THE ITALIAN PREMIER'S SPEECH. T HE Italian Premier is a little
too adroit. He is dancing in public on a tight-rope, and though the performance is amazingly clever, and not so dangerous as it looks, it is quite inconsistent with any idea of dignity in the performer. It is now admitted that, as we believed, S. Crispi did say to M. St. Cere the things which that agent of the Figaro reported, and said them with the motive which struck us as so perfectly visible. He wanted to conciliate France, which can worry Italy financially to a grave extent, and at the same time to defend the avowed policy of his Government. He therefore flattered France, in the way France loves to be flattered, as the most formidable Power in Europe ; and at the same time declared that the fear she inspired was the cause of the Triple Alliance, which, however, ex- pired in 1892, and might, he hinted, by possibility, not be renewed. All that was said with an object, and on the French side was clever ; but, unfortunately for S. Crispi, there is also an Austrian side. Austrians are duller than he is, and Austrian journalists asked in angry tones what he was really at, and whether he contemplated breaking away from the Alliance at a convenient moment. He found, too, that the French party in Italy, which is also the Republican party, were elated at his talk with the Figaro; and he possibly heard in private, that in the King's opinion he had given cause for mis- apprehension. He set himself, therefore, in a speech uttered at Florence on the 8th inst., to make the balance even, to reassure all doubters, to reaffirm his adhesion to the Alliance, and especially to conciliate the provoked Court of Vienna. He succeeded in doing all these things very fairly well, but not so well as to avoid the criticism that it ought not to have been necessary to make the explanation. He declared, for example, that to abandon the alliance would be treason to the country, which is, no doubt, his real feeling ; but then, feeling in that way, why did he hint that he might one day abandon it ? That is trickery, not statesmanship, and though S. Crispi is not a small man, it is small trickery, too. S. Crispi's real object, however, at Florence was to con- ciliate Austria, and he devoted half his speech to a state- ment that he has no sympathy whatever with Irredentism. Most Englishmen who study politics at all are inclined to consider Italian Irredentism a mere fad ; but it is a fad with a very dangerous element in it for Austria. Italians learned their politics at a time when the idea of "the nationalities" was entirely dominant with the Liberals of Europe ; and a large party in Italy is still unable to distinguish between Liberalism and the proposi- tion that every race is entitled to make of itself a separate national entity. They will not, therefore, surrender the hope that Italy may yet " redeem " Ticino, where the population has been Swiss for four hundred years, but speaks Italian ; the Trentino, where Italian agriculturists are politically Tyrolese ; Dalmatia, which belongs to Austria, but is full of Italians ; and Malta, which is British, but in which, though the people talk a bastard Arabic, the educated classes speak Italian, as two hundred years since did also the aristocracy of Vienna. The hope, as a matter of practical politics, is almost illusory ; for although Austria, after some great defeat, might cede the Trentino, the Ticinese would not endure either the Italian conscription or the Italian taxes ; the Haps- burgs cannot give up Dalmatia without an impossible German consent—Trieste being really the Southern port for all Germany ; and Malta is as much out of reach of the Roman Government as Jamaica or Ceylon. Neverthe- less, the Irredentists go on hoping, and keep up an agitation which, though Switzerland regards it with amused placidity, and the English never hear of it, greatly provokes and occasionally embarrasses the statesmen of Vienna. They feel as if Italy were always threatening a war for the Trentino, while they can hardly keep order among the Italians of Trieste, who read the Irredentist speeches and think there is something in them. They grow as angry as we should grow if a strong party in an independent Ireland were always demanding Wigtonshire because its workmen are often Irish, and if Liverpool were usually in a sort of revolt in order to belong to Ireland. The English under those circumstances would not be sweet-tempered ; and the Austrians, besides watching Trieste as. if it were about to rise in insurrection, are asking officially, as well as in journals, why, if Italy is so friendly, the Irredentists are not put down. S. Crispi will not put them down, because he does not wish to exasperate Liberal feeling ; but he has no objection to conciliate Austria by stating that he considers the whole Irredentist policy a mere anachronism.
It is a policy, he told the Florentines, which means war with Europe, and Europe in its own defence would not wait for the war to be declared. The Italian people must therefore submit, and keep their treaties ; and it would be well if they also abandoned their habit of denouncing them, treaties binding not only Governments, but the peoples whom Governments represent. In short, S. Crispi held out no hope to the Irredentists, and there will consequently be for the moment tranquillity alike in the Southern Tyrol and Trieste, and an absence of anxiety in Vienna.
• The speech is clever enough, for the Austrians will be conciliated in spite of themselves ; but it all creates the impression that the Italian Government under S. Crispi is a little too impartial, that it is always considering whether it would pay to break treaties, and that it is watching for an opportunity to take some new and more profitable line. That is a dangerous impression for a State to create when it is an accurate one, and when it is not, it is an unnecessary source of weakness. In the present instance, it is, we are convinced, inaccurate. The policy of Italy is consistent, and will be firm, because it is a policy of interest only. As we tried to explain last week, she neither has nor can have anything to gain by joining France, which has nothing to give, which protects the Papacy abroad, and which will never be heartily reconciled to Italian unity.
Italy must therefore, in self-defence, join Germany and Austria, and will remain at one with them as long as she possibly can, which means, at all events, until they have been defeated. Her policy is unswerving, because it is selfish ; and her Premier's hints to the Figaro reporter that it may swerve have no object except to make special negotiations with particular Powers just a little easier. They are tricks, in short, allowed by diplomacy, and sometimes, we suppose, in some conjunctions, of temporary use. They do not, however, raise the characters of those who employ them, and must leave behind them, in Austria especially, an uncomfortable feeling that the Italian Government is not only a fair- weather friend, but deliberately studies the barometer in order to see in good time how friendly she can afford to be. That is a false impression ; but the statesman who creates it, however great in other respects, lacks one condition of greatness,—he does not inspire perfect con- fidence just when that confidence is required. Credit is as valuable in diplomacy as in commerce, and it is not the men who gain a reputation for adroitness who in the end. have most command of money.
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