Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/19

 Politically (since the Chairman gives me so few minutes and is going to hold me down mercilessly to my half-hour limit) I shall say that the outstanding feature in the relations of Italy to her neighbors and friends, is that Italy has not rattled the sword except in word. That, she has done quite often. Mussolini has to keep quiet, to a certain extent prevent from taking the upper hand a large number of people who so far, thank heaven, have been fed with nothing but words; and if he talks about the coming of a Roman Empire or if some of the people under him talk of a Napoleonic Year, you need not get scared; it is with satisfaction that we see that the Napoleonic Year was to have been the year 1926, now defunct. It will do the world a lot of good to reflect upon the continuous necessity of speeches for home consumption for a people inordinately fond of flamboyant talk, lately mistreated, and now severely tried by a stern discipline and made to look toward a distant and brighter future for the salvation of Italy from her plight and the solution of her pressing international problems.

Look at the facts. When did you hear most of the trouble in the Adriatic? During the days when the "fine Italian hand" had almost brought Italy to war with Jugoslavia, or now, when by the cutting of the Gordian knot, Fiume being given to Italy and Dalmatia to Jugoslavia, it was possible to introduce peace into that troubled sea? Is it not a fact that Mussolini has looked in a practical, matter-of-fact way at the thorny matter of relations between France and Italy, merely saying, "We suffer from overpopulation; we must send our sons somewhere. The one country which can take these people is France. To France, we shall send them, and therefore you newspaper editors and writers please don't keep up with this exhausting yet useless war of pin-pricks that has been going on ever since France took over Tunis in 1881."

I call that practical Machiavellism, looking at the realities, not lulling yourself to sleep by means of words which cannot describe or lead to any reality of events; the same practical, businesslike way in which the relations of Italy with the United States have been carried on under Mussolini.

There were people who at the time of the passing of the latest American immigration law were expecting Italy officially to resent the situation; I regret I am not at liberty to say more. Word came directly from the head of the government—"No such nonsense can be contemplated. If other people do not like the new American law, we shall say nothing and take our punishment in peace."

And immediately it was possible to settle the one outstanding matter with a very interesting and very generous reduction on the part of America of the interallied—or, if you don't want to call yourselves the former allies of Italy, the interassociated debt of Italy to the United States, thus making it possible for us to start paying at once, and bringing to a close in a satisfactory way one of the knottiest problems of post-bellum days.