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diately after the attack upon him, he answered the tumult of the crowd denouncing those suspected of being concerned in it by shouting: 'We shall settle accounts with the foreigner. If that is the word you want, I have pronounced it.' And this defiance was greeted with thunders of applause.

Mussolini's arrival at Tripoli was a spectacular event. He disembarked amid salvos of artillery. He was received with the massed music of military bands, while the troops presented arms and a huge crowd cheered wildly. Speeches, military reviews, Fascist parades, banquets, visits to historical ruins and to oasis settlements, followed in quick succession. The principal native chiefs appeared in turn, bringing their presents and expressing, in suspiciously fluent Italian, their devotion to Italy and their admiration for her representative. Il Duce's manner was most correct. He emphasized his loyalty to the monarch. He posed as the faithful servant of King Victor Emmanuel, 'the august, majestic, and powerful sovereign' who had sent him as his representative to Africa. But if he had time to take thought amid the constant ceremonies and shouting mobs, he must have reflected that he was the real master; and if he did not say so, others said it for him.

The correspondents of the Italian journals were not deceived. They extolled Mussolini with a lyric exaltation that printer's ink is rarely called upon to reproduce. The representative of Messagero described him as slowly crossing the public square, 'his white plume shading his perfect consular profile, which so strikingly resembles the proud busts of Roman governors disinterred in this ancient soil'; and the correspondent of Piccolo portrayed him as he appeared to the attentive eyes of the natives in his simple uniform, with the blue scarf of a com

mander, in these words: 'When Mussolini reached the Palace Square, a shout of thunder rose from the spectators on the tribunes and from the great throng of Arabs and Berbers who filled all the approaches to the place. Mussolini on his champing bay steed looked perfectly the part of a Roman consul at the head of his legions. An enthusiastic American journalist shouted, "Salve, Imperator!" an Arab exclaimed, "Emir el Mansur!" (Lord of Victory), and the Italians chorused, "The man of destiny!" Mario Carli wrote in Impero: "The representative of the King of Italy seemed to rise out of the sea on his charger like some Heavensent celestial warrior. It is thus that the Berbers, the Negroes, and the Bedouins saw him enter the city on his fiery war horse with the majesty of a mighty conqueror. This was truly the natal day of Italy's colonial empire. In the eyes of the Duce one caught an inspired vision of the future, so intense that when his gaze rested on us we felt fairly dizzy at the radiance of the lofty heights we were summoned to scale.'

These descriptions are characteristic. Evidently their brilliant writers would not have adopted this style unless they were certain that it responded to the sentiment of their readers. Furthermore, upon his return to Rome, Mussolini was received with the same enthusiasm. A cheering crowd surrounded him. Was it merely a first minister of the King returning from an official tour? Was it not rather Scipio come back in triumph after his victory of Zama?

But let us listen to il Duce himself. On the Cavour, the warship that carried him to Libya, he used these proud words when addressing the Fascist provincial secretaries who had been mustered on deck in his honor: 'I declare to you that when these cannon thunder, it is really the voice of the

fatherland that speaks. It is then that we should humbly bare our heads.' When he reached Tripoli he thus proclaimed his intentions and his ambitions: 'My trip must not be considered as an ordinary act of administration. I mean it to seem what it actually is an affirmation of the power of the Italian people, a manifestation of the strength of a nation that derives its blood from Rome and that shall carry Rome's triumphant and immortal fasces to every shore of the Afric sea. It is the hand of destiny that guides us back to our ancient possessions. No man can defy destiny, and, above all, no man can resist our unshakable will. Italy has been great in the Mediterranean. She shall be so again.'

Later, in addressing the Fascisti of Tripoli, he said: 'It is not without significance that my first official tour has been across waters that once belonged to Rome and that now return to the sovereignty of Rome, and that I feel around me the vibrant vigor of the Italian people, a united nation of soldiers, colonists, and pioneers. Comrades! Turn your thought toward the Italy that is rising, the powerful Italy that, glorified by her great past, does not permit her ancient grandeur to shackle her, but rather lets it spur her onward toward the inevitable triumphs of the morrow. We need land; for we are too numerous for our present territories.'

All these speeches look toward the future and not toward the past. They come from a man who is proud of what he has achieved but has no intention of stopping halfway to his goal, who believes that a great future lies before his country and is resolved to grasp it. This explains Teveri's comment upon the burden of the Dictator's African speeches: 'Mussolini demands justice from our neighbors, as well as breathing space. Europe is shaken with mortal

agony on the one hand pauper nations, on the other nations smothered in their wealth. Peace exists only on paper; it does not reign in the land of God. Our pacifist gatherings have become ridiculous. In the midst of all this distress and decadence a single nation has conceived a clear programme

has been anointed with the unguent of a new youth. That land is Italy. Therefore the time has come for her to declare her purpose openly not boastfully, but resolutely.'

Italy undoubtedly needs room. Her misfortune is that her present colonies offer no attraction for emigrants. The Sporades already have as many people as they can support. Tripoli, even with the addition of Cyrenaica, where the ancients placed the garden of the Hesperides, will not accommodate many Europeans. It is a land gradually drying up, where the aridity is constantly increasing, which will never again be what it was in ancient times. Somaliland is also a parched and desert country which, even were Italy to acquire Jibuti, which her people are so eager to get from France, will never become habitable. Military occupations at the expense of little native kinglets, such as we hear of in the press, represent no appreciable gain in a country where the white race can live but can never labor.

No one is to blame for the fact that more favored countries divided up among themselves most of the fertile territory of the globe at a time when the Italian nation was slowly recovering her lost unity. She arrived too late to secure more than the leavings. Her delegates at Versailles, who might have secured part of the African spoils taken from Germany, were so absorbed by their dispute over Fiume that they disregarded more substantial gains. Today Africa, the last continent to be disposed of, has been parceled out to

others. Over the Mediterranean coast from Tunis to the Atlantic, where the Roman eagles once held sway, the tricolor of France now floats. England has settled herself in Egypt, and if she ever relinquishes that country it will not be to another European Power. Does Mussolini therefore propose to elbow his way into Africa by thrusting aside his neighbors, as his speeches suggest?

Most newspapers deny this. They argue that the Duce is too prudent to venture on such a hazardous undertaking. He knows that patriotic enthusiasm, no matter how ardent, cannot of itself win wars. Except for the Corfu incident, which was not a particularly risky adventure and was an impulsive act of legitimate indignation, his foreign policy has been consistently pacific. His bellicose harangues are intended to keep up the morale of his people, to induce his fellow citizens to consent to the sacrifices necessary for reorganization at home.

But is this so certain? Are not the Italians too intelligent to be treated like children? They are grateful to Mussolini for saving them from anarchy and restoring law and order, for getting the people back to work, for reestablishing their prestige abroad. They can follow that course of their own volition, without delusive flattery. The Duce himself, understanding his fellow countrymen as he does, knows that it would be extremely dangerous to harp constantly on the chord of conquest unless he were fully determined to make good his words. Some months ago a friend residing in Rome said to me: 'Italy has undergone a profound transformation. Her thoughts no longer dwell upon the great civilizations that have flourished on her soil; she no longer prides herself upon the marvels of ancient art and Renaissance beauty that she possesses; she no

longer dotes upon her galleries and her churches and her baptistries; she thinks only of force; and the man who has filled her with this new faith, who has lifted her so high, who owes his power entirely to the fact that he incarnates her will and aspirations, would never dare thus to preach the apotheosis of force if he did not intend to be true to that faith. Otherwise he would be destroyed by the very tempest he has unchained.'

Out of all these varying opinions one truth seems to me to emerge. The time has come when Fascism has ceased to be a purely Italian phenomenon. The nation feels stifled within its doctrinal as well as its territorial confines. It compares itself with what it sees beyond its borders and finds itself better. It conceives its mission to be to reform the world. Any attack, any obstacle thrown in its way, seems to it a sacrilege.

Mussolini has declared, 'We shall overthrow every barrier, no matter what.' That, of course, is still vague and indefinite. The movement is still in the stage of sonorous discourses and vast ambitions. But one definite goal is defining itself, toward which 'awakened' Italy will struggle like a single man that is, a larger territorial opportunity in the world. Its justification will be sought not only in what the Fascisti have already accomplished, but likewise in the lawgiving traditions of ancient Rome.

Does that mean that we shall soon have another war? I do not think so. Nations in a state of self-exaltation fortunately have other outlets besides war; and the world is big, even though it may have been already divided up. Nevertheless, a marked opposition has arisen between the spirit of Fascism and what we call the spirit of Locarno, which is also the spirit of Geneva. We should keep a sharp eye upon what is occurring in the Peninsula.

1

APPRENTICESHIP IN INTERNATIONALISM 1

BY PIERRE BOUSCHARAIN

An international spirit has never been more ardently advocated than it is today, but in some countries nationalism is more accentuated than ever. I need only cite Fascism in Italy, and the movement that created the republic of Angora. Furthermore, there has been

increase of nationalism within countries inhabited by different peoples or races, as anyone who has heard the League of Nations' debates upon national minorities, or who is familiar with the Flemish agitation in Belgium, is aware.

It is suggestive in this connection that nationalism in one country is generally stimulated by a lack of internationalism in other countries. That is true of Italy for two reasons: first because she has been treated as a poor relation by rival Powers, and second because she feels that her economic dependence on other countries- for such essentials as coal-has not received sufficient consideration from her neighbors. So want of political and economic internationalism in one country or group of countries often produces acute nationalism in another country.

We need a science of internationalism. We all recognize to-day that internationalism is indispensable to the future progress of humanity, but our minds are not yet ready to accept it. We are therefore in a state of dangerous confusion. It is illogical that the intense nationalism we see to-day in Europe should exist side by side with

1 From La Revue de Genève (Swiss political and literary monthly), March-April

the ardent cult of internationalism that is equally characteristic of our age. It is not normal that the United States, after drafting the Covenant of the League of Nations, should show such an aversion to participating in the affairs of Europe.

Yet the antagonism between these two sentiments is more apparent than real. Nationalism and internationalism, instead of being mutually antagonistic, complement each other; each is necessary to the other.

Unquestionably the old primitive and superficial idea of internationalism, which contemplated sweeping away all differences between nations and races and subjecting them to the same dead level of laws and institutions, bade wanton defiance to all the geological, climatic, ethnical, historical, and cultural differences that give the world its infinite variety. But the modern conception of internationalism is based on the idea of harmony in the midst of difference, just as the pieces of a mosaic contribute to the beauty of the whole. But the patterns must not be broken and discordant. Scientific internationalism assumes an equilibrium to be established, both in the individual and in society, between the instincts of race and national expansion on the one hand, and the sentiment of humanity on the other; between the national ego which demands its place in the sun, and the consciousness of universal brotherhood. This is an equilibrium difficult to attain except for certain men of exalted vision and apostolic gifts. We are not

born internationalists. To become one calls for a discipline of both the will and the mind.

Nevertheless, the task is not beyond our powers. All human progress is but one continuous illustration of the conquest of reason over impulses and passions. It is to the reason that we must appeal in the present instance. We must know ourselves before we can know others. If we analyze our own nationalism, if we study the causes and the influences that have shaped our national character, we shall more easily understand the influences and the forces that have fashioned other nations upon a different model. Nationalism in its loftier and better sense, the only sense in which it can permanently survive, does not bid us to worship and perpetuate blindly the faults of our race, but rather to strive constantly to abolish them. Blind nationalism may be hostile to internationalism, but enlightened nationalism is its intelligent coworker. Make a man an enlightened son of his country, and you make him a citizen of the universe.

Our first task, therefore, is to cultivate among the common people a clear and a broad conception of humanitythat is to say, to endow the individual citizen with a mind so furnished that he can appreciate the beauty and the necessity of universal harmony. The social passions that produce wars are simply the vices of the individual multiplied to infinity. The disorders that overthrow States are analogous to the disorders that dethrone the reason of the individual. Diplomatic lies are precisely the same in their nature as individual lies; they are collective falsehoods. We act irrationally as individuals when we are 'blinded by passion.' An identical irrationality reaches a catastrophic climax when nations are blinded by passion. How, then, may we discipline the collective mind and teach

it self-control, so that such crises may become impossible? In other words, how can we make the international mind sovereign in world affairs?

In order to create this international mind in the individual, and thereby in the nation, we have certain negative and positive tasks to perform. In a large sense, the negative task consists in rooting out the weeds of evil. Every human vice tends to corrupt the whole social organism. Consider what a contribution it would be to the bettering of relations between countries if the level of veracity of individual men and women could be raised. A lie transformed from the plane of the individual to the plane of society becomes counterfeit money, false weights, adulterated merchandise, fraudulent finance, currency inflation. These are lies that harm the State. Transformed to the international plane, they assume the guise of insincere treaties, Ems dispatches, scraps of paper. Such lies undermine confidence between Governments until their people come to distrust even the most honest agreements. Political lies and economic lies are the worst obstacles standing in the way of international collaboration. The first step toward internationalism, therefore, is to create the habit of inflexible truth-speaking between Governments and their representatives.

Next, perhaps, comes the principle of common honesty in respect to property. Society instinctively tries to root out the spirit of covetousness and rapine in the individual. That spirit, however, prevails to a disturbing extent in the relations between the Governments. It keeps the whole world constantly on its guard. In the same way that we have robbery committed by one person against another, so history records innumerable robberies committed by one nation against another-to say nothing of financial sharp practices,

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