Despite these stabs of yesterday, Italy must purge herself of distrust, which is the ferment and leaven of weakness. She must make good her alleged trust of France, her professed confidence in England, her hail of the United States as her deliverer. It is difficult for me to believe that often she has not had one language on her lips and another in her heart. The time has come when she must make the words of her heart and her tongue one. The moment has arrived when she must put her cards upon the table and say: "That is my hand and I play the cards face upward." If she can be made to realize it, Italy is big with the prospect of a glorious future and her delivery will not be long delayed.
Nothing impressed me so much in Italy during the momentous last months of the war as her ideas of nationality, the ideas that found dissemination, if not birth, in the prophetic soul of Mazzini and which began to germinate nearly a century ago. "Great ideas make peoples great, and ideas are not great for the peoples unless they go beyond their boundaries. A people to be great must fulfil a great and holy mission in the world. Internal organization represents the sum of means and forces accumulated for the performance of a preordained mission without. National life is the instrument; international life the goal. The prosperity, the glory, the future of a nation are in proportion to its approximation to the assigned goal." These words were written by Mazzini several years after his ideas had made Italy great, and during the war they were on the tongue and in the pen of every constructive statesman who was satisfied to live only under liberty's banner.
For fifty years or more, but particularly since that fateful day, the 20th of September, 1870, when Italian union became a reality, she had professed the profoundest sympathy for the oppressed nations of her hereditary and actual enemy, Austria-Hungary. Since the beginning of the World War the proud spirits of these oppressed nations, now commonly spoken of as the Czecho-Slovaks, had been active in devising plans that would liberate them and their peoples from the jaws of the monster. The whole civilized world who love liberty were in sympathy with them. No one denies that they accomplished results that were almost miraculous. Those who had real knowledge of what was going on in the world knew that in a measure we owed to them the secrets of Germany's diabolic machinations in our own country when we were on terms of amity with the Central Powers. It was not denied that Italy's success on the Piave in June, 1918, was in some measure at least due to the information that the Czecho-Slovaks were able to give the Italians.
In April, 1918, there was a congress of Czecho-Slovaks in Rome, which was warmly received by the Italian people and by some representatives of the Italian Government. This congress formulated the principles upon which it was waging war against Austria-Hungary. It set forth in language that even a child could understand its ideas of nationality. It put before the democratic nations of the world the ideas that they represented and proposed to represent. Their claims received the approbation of the prime minister of Italy, but for some inexplicable reason the stamp of approval of Italy's minister of foreign affairs, the only one who was in a position to represent the government authoritatively, was withheld from them. It was necessary, apparently, to bring the country to the brink of dissolution of its government by a public agitation of the question initiated by the Corriere della Sera before Sonnino's official approval of their aims could be secured. Despite the fact that France, England, the United States, Japan had in turn accorded to the Czecho-Slovaks the right of nationality, and despite the fact that it was well known that that organization called into being by Italy's noble, loyal sons known as the Fascio was warmly and industriously championing the cause of these oppressed people, yet the governmental hand had to be forced before she would put it on the table and play her cards face upward. When the Corriere della Sera was able to throw off the manacles of the censorship and bring the subject of discussion into the public arena, the influential journals that represent the standpatters in the government, such as the Giornale d'Italia, the Epoca, and even the Messaggero, denied that there was any dissension or shadow of dissension between the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs, and they continued to deny it in the most determined and deliberate way up until the very last moment. Sonnino's champions maintained that the position he took was necessary that Austria-Hungary's intrigues be rooted up and killed. The fear was expressed that the new policy favorable to the Jugoslavs might circumvent the stipulations of the Treaty of London, which were favorable to Italy, and sacrifice them to the exaggerated claims of the Jugoslav ideas of nationality.
The Corriere della Sera pointed out the futility of too great adherence to the Treaty of London and asked: "Can we expect Wilson to feel bound by the I. O. U. given to us in London if he did not sign it?" It insisted that the maintenance of the London treaty in full force was incompatible with a policy favorable to Czecho-Slav aspirations. This embittered those holding the opposite view. The Tempo rejoined: "An attempt is made to make Italians believe that there is a conflict between Rome and Washington due to our 'imperialistic ambitions,' which are looked upon with distrust by Washington. It is for this reason, they tell us, that the United States is loath to give us the help of their forces on our front. The nation rebels against this and will not allow anybody to put a noose around her neck and blackmail her by any such dilemma: either we must have a change of policy, with consequent revision of the London stipulations, or abandonment on the part of the Allies. We are not defending Sonnino, but what is much nearer our heart—the interests of Italy. We defend the Pact of London as the only guarantee of our interests. You can't tell us that an effort is not being made to diminish those stipulations: It is not true...." (Here the censor intervened.) "We entertain no prejudice against the Czecho-Slavs provided they do not insist stubbornly on crossing our path, and prove that they can do what is necessary in their own interests instead of expecting sacrifices from us. Let them meet us halfway by implicitly recognizing the integrity of the rights guaranteed to us by the Treaty of London, which are the reasons for our having entered into this war."
In the same paper, August 20, 1918, appeared this editorial statement:
"Either this war will make us secure in the Adriatic or it will be a complete failure as far as we are concerned. In politics there are no friends. There are interests only. The friends of to-day may be the enemies of to-morrow. It doesn't profit us to take away the control of the Adriatic from Austria to give it to those who up to yesterday have been the bitter enemies of our race and who now, because it is convenient to them, pose as our friends. We are not surprised that this is of no concern to Mr. Steed (the English pro-Jugoslav journalist, for many years correspondent of the London Times in Italy and now its editor). Were we English instead of Italian we also would not mind to see the Czecho-Slavs inherit the vantage position of the Adriatic held to-day by the Central Empires. This may be sufficient for those who only see in this war an Anglo-German conflict, but it is not sufficient for those who look only at Italian interests. It is easily conceivable that others may be interested in perpetuating our weakness in the Adriatic which will prevent our further development, but it is absurd that Italians should blindly follow such foreigners. Ask our navy officers, defenders of Italy, what they think of those who advise us to give up our just claims to the Dalmatian coast and islands, which is not only a pistol aimed at Italy's head, but a series of machine guns. The Treaty of London covers also our rights on the Ægean islands, eastern Mediterranean, and colonies. If we establish the precedent that this treaty can be abrogated or diminished, we do not know where this may lead us—all our interests protected by it may be questioned sooner or later. This fact has surely not been grasped by those who intoxicate themselves with demagogic magniloquence, who believe that after the war men will go to play the bagpipe in the shade of ilex-trees, and that the kingdom of Saturn will be restored. It can be understood only by men still in possession of their full mental powers, who know that this is a conflict of political and economic interests, after which men will continue to forge weapons for the great competitions in the vast world, resuming the struggle for the control of colonial markets and supremacy of the seas. Only such men understand the necessity of defending unguibus et rostris, even against our allies, the juridical ground we have conquered. The London treaty must not be discussed, as it is the only justification for our war, conceived as a war, for national development and balance of power among the nations which will constitute the new world which will be born out of this conflict. Whosoever thinks differently is a traitor to his country."
This is what may properly be called "tall talk." After this climax of virulence, a tendency developed in the press tending to mitigate the effect of such rancor. An attempt was made to show that the variance of opinions was more formal than substantial, and that it was for Parliament to decide. Even the Idea Nazionale expressed this opinion, though for years it conducted a campaign to undermine the authority and prestige of parliamentary institutions in Italy.
The Tempo, however, did not back down, but asked: "Is it true or not that during the meeting of the oppressed Czecho-Slavs in Rome no territorial agreement could be arrived at because the Czecho-Slav representatives did not want to accept the Adriatic limitations involved by the Treaty of London?" It also sarcastically remarked that the Treaty of London is now being called the "Pact of London," that somebody has already started to call it a "memorandum," and that it is to be expected that soon it will be called a "laundry list." And it continued: "Is it true or not that our requests, contained in that document, are an indispensable minimum to insure our safety in the Adriatic such as will justify the enormous sacrifices we have made in this war? Are we not right, then, to distrust this policy favorable to the Czecho-Slavs which tends to postpone the solution of geographic points without first recognizing the Italian claims as being fundamental? Let the Czecho-Slavs first recognize our right to safety and let them dispel our legitimate diffidence. All this discussion seems to have been the pleasant outcome of those who entertain the jolly notion that we are waging a poetic war instead of trying to solve in our favor vital military and political problems, and that we should be perfectly unconcerned about knowing whether on the other shore of the Adriatic there will be either Germans or Slavs, Republicans, Catholics, Orthodox, Conservatives, Democrats, musicians, or poets."
Gradually the thunder-clouds began to disperse and a conciliatory element was introduced into the discussion. "Rastignac," who drives an authoritative quill, and who is one of the leading and much-listened-to journalists and lawyers of Italy, wrote in the Tribuna, the newspaper identified with Giolitti: