Page:Gaetano Salvemini and Bruno Roselli - Italy under Fascism (1927).djvu/31

 It was a famous American humorist who said that the news of his death had been grossly exaggerated. The treatment of the German minorities in the Tyrol (and if they are there, other men and other countries ought to shoulder the blame as much as Italy, and more than myself) is. better than that of many other minorities whose grievances are seldom aired by people who are only trying to find fault with what Italy is doing. There are 3,000,000 Germans in Czechoslovakia out of a total of 9,000,000 inhabitants, but precious few crocodile tears are being shed over those. The minorities of Roumania only came up at the time of the visit of a well-known crowned head who graced this country with her presence.

But ever since a small group of Germans was annexed by Italy by a peace in which Italy was not treated with generosity in any quarter except in the northern quarter, in which her geographical frontiers were reestablished, ever since those few hundred thousand Germans came to be a part of a United Italy of 42,000,000 inhabitants, people have taken serious exception to such things as the supposed and not real denial of the right to have Christmas trees at Christmas time, which later turned out to be untrue.

I am not here to defend what the Treaty of Versailles or any of the other treaties which formed the foundation of the present-day patched-up peace did do. I am only asking you in fairness why it is that when Italy, with tremendous need for expansion, was denied the inheritance of German colonies, was denied her share in the partition of Turkey (which was not denied to her Allies), was held before the whole world as land-grabbing and imperialistic in the Adriatic, while other people did practically everything they wanted to their hearts' content—why is it that when Italy was treated with generosity in one and only one quarter we shouldn't find a bigger and more kindly spirit on the part of people who ought to consider the entire treatment of minorities as an undetachable and undistinguishable whole?

The last question which is addressed to Professor Salvemini is this: Professor Salvemini says that the Fascists are a minority, that a majority of Italians are anti-Fascist. How does he anticipate, if his version is true, that the majority will ever become the dominant party in Italy

The Italian people have a wonderful capacity for passive resistance. They resist passively for years and years, and one fine day they awake when you don't believe they are capable of awakening. I cannot foresee when they will be capable of taking in their own hands their own future. But I am quite sure that they will one day take in their own hands their own future, and it is our work to stand by and give them the example of not giving up.