During the progress of the War, which was long and bitter, Italy passed through some terrible hours. Her privations during the War, and immediately after, surpassed all expectations. Italy found herself face to face with an enemy who enjoyed a superior geographical situation, a numerical superiority, as well as a superiority in artillery. After the downfall of Russia she had to support a terrible campaign. Even in 1917, after the military disaster, when allied troops came to Italy, she sent abroad more men than there came allied troops to her aid. According to some statistics which I had compiled, and which I communicated to the Allies, Italy was shown, in relation to her demographic structure, to have more men in the front line than any other country. The economic sufferings were, and are, greater than those endured by others. France is only in part a Mediterranean country, while Italy is entirely so. During the War the action of the submarines rendered the victualling of Italy a very difficult matter. Many provinces, for months on end, had to content themselves with the most wretched kind of food. Taking population and wealth into proportion, if the United States had made the effort of Italy they would have had to arm sixteen millions of men, to have lost a million and a half to two million soldiers, and to have spent at least four hundred milliards. In order to work up popular enthusiasm (and it was perhaps necessary), the importance of the country's Adriatic claims was exaggerated. Thus many Italians believe even to-day in good faith that the War may be considered as lost if some of these aspirations have not been realized or will not be realized.
But, after the War, Italy's situation suddenly changed. The War had aroused in the minds of all Europeans a certain sentiment of violence, a longing for expansion and conquest. The proclamations of the Entente, the declarations of Wilson's principles, or points, became so contorted that no trace of them could be found in the treaties, save for that ironic covenant of the League of Nations, which is always repeated on the front page, as Dante said of the rule of St. Benedict, at the expense of the paper.
For Italy a very curious situation came about. France had but one enemy: Germany. She united all her forces against this enemy in a coherent and single action which culminated in the Treaty of Versailles. France had but one idea: to make the Entente abandon the principles it had proclaimed, and try to suffocate Germany, dismember her, humiliate her by means of a military occupation, by controlling her transports, confiscating all her available wealth, by raising to the dignity of elevated and highly civilized States inferior populations without national dignity.
Austria-Hungary was composed of eleven peoples. It was split up into a series of States. Austria and Hungary were reduced to small territories and shut up in narrow confines. All the other countries were given to Rumania, to Serbia, or more exactly to the S.H.S. State, to Poland, or else were formed into new States, such as Czeko-Slovakia. These countries were considered by the Entente as allies, and, to further good relations, the most important of the Entente nations protected their aspirations even against the wishes of Italy. The Italians had found themselves in their difficult theatre of war against Galatians, Bosnians, Croats, Transylvanians, etc. But by the simple fact of their having changed names, and having called themselves Poles, Jugo-Slavs, Rumanians, they became friends. In order to favour some of these new friends, it has happened that not only have Italy's sentiments been offended, but even justice itself. Montenegro was always mentioned in the declarations of the Entente. On January 10, 1917, Briand, speaking in the name of all the Allies, united at that time pour la défense et la liberté des peuples, put forward as a fundamental programme the restoration of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro: Montenegro was in this on an equality with Belgium. Just a year afterwards, January 8, 1918, Wilson, when formulating his fourteen points, had included in the eleventh proposition the duty of evacuating the territories of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, and restoring them. The exact reason for which it was established that Montenegro should be absorbed (even without plebiscite) by the S.H.S. State, thus offending also Italy's sentiments, will remain one of the most melancholy pages of the New Holy Alliance that the Entente has become, along with that poor prestigeless organism, the League of Nations. But let us hope this latter will find a means of renovating itself.
While France was ruining the German people's sources of life, the peoples who had fought most ferociously against Italy became, through the War, friendly nations, and every aspiration of Italy appeared directed to lessen the prestige of the new friends and allies.
The territories annexed to Italy have a small economic value.
For more than thirty years Italy had sold a large part of her richest agricultural produce to Germany and had imported a considerable share of her raw materials from Russia. Since the War she has found herself in a state of regular isolation. A large part of the Italian Press, which repeats at haphazard the commonest themes of the French Press instead of wishing for a more intense revival of commercial relations with Germany, frightens the ignorant public with stories of German penetration; and the very plutocracy in France and Italy—though not to the same extent in Italy—abandons itself to the identical error. So to-day we find spread throughout the peninsula a sense of lively discontent which is conducive to a wider acceptance of the exaggerations of the Socialists and the Fascists. But the phenomenon is a transitory one.
Italy had no feeling of rancour against the German people. She entered the War against German Imperialism, and cannot now follow any imperialistic policy. Indeed, in the face of the imperialistic competitions which have followed the War, Italy finds herself in a state of profound psychological uneasiness.
France worries herself about one people only, since as a matter of fact she has only one warlike race at her frontiers: Germany. Italy's frontiers touch France, the German peoples, the Slav races. It is, therefore, her interest to approve a democratic policy which allows no one of the group of combatants to take up a position of superiority. The true Italian nationalist policy consists in being against all excessive nationalisms, and nothing is more harmful to Italy's policy than the abandonment of those democratic principles in the name of which she arose and by which she lives. If the policy of justice is a moral duty for the other nations, for Italy it is a necessity of existence. The Italian people has a clear vision of these facts, notwithstanding a certain section of her Press and notwithstanding the exaggerations of certain excited parties arisen from the ashes of the War. And therefore her uneasiness is great. While other countries have an economic crisis, Italy experiences, in addition, a mental crisis, but one with which she will be able to cope.
France, however, is in a much more difficult situation, and her policy is still a result of her anxieties. All the violences against Germany were, until the day before yesterday, an effect of hatred; to-day they derive from dread. Moral ideas have for nations a still greater value than wealth. France had until the other day the prestige of her democratic institutions. All of us who detested the Hohenzollern dynasty and the insolent fatuity of William II loved France, heir of the bourgeois revolution and champion of democracy. So, when the War came, all the democracies felt a lively pang: the crushing of France meant the crushing of democracy and liberty. All the old bonds are broken, all the organization which Germany had abroad is smashed up, and France has been saved, not by arms alone, but by the potent life of free peoples.