"To-night," said my companion, "I think we shall declare war upon Germany.The decision is being made."I asked intelligently why this had not been done before.Iforget the precise explanation he gave.A young soldier in uniform, who had been dining at an adjacent table and whom I had not recognised before as a writer I had met some years previously in London, suddenly joined in our conversation, with a slightly different explanation.I had been carrying on a conversation in slightly ungainly French, but now I relapsed into English.
But indeed the matter of that declaration of war is as plain as daylight; the Italian national consciousness has not at first that direct sense of the German danger that exists in the minds of the three northern Allies.To the Italian the traditional enemy is Austria, and this war is not primarily a war for any other end than the emancipation of Italy.Moreover we have to remember that for years there has been serious commercial friction between France and Italy, and considerable mutual elbowing in North Africa.Both Frenchmen and Italians are resolute to remedy this now, but the restoration of really friendly and trustful relations is not to be done in a day.It has been an extraordinary misfortune for Great Britain that instead of boldly taking over her shipping from its private owners and using it all, regardless of their profit, in the interests of herself and her allies, her government has permitted so much of it as military and naval needs have not requisitioned to continue to ply for gain, which the government itself has shared by a tax on war profits.The Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy.They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the deliberate greed of the British state.This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the door on the German connection.
I did my best to make it clear to my two friends that so far from England exploiting Italy, I myself suffered in exactly the same way as any Italian, through the extraordinary liberties of our shipping interest."I pay as well as you do," I said; "the shippers' blockade of Great Britain is more effective than the submarines'.My food, my coal, my petrol are all restricted in the sacred name of private property.You see, capital in England has hitherto been not an exploitation but a hold-up.We are learning differently now....And anyhow, Mr.Runciman has been here and given Italy assurances...."In the train to Modane this old story recurred again.It is imperative that English readers should understand clearly how thoroughly these little matters have been /worked/ by the enemy.
Some slight civilities led to a conversation that revealed the Italian lady in the corner as an Irishwoman married to an Italian, and also brought out the latent English of a very charming elderly lady opposite to her.She had heard a speech, a wonderful speech from a railway train, by "the Lord Runciman." He had said the most beautiful things about Italy.
I did my best to echo these beautiful things.
Then the Irishwoman remarked that Mr.Runciman had not satisfied everybody.She and her husband had met a minister--I found afterwards he was one of the members of the late Giolotti government--who had been talking very loudly and scornfully of the bargain Italy was making with England.I assured her that the desire of England was simply to give Italy all that she needed.
"But," said the husband casually, "Mr.Runciman is a shipowner."I explained that he was nothing of the sort.It was true that he came of a shipowning family--and perhaps inherited a slight tendency to see things from a shipowning point of view--but in England we did not suspect a man on such a score as that.
"In Italy I think we should," said the husband of the Irish lady.
4
This incidental discussion is a necessary part of my impression of Italy at war.The two western allies and Great Britain in particular have to remember Italy's economic needs, and to prepare to rescue them from the blind exploitation of private profit.They have to remember these needs too, because, if they are left out of the picture, then it becomes impossible to understand the full measure of the risk Italy has faced in undertaking this war for an idea.With a Latin lucidity she has counted every risk, and with a Latin idealism she has taken her place by the side of those who fight for a liberal civilisation against a Byzantine imperialism.
As I came out of the brightly lit Galleria Vittorio Emanuele into the darkened Piazza del Duomo I stopped under the arcade and stood looking up at the shadowy darkness of that great pinnacled barn, that marble bride-cake, which is, I suppose, the last southward fortress of the Franco-English Gothic.
"It was here," said my host, "that we burnt the German stuff.""What German stuff?"
"Pianos and all sorts of things.From the shops.It is possible, you know, to buy things too cheaply--and to give too much for the cheapness."THE WESTERN WAR (SEPTEMBER, 1916)
