LAW AND HUMANITY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—It is humiliating to find a fellow-Englishman, Mr. Harold Goad—and that Englishman a teacher and instructor of youth in the famous city of Florence—seeking, pro fascism°, to deny or to ignore the degrading and vindictive treatment by the Italian Government of the wife, and, still more, of the brother df Professor Rosselli ; and then, forsooth, accusing his indignant fellow-Englishmen of "poisoning the springs of Italian friendship." What an accusation to bring ! Or is it a "red herring " ? For the love of Italy is widespread among us. What the English Press have kindly done, and are doing, is to expose the suppressions and the lies, the injustice and the mediaevalism which are involved in the political vindictive- ness shown to two innocent and near relatives of an escaped political prisoner.
And what was the prisoner's crime ? It was what in any civilized land would be judged to be simply an act of good citizenship ! The original crime was committed, stupidly and wickedly, by the Fascist Dictatorship in suppressing all freedom of thought, speech, and action so that thousands of Italy's most enlightened sons, who longed to honour her by their devoted service, finding themselves watched, and persecuted, and thwarted from serving their mother- land, sought perforce surreptitiously to leave their homeland where Freedom herself is a fugitive, for a freer air and sky.
.• Why was the aged and distinguished statesman, Signor Turati, not allowed to leave Italy freely as he wished ? Why was his leaving made a "crime" at all, so that the kindly sympathy and friendship shown him by Professor Rosselli and Signor Parri were punished ? And now, an innocent brother—a man entirely non-political—who was working near Rome at historical research on the " Risorgi. mento " for the honour of his country, and who had not even seen his imprisoned brother for nearly three years, is imme- diately pounced upon, and deported to the worst of the "Devil's Islands," degraded in a sea of eight hundred criminals on the vilest of the islands—for what ? For being Nello, the brother of Carlo Rosselli !
And this schoolmaster, Mr. Goad, who delights pedantically to quote Chambers' Encyclopaedia respecting the deportation islands, and who quibbles over a correspondent's rough metaphor of" Italy's Siberia "—a phrase whose main import any fool can grasp—does not tell us that all drinking water has to be conveyed to the prison island by ship from the mainland ; that the islands are scourged with " African " dysentery ; that, morally, they are breeding places for vice, and schools of demoralization ; that slowly, bit by bit, the strongest charac- ters disintegrate ; that, as in Tsarist Russia, you are one day presented with a slip of paper informing you that you are a prisoner and will be taken to Lipari ; that the slip bears your name and describes your offence only in the most general terms as "anti-fascist actiVity " ; that there is no judge, no lawyers, no trial, no right of habeas corpus—you are simply guilty upon receipt of the slip—that your hands are manacled, and, like the prisoners in the mines of Siberia, you are chained together with a chain running from manacle to manacle ; that your journey to Lipari, which by train could be completed in twenty-four hours, lasts for prisoners from twenty to fifty days ; that your food is bread, and, if you are lucky, soup ; and that, therefore, it is very little wonder that when the men arrive at the island they are but pale phantoms of their former selves !
No! Mr. Goad tells you nothing of all this. It is remark- able—and, as I have said, humiliating—that so biassed a version as Mr. Harold Goad's is shown to be—he must be of great assistance just now to the Italian Government's Foreign Press Bureau—should accuse others of what he calls " obvious bias amounting almost to malice," of" rushing into print," of "assuming an outrage has been committed," and of "poisoning the ancient _springs of friendship," and—what not ?
I apologize most sincerely for the great length of this letter, and I shall be very grateful if you can find space for even a small part of it. I have for years respected the Spectator for fair play more, perhaps, than any other Conservative journal, and your kindness in publishing the facts, as you are now doing will help not merely one or two ill-used Italian subjects, but all humanity, in this international subject of married women's nationality, whether justice to women is to be sac- rificed to the mere symmetry of international law, or the law to be adjusted to the rights of women as human beings.
There is widespread, strong desire that the woman should
have the same right as a man to choose her own nationality, even when married to a foreigner. Your introduction of this theme is timely, because the codification of international law (of which the subject of nationality forms an important part) will be dealt with by a commission at The Hague next year. Already, in twenty-two countries, varying from Algeria to U.S.A., a woman who marries a foreigner does not auto- matically lose her nationality ; and the British, the Australian, and the German legislatures have v_ted in favour of the principle of choice. Extended travel, and the improved status
and education of women are greatly increasing the number of mixed marriages ; and, from the patriotic point of view, a woman should not be deemed incapable of loyalty to her own country, nor her allegiance automatically altered without her knowledge or consent ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
PAIR PLAY.
[The Spectator, as an independent newspaper, with specific liberal and humanitarian affiliations, cannot but endorse the views of "Fair Play." (For obvious reasons we respect the anonymity of correspondents on this issue). We are par- ticularly glad that the subject of the nationality Of married women should have been broached, so that public opinion may be able to assert itself before the Conference on the Codification of International Law, which is to meet at Geneva next March.—En. Spectator.]
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