THE RED SHIRT. T HE papers have published a letter from

Mr. H. W. Nevinson, who asks for help to send out to Italy, for the celebrations of Italian unity, a few of the survivors of the " British Legion " that fought under Garibaldi. It appears that only twenty-one of the 674 who sailed from Harwich for Naples in the autumn of 1860 are still alive, and of these only about six will be able to undertake the journey to Rome. These six, or more, will be accompanied by six of their Italian comrades-in-arms who are living in England. The British legion—except the colonel and one or two others who fought in Sicily before the fall of Naples—arrived towards the end of Garibaldi's greatest campaign, but fought well at Volturno, during the passage of the Apennines, and up to the moment when Sicily and Southern Italy came formally under the government of Victor Emmanuel. No Englishman who is proud to remember the aid which Great Britain gave to Italy when her cause was in sore need of it will withhold his sympathy from Mr. Nevinson's appeal. Money may be sent to Baron J. C. Keen, 9 Oxford Street, W., a son of a member of the legion ; and if more is subscribed than is needed for the journey it is proposed to devote the balance to a memorial of the legion in a London or Roman church. Some of the legionaries may have been such soldiers of fortune as discover that right is always on that side which gives them an oppor- tunity of a fight, but the majority bad been profoundly moved by the spectacle of Bourbon despotism, and they offered their lives as a genuine sacrifice to liberty. If their enlistment was rather irregular, in one sense it was regularized by the divine law of justice. These men were the more active

expression of the generous English emotion which fired Gladstone's denunciations of the Neapolitan tyranny and Lord John Russell's reasoned justification of the movement towards unity. It is a good and purifying thing for a nation now and again to sweep aside peddling objections, as England did then, to disregard barren questions of form, and to declare its unalterable conviction that the demand for free- dom must prevail in all circumstances over the assertion of

a right to perpetuate tyranny.

But there was something more at work in the hearts of

Englishmen of that day than an appreciation of the political issue at stake in Italy. For ages Englishmen had directed their sympathies and their affections and their search for

intellectual stimulus so naturally to Italy that the request for support coming thence was a guarantee of the response. The " Italianate " Englishman may sometimes have been a ridiculous figure, and, as Mr. Sidney Lee has lately made clear to us, he and his successors may have greatly under-estimated the contribution of France to the Renaissance, but, at all events, he had a real reason for existing. He stood for some- thing that was strong and stable in the intellectual and artistic sympathies of England. Those affinities may be traced clearly in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. " A man who has not been in Italy is always con- scious of an inferiority," exclaimed Dr. Johnson. They passed into the nineteenth century with Byron :— "Italia, oh Italia, thou who bast The fatal gift of beauty."

Englishmen have never been able to resist that beauty. The very names of Italian cities and historical places stir within them ideals, regrets, desires. They cannot, of course, have the quality of Garibaldi's passion when he was fighting for his own land, but his unforgettable address to the women of Rome, who had declared that they looked to

him to deliver Rome, does not strike falsely on the ear :— " Rome is a word that will arouse people as the tempest raises the waves. Rome, the mother of Italian grandeur. Was it not its history of giants, its wonderful ruins, that kindled in my young soul the flame of the beautiful, the ardour of

generous designs? Rome ! oh, Rome ! who is not urged by thy very name to take arms for thy deliverance P Who feels not thus has not deserved the tender embrace of a mother or

the ardent kiss of a lover. Such a one has only to restore a base heart to its original clay."

The Englishmen who put on the red shirts of freedom with Garibaldi intensified their enthusiasm as they learned all his passion, sincerity, and simplicity. It has often been said that Garibaldism became a new religion ; devout nuns worked his figure into the sacred fabric of their creeds. His magnetism

was explicable only because his human qualities so plainly framed his greatness. As Dictator in Sicily he would

administer a philanthropic institution on methods of common-

sense which might be bodily adopted by the Charity Organisation Society to-day. But if an appeal were made to his own pocket he could not say no to the most palpable rogue. He drew only the pay he allotted to himself—

eight francs a day—when the whole Treasury of Palermo was at his disposal. And he would borrow pence from his soldiers whenever he overspent his eight francs, and religiously repay the debt. He was so gentle with animals that he would not allow a whip to be used to a horse, or any animal, within his sight. At the same time, he had the proper severity of a master and a leader. A correspondent of the Times in 1859 wrote of him : "A child would stop him in the street to ask

what o'clock it was, but the man condemned to immediate execution would never, after a look of that calm, determined face, waste time in asking mercy upon earth." A member of

the British Legion, named Brook, wrote : " I never in my life saw a face like Garibaldi's—so dignified, so resolute, and so perfectly self-possessed in his every lineament—with the eye of an eagle, the brow of a Grecian sage—his smile is the sweetest and the most reassuring in the world." Forbes, another Englishman who fought with Garibaldi, wrote this remarkable tribute :—

" In his downright honesty we have the secret of his unparalleled successes. He cannot lie; • and if ho could, why should he? From the hour when he first dreamt of Italian unity' he declared war to every obstacle in his path, whether priestly or princely. When he saw an Italian prince lead on against the Austrian he hastened to join him. Though Euroye dared not oppose a French occupation of Rome, he did, by his uncompromising heistility to oppressors, whether foreign or domestic; he revivified the nation and in- augurated that spirit which has emancipated sixteen millions. Three millions of his countrymen are yearning in Some and Venetia, and because he is bold enough to avow his determination to finish his task haggard diplomacy desires him to be more circumspect. What, in the name of Heaven ! has diplomacy ever done for Italy since it condemned her to half a century of misrule at the Treaty of Vienna ?"

The best known of all the British legionaries was their commander, Colonel Peard. He was a true volunteer of liberty's cause, knowing what he did, why he did it, and how to do it. At school and Oxford he had been a prodigy of physical strength ; he weighed fourteen stone when he was

nineteen years old. On the river, as a boxer, as an Achilles in town-and-gown fights he was equally well known. He was a lover of Italy, and in his visits there he had seen with his own eyes the oppression by officials which Garibaldi was determined to end. None fought with such conviction as " Garibaldi's Englishman." Those who care to read them will

find Peard's war-journals, edited by Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, in the Cornhill Magazine of 1908.

Such traditional English affection for Italy was deeply reciprocated by Garibaldi When he was about to return to his home in Caprera, after the capture of Naples, he visited Admiral Mundy in Naples harbour, and, looking at the English ship in which he was about to make the passage, and which was awaiting him impatiently, he said, "I could not depart without expressing my steadfast faith in the honour of the English flag." The friendship is as bright to-day as fifty years ago. At least, we can answer for it that it is so on our side. Italy has entered into an alliance with her ancient enemy, Austria; Englishmen are formally associated with her other ancient enemy, France. These changes and chances make no difference. The tradition of our sympathy holds.

And of all that we like to emphasise in that tradition, the most memorable part is the struggle of fifty years ago.

" Yet, Freedom I Yet thy banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind."