Page:Giuseppe Bianchini - The Work of the Fascist Government and the Economic Reconstruction of Italy - tr. Luigi Villari.pdf/42

 competition is making itself felt and disturbs the interests of other countries; the feeling that also from the point of view of international politics Italy is no longer a negligeable quantity, but carries adequate weight, comes as an unpleasant surprise to many non-benevolent rivals.

Fortunately journalism and politics are not everything. Even in foreign countries there are large masses of people representing production and work, and in these circles the outlook is more objective. They know that Italy has conducted a great war with honour and at the cost of terrible sacrifices; that she had been serionsly by stricken by the tide of madness coming from Russia, so much so that, after Hungary, she was regarded at a certain moment as the country most deeply infected with Bolshevik poison; that the Italian people found in itself the strength to react, vigorously and that its recovery was rapid and complete, and the results of this recovery are appreciated not on account of the good or evil which is said of them, but on what people, even abroad, really see and feel.

Manufacturers, merchants and bankers have posi-