I HAVE BEEN amused to hear from a friend in
Italy of the Italian Liberal Party's ingenious expedient to restore its depleted membership. Its leader, Signor Malagodi, wrote recently to the Union of Italian Monarchists, a non-political body, to remind them that its members' monarchist sympathies need not be a bar to their joining the Liberal Party. His advice has since been backed by ex-King Umberto himself, who referred to the `glorious record of the Liberal Party as collaborator in the Risorgimento with my house,' in a letter to the press—a letter which makes clear Umberto's own attachment to Liberalism. This ought to prove useful to Malagodi in his election cam- paigning, for there must have been many monarchists who have not cared to be associated with either of the two dubious monarchist political parties. The leaders of those parties are now busy trying to explain that Liberalism today is not what it was at the time of the Risorgimento; but Umberto's pro- nouncement is going to make life very, difficult for them.
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