29 SEPTEMBER 1944, Page 18

The Background of Modern Italy

The Evolution of Modern Italy : 1715 - 1920. By A. J. Whyte. (Blackwell. 18s.)

AFTER the journalists on the future of Italy, a scholar on her past. Dr. Whyte hai made the Risorgimento his life-study, and he writes on it with all the competence of an authority, and with all the zest of an enthusiast. We know, of course, something of the Risorgimento in England: have we not had our Bolton Kings and our Trevelyans? But it may be doubted whether we know much of nineteenth-century Italy, in spite of that. The interest has been for the achievement, for the making of Italy. Did not Trevelyan break off his account of Garibaldi at 186o? That is why it can seem to us that no country has forgotten its recent history so much as Italy. She profited by non-intervention, she was made on liberal-national principles. But Mussolini aped Metternich ; he intervened in Spain for the very reasons alleged by the reactionary Powers of Europe against the Roman Republic of 1849. Mazzini saw in the oppressed peoples of the Austrian Empire the future allies of Italy ; Mussolini Saw

Yugoslavia as the natural object for aggression. So far had Italy moved from her ideals.

But our views seere one-sided because we turned aside satisfied ifter the heroic progress and the accomplishment of a nation's destiny, That was rather what Italy did, exhausted by an attainment which had been long and painful. But physical unity solved one problem only (that of physical unity) ; and it distracted attention from the problems that fact created. And, in spite of the deeds and the personalities which have attracted the eye, unity came more as a by-product than as the realisation of a people's will. By the policy of Cavour France checkmated Austria, and with the incubus gone, the States of Italy tumbled together, in various ways, but with the same haste, and with the same lack of programme. In that union were the seeds of misfortune: from now on the underside of the Risorgimento found expression. It is a merit of Dr. Whyte's book that it shows this necessary background clearly. The first chapter, with its sketch of the eighteenth century, is essential' tct a general view. Italy then lay stagnant, perhaps with a little less of social brilliance than Dr. Whyte suggests. The nobility of Florence seemed poor and petty enough to Horace Walpole. But the point is rightly made : without Napoleon there would have been no start to the Risorgimento. The Restoration left Austria as an irritant, and her force as the reason for going back. When Austria departed, what was there to do?

The answer, as Dr. Whyte puts it, was that there was a new Italy to build; that there was neither the spiritual energy nor the leader to do it. Did the South want the North? and what were the common denominators between the sturdiness of Piedmont, the prosperity of Lombardy, and the blighted Papal States or the back- wardness of Naples, with its 90 per cent. of illiteracy? Cavour might have managed to reconcile regional differences and sectional

But he died ; and the ready-made constitution led on to Giolitti and his army of placemen. After 186o the heroism is gone: Garibaldi - was twice humiliated, the recovery of Venice brought shame, so did that of Rome ; and colonial adventures half-heartedly undertaken led to whole disasters. This is the last third of Dr. Whyte's book, and I wish he could have given it more emphasis, as it is what we know least. It is the trait d'union to the Italy of Mussolini, who succeeded because he made a synthesis, as well as a perversion, of opposite methods. From the secular State, with its Masonic Civil

Service, he inherited the rule by ticket; at the same time he saw the hold of its old opponent, the hurch,- as something to be utilised. Fascism also was an authoritarian hierarchy, with totalitarian claims. It had its martyrs and its mysticism, and its lay infallibility. Was there not a Roman Monsignore in the 193os who found Catholicism and Fascism hardly distinguishable? That is not a fashionable identification now ; but it is a significant one. No one will understand the success of Mussolini who does not look to the elements of nineteenth-century Italy. It is a little unfortunate that Dr. Whyte's view.is still focussed too strongly oh the Risorgi- mento (which takes two-thirds of his space) for this task of tracing the roots of Fascism to be consciously envisaged here. But he offers a fuller, and a rounder, view of Italy than is usually the possession of the Englishman. And that is wholly to the good.

J. H. WHITFIELD.