ENGLAND AND ITALY Now that the Treaty of Peace has been signed with Germany the time has come to seriously consider how we stand, after so many months of negotiations, with our great partners and friends. With France it might seem certain that we are on a firm basis of friendship and understanding, and in spite of the Irish question and the question of the right of blockade which is sure to re-arise, our relations with the United States would seem to be more cordial and frank than they have perhaps ever been before. Mr. Curtis of the Saturday Evening Post and the Public Ledger of Philadelphia — it would be hard to find a better judge assures us that this is so. I have traveled,' he says, 'quite a good deal from the Atlantic to the Pacific and I have come into contact with all sorts and conditions of people and I am quite sure that the feeling to-day among all classes is that the English and Americans are one. . . . Our relations, then, with France and America being so happy, can we say the same of our relations with Italy? Unfortunately we cannot, and it is absolutely necessary that we should understand why. - There is no other nation in Europe which has in the past won the good will and held the affection of the English people as Italy has done, and it would be equally true to say that the Italian people have fully reciprocated our friendship and sympathy. We have had, indeed, very valuable proof of this in the past. The Italians were the one people who stood by us morally in the South African War, and their faith in us right up to the armistice was such that they utterly refused to believe the first news of the battle of Jutland, and no troops were welcomed as ours were upon the Italian front. Individually the Italian and Englishman have always been sympathetic and able to 'get on' in a way that is certainly not true of the English and any other people. If something - though indeed not all of this understanding and friendship seems for the moment to have passed under a cloud or been lost, it is essential that if possible we should recover it. But if we are to be successful we must first understand what has happened. That something has befallen us, that a serious misunderstanding and loss of sympathy have appeared, there is, unfortunately, no lack of evidence to prove. Almost any Italian newspaper shows the signs of it any and every day, and a week's sojourn in Italy is enough to convince the most unwilling that this is by no means mere 'politics' or 'journalism.' It is far more than that. It is much too human, too widespread, and too sincere. On the other hand, in England it seems increasingly dfficult to find anyone professing the least interest in Italian affairs. The newspapers contain very little information about Italy, though more than enough concerning the Italian claims as put forward in the Paris Conference. And the debate in England kept up by a few extremists on both sides has had no other result at all and could have no other result than to make Italy appear to be intent on filling the place from which Austria has just been thrown. Anything more false and unfortunate than this, the result of a mistaken method on the part of the Italian protagonists, could not have happened. It was because we most clearly foresaw what was bound to happen, and why, that the Anglo-Italian Review has refused to have anything to do with so foolish a policy. With the advent of a new government it is to be hoped that new methods will be followed in this country. But if this unhappy and indeed tragic state of affairs, wholly artificial as it is and rooted in nothing but misunderstanding, is to be remedied, we must begin by realizing what that misunderstanding is. It is dangerous, of course, to analyse so obscure a thing, but it is worth while risking the danger, for it is certain that without a clear apprehension of what has, half unconsciously, befallen us both, we shall never be able to return to the old confi dence and friendship. Now first with regard to Italy. We shall not be far wrong if we begin by saying that when Italy entered the war she felt that England was her best friend and that she looked to England for a really strenuous support both military in the war and politically in the Conference which must follow it. More than this: she had the right to expect and she did expect of England a fuller appreciation of her efforts and a keener sympathy for her sufferings and misfortunes than let us be honest about it-in fact she ever received. Italy freely forgave us for leaving her alone for two years to face a much superior enemy force because she saw we were hard pressed, and her generosity of heart was and is and always has been unbounded. She thought we understood. We did not: and when we rushed to her assistance in 1917 the expression of 'sympathy' in this country was far too much like an impatient sneer. We had failed to realize or had forgotten the awful odds against her; under-gunned and undermunitioned as her armies were, and outnumbered too. It was ungenerous of us and, more, it was unjust. It was and is hard to forgive. However, this was not fundamental and at any rate did not fundamentally affect public sentiment in Italy toward this country until it was recalled and emphasized by our hopelessly unimaginative way of looking at Italy's claims at the Peace Conference. Italy appeared at that Conference believing with her whole heart, and, as history will show, rightly believing, that she had deserved nobly of the Allies. Remember, she was the youngest of us. This was her first war of European dimensions, her first Conference with the whole world. I do not say her affairs were brilliantly handled. But let us ask ourselves whether when we peer through the fog that surrounds the great debate we are convinced that Italy, our youngest sister, was nobly treated; whether her enormous services, nothing less than the salvation of us all in 1914, for instance, were acknowledged with anything like justice; or a proper and generous consideration given to her most elementary desires, those things upon which she had most set her heart. Let us consider the matter in this way. There was one thing, at any rate, which, Fourteen Points or no Fourteen Points, England did not intend to have debated or put in jeopardy — the question known as the Freedom of the Seas. Quite frankly in accepting the Fourteen Points as a basis England told Mr. Wilson that she could not accept that one which dealt with this point. England had her way. Italy, too, made a protest, so it is said, with regard to one of those points which seemed to touch her claims in the Adriatic. But whether or no that protest was ever made, has Italy ever received the same consideration with regard to what she considers vital to her future as England did with regard to the Freedom of the Seas? We all know she has not. And Italy asks, and rightly asks, Is this just? She supported England in her claim: did we support her in hers? We all know we did not. And Italy asks, and rightly asks, Is this fair or generous? There is, however, more than this, and I don't think I can put it better or more briefly than it was put to me the other day in a letter by an eminent Italian man of letters. "There is here,' he writes from Italy, 'much alarm and disillusion, and with some right. You have seen, however, that Italian people and also the best Democrats are not so much disillusioned and angry against England, as against Wilson. Wilson has allowed the kind of peace you see; and only with Italy has he been acting the prig and the zealot. . . . Italy is now in a very bad economic condition: the economic condition is even worse than the political condition, which is certainly not a brilliant one.' There we have the truth. If Wilson has raised no final objection to French claims, for instance, in the Saar, why has he raised a fundamental objection to Italian claims in the Adriatic? If If England supported France in her claims, why did not England support Italy in hers? The diplomatist doubtless sees all manner of differences in the nature of the claims, the man in the street does not. The Italian people see the French claims satisfied: they see the Italian claims refused. They see England support France: they do not see England support Italy. They ask why, and the political leaders are dumb. The journalists meanwhile invent every sort of mean and unworthy motives for England's action. The Italians are told, for instance, that the Jugo-Slav Government has made an arrangement with the Cunard Company for a monopoly of the port of Fiume in exchange for the support of England and the English press in its claim. Hence the English attitude. All this is of course nonsense, but how is the Italian to know that? He partly, not wholly, believes it, and in any case he fails to understand why England has not wholeheartedly supported Italy in what he considers her most just claims: claims, too, which, under the Treaty of London, 1915, he firmly believes England promised to see satisfied. Just there perhaps we touch the root of the matter. How many Italians, how many English people, really know the terms of that Treaty? It is greatly to be hoped that Signor Tittoni will obtain the permission of England and France for the publication of that fundamenta! document. If that is done Italian public opinion must at once realize that if England did not support the Italian claim to Fiume, it was because she was forbidden to do so by treaty. That Treaty gives Fiume to the Croats. It was Italy herself who gave up Fiume. It was the Treaty of 1915, not Wilson, which first denied Fiume to Italy. When Italy now asserts that Fiume is essential to her Wilson can reply: 'But it cannot be essential, since in 1915 you gave it to the Croats.' If England moves to support the Italian claim, Wilson can pull her back. He has only to say: 'England is bound by the Treaty of 1915, which gives Fiume to the Croats.' The publication of that Treaty is thus essential if Italian public opinion is to understand the English attitude at Paris and our failure finally to support Italy. So much for the Italian point of view. What is the English? We may learn this best from an excellent Italian observer, the London correspondent of the Giornale d'Italia. Signor Bedolo, who deals in that journal very precisely with 'the nasty theme at of Anglo- which control it. For reasons which some Italy for the last three months has appeared to foreign observers, above all I mean British ones, to be in a condition of hysteria. The alternations of her explosions of nationalism, of her crises of humanitarianism, of her shouts of defiance, of protests, of cynicism, of her denunciations, of her menaces, of her moments of contrition, in fact the incessant alternation of her maximum demands and of her minimum offers . . . have ended not only by alienating foreign sympathies, but even by creating a lack of interest in our destiny.... Italy has not supported three years of war in order to win the hostility of the world, and this is precisely what is happening. . . . I have said that it is not worth while going into the merits of the causes which produced this damaging situation. What is necessary is to change it, and I will at once mention the first remedy: stop talking. . I do not think that I am exaggerating when I affirm that never in history, recent or remote, has Italo-British friendship found itself in such a singular and dangerous position. . . . If down to last April it was easy to find people of every party sincerely disposed to seek by every means a settlement satisfying our claims, with the intention of maintaining at all costs the friendship traditionally and spiritually dear and necessary to the British people, to-day it is difficult to find one single person disposed to take any interest in the matters which concern us. It is not hostility, it is suspicious indifference. The second is more pernicious than the first. In my opinion it is in any case the one which at the moment does us most harm. The inevitable political passivity of the British people must not be confounded with the hostility of a few diplomatists The Anglo-Italian Review This is an explanation very severe, indeed too severe, on the Italian people. We are at least as much to blame for the misunderstanding that exists. The great thing now is by frankness and good will to bring this misunderstanding to an end. The first step was to explain how it arose. The second must be to devise new means of communion and understanding between the two peoples who are absolutely necessary the one to the other intellectually, morally, and politically, not to speak of commerce. And these new means must be devised at once. Meanwhile it is to be believed that we can make a new beginning with the advent in Italy of a new ministry. 1 EDUCATION AND WAR BY ANATOLE FRANCE [EDITORIAL NOTE: This speech, delivered before a congress of teachers' associations, has caused much discussion in France. The Pacifist press in general has sustained the speaker, while the Nationalist and Conservative journals have condemned the views expressed in no measured terms.] 'CITIZENS and Dear Friends: You see an old friend before you. He stood at your side, in company with the great Jaures, when, in 1906, you began your struggle for the right to form associations. Now that this right has been admitted, a time is at hand to regulate its exercise, and it is for this reason that your associations have united here. "This Congress, however, has still another object; one of capital importance, the reorganization of elementary education. Count only on yourselves to accomplish this task; such is the counsel of prudence. 'It was with joy that I read yesterday in the news the opinion of our friend M. Glay on this subject. "The war," he wrote, "has clearly shown that the popular education of to-morrow must be entirely different from that of yesterday." I hasten to put my thought before you. Teachers and dear friends, it is with a strong emotion that I address you; I speak to you as one moved by both hope and uneasiness. For one cannot but be moved by the thought that the future lies in your hands, and that it will be largely what your spirit and your care have made it. 'In forming the child, you shall be preparing the future. What a task this means to-day, in this great overthrow of things during which the ancient societies are crumbling beneath the weight of their faults, when conquerors and conquered fall side by side into the abyss of a common misery, exchanging looks of hatred as they descend! In the social disorder created by the war and consecrated by the peace which follows it, you have everything to do; everything to rebuild. Let your courage and your spirit be high. It is your task to create a new humanity, to waken new intelligences, if you do not wish to see Europe fall back into folly and barbarism. "They will say to you, "Of what use are your efforts? Man does not change." Yes! He has changed! He has changed since the age of the caverns, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad; he changes with his environment, and it is education which moulds him as much, perhaps, as air and nourishment. Yes, we must not allow to exist an instant longer the kind of education which rendered possible, which favored even (for it was of much the same variety in all so-called civilized nations), this fearful catastrophe under which we lie half buried. First of all, everything which can make a child love war and its crimes must be banished from the school, a task, this, which will require your long and constant effort, if it is not some day accomplished by the whirlwind of |