Books of the Day
Italy in Africa
Fourth Shore : Italy's Mass Colonisation of Libya. By Martin Moore. (Routledge. 125. 6d.) How pleasant to know Mr. Steer, and to be transported out of the chill uncertainty of today into the clearer atmosphere of the last crisis but three—into Tunis and Libya and the Italo-French tension of this time last year. How pleasant, also, to be Mr. Steer, and to be able to combine shrewd political judgements with such good entertainment. The secret of this feat is that he travelled for amusement, pushing this way and that in accordance with his temper, or the weather, or local advice. He never knew what was coming next. Nor do you. Without having to leave civilisation (for the North African coast is now almost wholly bus-ridden and civilised) you can enjoy a fair share of the sensations of the explorer.
Yet the drifting course he chose does not prevent him from reaching some useful conclusions about North African politics and society. A year ago, the most interesting would have been his assessment of Italian military preparedness. He must be one of the few people who have visited not only the Mareth line in Tunisia and the opposing curve of forts in Libya, but also the rival defences on either side of the Italo-Egyptian frontier. But today, when the intrusion of Russia into the expansionist group has altered Italy's outlook on policy, this part of his picture has lost its topicality. Possibly it will one day return to the limelight, for the Italians still cherish " aspirations," but, for the time being, more apt and more arresting are his reflections on the demerits of our modern design for living compared with that of Ancient Rome.
Why do Roman maps of urban development put ours to shame? Why do we build pill-boxes where they built granaries? Why do we increase the desert by installing fron- tiers? Why don't we use our strength to fight, not one another, but the smothering sand?
If you ask a Frenchman why he has not dug down to the subsoil for the water that used to feed Domitian's aqueducts, he will tell you that it costs too much. He can afford tank-traps, but not artesian wells—an anomaly which accounts for the dilapidated nineteenth-century appearance of civilian France in Tunisia. By comparison, the Italian looks go-ahead. He has spent on silos as well as blockhouses ; he is ready to get to grips both with nature and with the King's enemies. The stupendous colonising scheme which Marshal Balbo is pur- suing in Libya is not yet two years old, but it promises well as far as reclaiming land is concerned, and, as a result, any traveller who journeys first in Tunisian trains, then over the frontier potholes, and afterwards along Mussolini's shining tarmac will report that Italy approaches more nearly than does France to the Roman leveL As a first impression this conclusion is inevitable. A dis-
cerning eye—trust Mr. Steer spot another difference, this time redounding more to French than to Italian credit. " There is something also in the humanitarian ideals of the republic that makes the Tunisian Arab happier than the Libyan Arab, makes him intervene more deliberately, by a word or handshake, in the life of the traveller." France does not do all that she might for the Arab's welfare, but at least she lets him have his fling. She leaves him free to gossip and grumble, and he thrives on grumbling. With Italy the conception is different. Undoubtedly she brings the Arab benefits, but improvement of his lot is the by-product, not the object of her system. Her main aim is to build a land for Italians,. ear- marking the best bits for peasant immigrants who are already competing with the Arab and who will in the end cut him out.
But Balbo's Libyan experiment is so remarkable that it deserves inspection from more than one angle. Mr. Martin Moore, who devotes several chapters to showing it as it looks from Italy, has therefore much to add to Mr. Steer's more impressionist picture. Seen from Rome, or, better still, from one of the overcrowded villages of the Veneto, it represents the offer of land to the landless, of status to peasants living in depths unimagined by the English (though the essentials
can be gleaned for sixpence by buying the Penguin trans_ lation of one of Ignazio Silone's novels). No wonder, there-
fore, that Balbo's Great Trek is " a kind of sober gold-rush." It is a rush, but one conducted at organised speed, and when you read of the excellence of the organisation you feel that it merits success.
Mr. Moore enjoys an advantage over its previous chroniclers (who are all Fascists) because, as well as praising, he can trounce it where trouncing is due. He can admit that the motives which prompt the spending of £2,000 on settling a single family are prestige and strategy, not economy ; he can count the cost and weigh the assets. The admiring note on which he ends is the more flattering to Italy because it is earned despite some adverse criticism.
Usually, the simultaneous appearance of two good books on one topic is a source of annoyance to both authors. Here both should be gratified, not annoyed, because, with virtually no overlapping, each reaches conclusions which always com- plement and usually bear out those of the other. Further, both by their different routes arrive at the same moral. Is it just an effect of the times we live in, or is it the birth of a decade of reason that makes both return again and again tp the same theme, namely, that Balbo is showing the world a pursuit far more satisfying than war, and just as likely to be profitable?
ELIZABETH MONRQE.
Previous page
