gathering strength. It had successfully exerted an increasing pressure on the Liberal state, especially in the more vigorous North. True to its general attitude of "agitation and education" it had, as we have seen, successfully eluded Giolitti's effort to dilute his Cabinets with Socialism, with the result that the Italian premier, in order to retain power, was forced to make more and more concessions to the masses organized by the Socialists. For instance, he evaded popular indignation at the results of the Libyan war by the timely concession of universal suffrage in 1912. More and more it came to be an accepted axiom that the only alternative to the graft and corruption of the "dictator was Socialism. More and more Socialism was accepted as sooner or later inevitable.

Since the day when at the Ancona Congress in 1912, Mussolini had made a great fighting speech against the placid semi-bourgeois mentality of the reformists," he had acquired a more and more commanding position in Italian 1 Quoted Mowrer, “Immortal Italy,” p. 308

Socialism as the marvellously energetic editor of Avanti, the most influential organ of the party. It was a great achievement for a young journalist of twenty-nine and by the summer of 1914 he was looked on as the strong man of Italian Socialism. Then came the war and with it the spiritual crisis Sorel had foreseen. Mussolini was not long in convincing himself that with the defeat or victory of the Central Powers was bound up the rise or fall of European Socialism and with it the cause of integral revolution. In the struggle against German militarist aggression he felt the Italian proletariat would at once help in freeing the West from a menace stultifying alike to Liberalism and Socialism, and, disciplined in the fiery ordeal, would be thus equipped for the task of revolution-a revolution that should be a transformation and renaissance of Italy at last made one in blood and fire. Thus did he reconcile his Socialism still revolutionary, with the intense consciousness of Italy a nation. He had taken over the doctrine of war from the Nationalists because, like them, he felt that the unity of Italy was as yet political only, the legacy and life work of Cavour must be made one in spirit as in body.

He did not hesitate to promulgate the necessity of Italian intervention on the side of the Allies and to co-operate with all who followed this great idea, but he did not leave the Socialist party until he was first deprived of the editorship of the Avanti, and finally, on 25th November 1914, expelled from the party. At the meeting at Milan, before the Socialist section which decreed his expulsion, he re-affirmed his Socialism in memorable terms: "You think to sign my death warrant, but you are mistaken. . . . You have not seen the last of me! Twelve years of my party life are, or ought to be, a sufficient guarantee of my faith in Socialism. Socialism is something which takes root in the heart. What divides me from you now is not a small dispute, but a great question over which the whole of Socialism is divided. Amilcare Cipriani can no longer be your candidate because he declared, both by word of mouth and in writing, that if his seventy-five years allowed him, he would be in the trenches fighting the European military reaction which was stifling revolution.

Time will prove who is right and who is wrong in the formidable question which now confronts Socialism, and which it has never had to face before in the history of humanity, since never before has there been such a conflagration as exists to-day, in which millions of the proletariat are pitted one

against the other. . . . You must not think that the middle classes are enthusiastic about our intervention. They snarl .. and fear that the proletariat, once armed with bayonets, will use them for their own ends.

"Do not think that in taking away my membership-card you will be taking away my faith in the cause, or that you will prevent my still working for Socialism and Revolution." 1

"

Already, on 15th November 1914, he had launched another paper, the Popolo d'Italia, and became its editor, to preach with all his unwearying pertinacity the necessity of Italian intervention. He stumped the country on speaking tours, inveighing trucelessly against the "flabby and frightened foreign policy of the Salandra Government. We should not explain," he said at Parma on 13th December 1914, "the universal phenomenon of war by attributing it to the caprices of monarchs, race-hatred, or economic rivalry; we must take into account other feelings which each of us carries in his heart, and which made Proudhon exclaim, with that perennial truth which hides beneath the mask of paradox, that war was of 'divine origin.' . . After examining the various lines of pacificist argument developed before the war, he turns to the programme of the Second International. "The Germans, who ought to have set the example, flocked as a man to the Kaiser's banner. The treachery of the Germans forced the Socialists of the other countries to fall back upon the basis of nationality and the necessity of national defence. The German unity automatically determined the unity of the other countries. It is said, and justly, that international relations are like love : it takes two to carry them on. . . ." He reminds his hearers yet again that the bourgeoisie is neutral in spirit. "As a conclusive proof, compare the tone of the middle-class papers to-day with that shown at the time of the Libyan campaign, and note the difference. The trumpet-call which then sounded for war is muffled now. . . The secret is out, and ought to make the Socialists, who are not stupid, stop and think. On the one side are all the conservative and stagnant elements, and on the other the revolutionary and living forces of the country. It is necessary to choose." Almost in the very words of Machiavelli's "Prince" he produces his last argument: It is necessary to act, to move, to fight, and, if necessary, to die. Neutrals have never dominated events.

1 San Severino, "Mussolini as revealed in his Political Speeches, Nov. 1914-August 1923," pp. 5-6.