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Absolutely nothing is published in the Italian papers or reviews concerning military or naval operations until the result of a given movement is known. Meanwhile, what are Italians reading and what is the intellectual food given them to sustain the wonderful sentimental enthusiasm with which they welcomed the war?

Previous to Italy's declaration of war against Austria-Hungary, on May 24, the press in general dealt with the negotiations between the two Governments from the point of view of domestic politics, which gave foreigners the impression that Italy was only waiting to receive her price to remain neutral until the end of the war. Austrian intrigue and dilatoriness were alike criticized. Little was said about Germany in regard to Italy, although her military methods in Belgium and northern France, her raids on the defenseless coast towns of England, and her submarine activities in the War Zone were severely condemned. This censure, however, was entirely academic and objective. The reviews republished a quantity of English, French, Russian, and even American articles as to the causes of the war, and the illustrations which accompanied them could hardly be considered proTeutonic. Only the comic press-and this in spite of its augmenting circulation which should have indicated to observers the sentiment that was elsewhere suppressed-gave full vent to popular

emotion.

The moment war was declared there was a complete change. To be sure the "Green Book" was published in numerous 20-cent editions and sold by the hundreds of thousands and the closing speeches of Italian and Austrian diplomats were given in full with comments, yet little time was wasted with explanations of the failure of the ItaloAustrian negotiations and the meaning of the Seventh Article of the Triple Alliance. The daily press, the weekly periodicals, and the monthly reviews suddenly changed their objective expositions

of Germany's conduct in regard to others and began to expound, explain, and elucidate, in an intimate subjective manner, how that conduct affected Italy.

Austria was almost ignored. The antiGerman riots at Milan and other cities, where thousands of dollars worth of property was systematically destroyed before the authorities could interfere, showed the volcano that had been lying dormant beneath the surface. Articles which must have been prepared months before suddenly appeared in the press and reviews showing how Germany had come to control the banks and steamship lines of the Peninsula and how German capital, under the guise of promoting Italian enterprises, had laid hold of vast industries whose profits went to fill the pockets of the Germans; and, worst of all, how the savings of Italian immigrants in America had gone, through the Germanconducted banks, to enrich the same persons without any contingent benefit to Italians.

Indeed, it almost seemed as though the press and reviews alike had been organized as completely as had the army and navy for the prosecution of the war with the sole object in view of preventing Germany ever again from using the Peninsula as a territory for exploitation. The propaganda for Italia Irredenta suddenly sank into insignificance beside the determination to throw off, once and for all, the German commercial, industrial, and financial yoke, revealing the abiding faith of the Italian people that their army would attend to the former as completely as desirable and without the advice and criticism of civilians. Faith in their King and their army and in their ultimate success is not a matter for argument among Italians.

Meanwhile, the staffs of all publications, from editors to compositors, have felt the weight of conscription-sacrifices they enthusiastically make for the common cause. Their pages may be fewer and some favorite contributors may be heard of no more, but they are sure that the public will bear with them.

On the other hand, a new periodical has sprung into existence called La Guerra d'Italian nel 1915-The Italian War. of 1915-the first number of which has just come to hand. Its introduction accompanied with several well-made portraits constructs the basis of Italy's actionhow Italy having been tricked through a fancied fear of France and the apparent unresponsiveness of England into entering the Triple Alliance in 1882, had been forced to remain there, possibly protected thereby from actual Austrian aggression, but ever a prey to German exploitation. Then comes an analysis of the Italo-Austrian negotiations, conducted directly and through Prince von Bülow, the Special German Ambassador in Rome, showing why these negotiations could not possibly have succeeded. Like the Government itself the new periodical is in no haste to describe military operations.

The first review to devote almost its entire space to the war was La Vita Internazionale of Milan. The opening article is by the well-known publicist E. T. Moneta. He begins:

Without boast but with self-esteem secure, Italy has taken her place in the combat among the nations which for ten months have been fighting for the liberty of the people and the cause of civilization. The enthusiasm with which this announcement has been received in France, Russia, and England, and especially in martyred Belgium, is enormous. For they have all understood what decisive effect our army would produce on the destiny of the Great War.

The fighters for liberty and civilization who have always hoped for an ultimate victory, today feel the certainty of that hope, and that the duration of the war with the loss of millions of other lives will be shortened. For this reason, from those governments and people, from their parliaments and from their press, from workingmen's societies and from institutions of learning there have come to our country

warm words of admiration and of social unity. All these things form an added inspiration for us to do our best to hasten the end of this slaughter of men.

Signor Moneta goes on to compliment the diplomacy of Premier Salandra for resigning from office and thus giving the people the opportunity to show through

their demonstrations that they desired war and to silence once and forever the propaganda of Giolitti who had declaimed in vain that the people did not want war, as they could secure by negotiations unredeemed Italy-as though that were all.

It

Another article is by D. Giuseppe Antonini and is entitled "The German Madness." Its subject, full of quotations from Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi, is not new to Americans. For Italians it may come as a revelation. It demonstrates the formative influences which have found expression in what is called "Prussian Militarism," as an attitude of mind which believes in the supremacy of force over all things— over goodness, virtue, kindness, and all else that make life worth living. declares that Prussian Militarism has so possessed all Germans that not only their moral but their logical point of view has become distorted, so that they behold nought but virtue in applying science to bring about Mediaeval results. The conflict, he declares, is between absolutism which pretends to be sufficient unto itself and democracy which receives its power from the people, and that the latter must win unless centuries of the power, by revolutions without number, for the benefit of the masses are to end in failure.

Paolo Baccari deals with "The Supreme Duty." He says that the intervention of Italy was not merely to complete Unification by uniting all Italians. of the Peninsula and the Adriatic littoral under one flag and government, but to register herself as standing for justice, law, and humanity against organized barbarity, injustice, illegality, and inhumanity, which, if victorious, would not rest until it had conquered the world. He calls the peace propaganda at this time a "vile lie of conventionality" because its success could only mean the victory of those forces which all honest nationalities and persons condemn.

As to the other serious reviews, such as the Nuova Antologia and the Rivista d'Italia, their June numbers, aside from expounding Italy's relations to Germany, have not gone beyond academic

discussion of the causes of the war and the economic phases as revealed by the budgets of France, England, and Russia, and the sacrifices that Italy must endure in order to make her a worthy ally of these countries, all putting forth their greatest efforts in the battle for the world's salvation.

There are in Italy a large number of popular, well illustrated, monthly magazines, which, taking it for granted that their readers have already been thoroughly instructed as to the diplomatic phases of the war, have started a campaign of education in regard to the war itself. There are articles contrasting the armies of the days of Garibaldi and the great King Victor Emmanuel with those of the present. There are also articles, historical and descriptive, sociological and economic, on Trieste, Trent, and other cities of Unredeemed Italy, and historical monographs showing the bonds that formerly bound Italy to England

and to France which have now been cemented anew, free from all Teutonic influence.

Among the magazines of this class are the Secolo XX, the Noi e il Mondo, and La Lettura; all, whenever the occasion offers, deal generously and enthusiastically with Italy's allies.

In all this published matter one thing has been revealed since Italy entered the war. Previously all the Italian writers placed in the same category of contempt the alleged attempts that were being made to influence Italy by the Central Empires as well as by the Entente Powers and unblushingly declared that if Italy ever entered the war it would not be for the benefit of one party or the other but for the benefit of herself alone. Now they frankly confess that the Entente Powers made no attempt to influence Italy, knowing all the time that when she was ready she would line up on their side.

Sweden and the Lusitania

By SWEDISH ARTISTS AND PROFESSORS

Stockholm, May 10, 1915.

English people know that the Swedish nation is practically unanimous in supporting the Government in its policy of strict neutrality. Yet a large section of the people, whether the majority or not we cannot say, is anything but neutral in their feelings at the methods of warfare which have been adopted in this terrible war, and have culminated in the sinking of the Lusitania.

The misconception that war suspends all laws of humanity must prove fatal to the future of civilization and disastrous for that human solidarity that is of such vital interest to the smaller nations especially.

(Signed)

SVANTE ARRHENIUS, Professor.

BARON ADELSWARD.

VICTOR ALMQUIST, Chief Director

for State Prisons.

W. LECS, Professor.
KNUT KJELLBERG, Professor.
JULES AKERMAN, Professor.
TORGNY SEGERSTEDT, Professor.
ISRAEL HOLMGREN, Professor.
G. KOBB, Professor.
OTTOR ROSENBERG, Professor.
GUNNAR ANDERSSON, Professor.
GERHARD DE GEER, Professor.
OLOF KINBERG, M.D.
ALFRED PETREN, M.D.

JOHN TJERNELD, barrister.

TOR HEDBERG, author.

HJALMAR SODERBERG, author.
G. STJERNSTEDT, barrister.
IVAN HEDQUIST, actor at Royal
Theatre.

IVAN BRATT, M.D.

T. FOGELQUIST, Rector.
MRS. EMILIA BROOME.
MISS SIGNE HEBBA.
CHRISTIAN ERIKSEN, sculptor.
LUDVIG MOBERG, M.D.
KARL NORDSTROM, artist.
NILS KREUGER, artist.
ARNOLD JOSEFSON, M.S.
CARL ELDH, sculptor.

MISS ALMA SUNDQUIST, M.D.

A Threatened Despotism of Spirit

By Gertrude Atherton

The subjoined article, appearing as a letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, was provoked by the appearance on hundreds of billboards in New York of flaring appeals to American women that they use their influence to prevent the further exportation of arms and munitions to the enemies of Germany.

New York, July 5, 1915. To the Editor of The New York Times:

As I do not belong to any of the suffrage or other woman's organizations in New York, may I say in your columns that for the honor of my sex, if for no other reason, I hope the Mayor will consent to the obliteration of those disingenuous posters addressing “American citizens," and so cunningly worded and signed as to produce an impression of representing the women of the United States? If the people that are spending their thousands so freely had come out frankly and stated that they were proGerman, and that the success of their propaganda would mean defeat for the Allies, short of ammunition, and victory for a nation that has nine-tenths of all the ammunition in Europe, then at least we should have the sheep separated from the goats; we could put it down to masculine influence over the weaker female vessel, which at least was trying to be honest, and let it go at that.

But I hold that such a poster, flaring from every billboard, is a defamation of patriotic American women, and a distinct blow to the cause of suffrage. It will not only antagonize men, who alone have the power to grant the franchise in those States still obdurate, but disgust thousands of women not yet won over to the cause, and far too intelligent not to know the precise meaning behind those lying and hypocritical words. For if that poster were really representative of American women it would mean that American women were traitors to their country, just as all proGerman American men, whatever their descent, are traitors, whether they realize it or not. What was the cause of

Anti

the roar of indignation that went up all over the United States on Aug. 1? Germanism? Not a bit of it. If Russia had made the declaration of war the roar would have been as immediate and as loud. It was the spontaneous protest of the spirit of democracy against an arrogant autocracy that dared to plunge Europe into war and the world into panic, without the consent of the people; the manifest of a mediaeval power by an ambitious and unscrupulous group over millions of industrious, peace-loving men who had nothing to gain and all to lose.

It has been pointed out over and over again how diametrically opposed are the German and American ideals; therefore, it seems incredible that every American who champions the cause of a powerful and sublimely egotistic nation does not realize that what he hopes to see is not only the victory of the German arms in Europe, but the eventual destruction of democracy, the annihilation of the spirit of America as epitomized in the Declaration of Independence. I have not the least apprehension of immediate war with Germany, any more than of physical defeat at her hands did she, with the rest of Europe prostrate, make a raid on our shores; but it seems hardly open to question that with Europe Prussianized, we, the one heterogeneous race, and always ready to absorb and imbibe from the parent countries, should lose, in the course of half a century, our tremendous individual hustle, and gratefully permit a benevolent (and cast iron) despotism (not unnecessarily of our own make) to do our thinking, perhaps to select our jobs and apportion our daily tasks.

For that is what it almost amounts to now in Germany, and it is for this reason, no less than to escape military service, that so many millions of Germans have immigrated to this country. Unlike the vast majority of the bourgeois and lower classes, a kindly but stupid people, they were born with an alertness of mind and an energy of character which gave them the impetus to transfer themselves to a land where life might be harder but where soul and body could attain to a complete independence. Their present attitude is, however unconsciously, hypocritical, but it is not altogether as traitorous as that of the American born, who has not the excuse of that peculiar form of sentimentality which has fermented in Germans at home and abroad during this period of their Fatherland's peril. It is this curious and wholly German brand of sentimentality which is the cohering force in the various and extraordinarily clever devices by which modern Germany has been solidified. It is a sentimentality capable of rising to real exaltation that no other nation is capable of, and that alone should make the American pro-German pause and meditate upon a future United States where native individualism was less and less reluctantly heading for the iron jaws of the Prussianized American machine; and, furthermore, upon the weird spectacle of the real gladiatorial contest-German sentimentality wrestling in a death grapple with American downright unpicturesque common sense.

During the seven years that I lived in Munich I learned to like Germany better than any state in Europe. I liked and admired the German people; I never suffered from an act of rudeness, and I never was cheated out of a penny. I was not even taxed until the year before I left, because I made no money out of the country and turned in a considerable amount in the course of a year. When my maid went to the Rathaus to pay my taxes, (moderate enough,) the official apologized, saying that he had disliked to send me a bill, but the increased cost of the army compelled the country to raise money in

every way possible. This was in 1908. The only disagreeable German I met during all those years was my landlord, and as we always dodged each other in the house or turned an abrupt corner to avoid encounter on the street, we steered clear of friction. And he was the only landlord I had.

I left Munich with the greatest regret, and up to the moment of the declaration of war I continued to like Germany better than any country in the world except my own.

The reason I left was significant. I spent, as a rule, seven or eight months in Munich, then a similar period in the United States, unless I traveled. I always returned to my apartment with such joy that if I arrived at night I did not go to bed lest I forget in sleep how overjoyed I was to get back to that stately and picturesque city, so prodigal with every form of artistic and aesthetic gratification. But that was just the trouble. For as long a time after my return as it took to write the book I had in mind I worked with the stored American energy I had within me; then for months and in spite of good resolutions and some self-anathema I did nothing. What was the use? The beautiful German city so full of artistic delight was made to live in, not to work in. The entire absence of poverty in that city of half a million inhabitants alone gave it an air of illusion, gave one the sense of being the guest of a hospitable monarch who only asked to provide a banquet for all that could appreciate. I look back upon Munich as the romance of my life, the only place on this globe that came near to satisfying every want of my nature. And that is the reason why, in a sort of panic, I abruptly pulled up stakes and left it for good and all. It is not in the true American idea to be too content; it means running to seed, a weakening of the will and the vital force. If I remained too long in that lovely land-so admirably governed that I could not have lost myself, or my cat, had I possessed one-I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream

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