ITALY AFTER THE WAR : I. PUBLIC OPINION
By A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT .
[This is the first of a short series, of articles by a Special Correspondent who has recently visited Italy on behalf of THE SPECTATOR. Next week's article will deal with the Economic Position:] T HAD fair reason to think my fellow traveller a Frenchman. As our train laboured over the Simplon he cursed its inadequate engine in fluent French in the intervals of abusing the French Government and all its works. But when, in his own strain, I animad- verted against the British Government's handling of the Abyssinian mess he by no means agreed. I gathered -that he had quite a good opinion of Mr. Eden ; that our Government, though wrong about sanctions, had not clone •too badly ; and that he thought it was being rather unjustly slated by its own public. He then proceeded to order and criticise his dinner in such perfect Italian that I ventured to express my envy of it. " But why not ? " he replied. " After all, I am Italian." So my voyage of rediscovery to Italy opened on a note which was, by me at least, quite unexpected.
There may be some doubt about the value of public opinion in dictator-ruled countries where it swoops and swerves with the docility of an aeroplane under wireless direction, but it is none the less the first thing to engage the traveller's attention and about which he is asked on his return. Its analysis in Italy today is made particularly difficult by the façade of " business as usual " with which he is confronted almost wherever -he goes. It is as though he was looking at a sheet of frosted glass, which from a distance presents a plane surface. At closer range it reveals innumerable facets, such as that of my friend in the train, which reflect the light in varying directions. But it remains very hard to see through.
Here, after all, is a country still menaced by great economic difficulties. For many months it has been keyed up to a high pitch of national effort, although circumstances have spared it much of its anticipated sacrifice. Within little more than a year over 3,000 of its young men have died in action or from disease in a distant land. Many more—their number is unguessable—have suffered and still suffer, some per- manently, from the effects of climates and altitudes which under the most favourable conditions are very trying to the European constitution. Nearly half a million are still exposed to these risks and to the chances, difficult to assess, of a sporadic warfare no less lethal for being called rebellion. And the nation on the home front has been put through an intensive course of hate.
One would expect something of this to show in its demeanour; some sign of anxiety, bereavement or strain, a foreboding of economic difficulty or relic of sedulously inculcated hate ; or alternatively, some exuberance of triumph or relief at danger narrowly escaped. Such feelings must indeed exist and their outward manifesta- tions may recur, but for the moment there is practically no indication of them and one receives the impression that the Italian, emerging from the shadows, is content for a space to sit in the sun and give his emotions a rest. The peasant and worker go about their tasks exactly as before, except that the factory worker (of whom I saw little) seems rather more contented. The townsman pursues his gain or pleasure equably, on the whole more spruce and carefree than his counterpart in London. His wdmenfolk, who usually provide a sensitive barometer, show no sign of recent Stirring by passions other than the usual and eternal ones. Of the officials, the higher grade is suave, the lOwer, poliCe- nien, dustbins' examiners and their like, kood:natured. Only the-middle ranks is there a stiffness aniftendency to make things rather more difficult in which a trace of spite is discernible. Among the people, as a whole the most obvious Englishman can move politely dis- regarded or, if he obtrudes his presence, sure of an unaffected and apparently instinctive courtesy.
There arc, however, certain beliefs, some so obvious as to need no discovery, which are so widespread as to be to all intents and purposes universal. The first is that Italy has been fighting not only an essential but an absolutely righteous war. The second and more surprising is that Abyssinia was the aggressor. The important thing about them is not their falsity, nor the process by which they were reached—for one is used to the miracles of a controlled and inspired Press—but their complete sincerity ; and of this I was assured by an Englishman on the spot who, if training and oppor- tunity count for anything, should be an unchallengeable judge. The third is a profound belief in the hypocrisy and recently hostile motives of the English. For this belief a very logical reason was given to me by another Briton most excellently qualified to speak. Incidentally, since England's alleged evil intentions have been thwarted, they are now viewed, if not with forgiveness, at least with a certain degree of indifference.
When Italy (said my informant) became a founder- member of the League she looked to it not only for collective security—which to us has always been para- mount—but for the peaceful removal of economic inequalities among its members. To be precise, she hoped to gain peacefully and with its help an outlet for her surplus population and an independent source of raw materials. When this idea received no practical support from her most powerful partners in the League, the League itself became in her eyes no more than an instrument by which France hoped to keep Germany in subjection, and England to preserve her empire at reduced cost. All faith in the idealism of at least these two members vanished irrevocably. Therefore, when England advanced idealism as the motive Of her oppo- sition to Italy's Abyssinian project, she stood convicted in Italian eyes of crass hypocrisy. Cultured and travelled Italians could, it is true, see England's point of view, and by them the accusation of hypocrisy was toned down to one of self-deception. But to them as to the less broad-minded the basic if subconscious motives of England's policy were greed, self-interest and jealousy.
With these beliefs at heart, Italy's resentment became the anger of a just man wronged rather than of a criminal who sees himself in danger of being foiled. But why was this anger deliberately fanned into hatred and why has this hatred apparently so suddenly declined ?
- An Italian acquaintance, an ex-soldier, volunteered to me part of the explanation. " We were sure," he said, " that you meant to fight us. Mussolini said that sanctions if they threatened to become effective, meant war. Your own politicians said the same thing. They went on pressing for intensified sanctions. How could we tell that you were bluffing " Now the Duce_ had put a heavy strain on the faith and solidarity of his people when, at a low ebb of their economic fortune, he committed them to the Abyssinian war. Anyone, who was in Italy early in 1985 could sense , the strain. British policy not only militated against success in that war but brought into the realm of possibility—if not of inevitability as my friend had supposed—an infinitely more terrible ordeal by which the most stout-hearted might well have been appalled. Fear begat hate, and the Duce, seeing in hate not only the best antidote of fear but also the strongest unifying power known to man, deliberately stooped to foster it just as, at the crux of the campaign, he stooped to physical weapons the use of which revolted the whole civilised world.
The cause for fear disappeared. " -There are only two armed powers in Europe which count today," con- tinued my ex-military friend, who was probably no very well-informed student of international politics but who seemed to voice a large volume of opinion. " Germany and Italy. You had to climb down to us because you were afraid of Germany. You will have to climb down to Hitler for fear of us. We are not afraid of your rearming. Your young men won't fight." The need for hate had gone. The order went out that it should no longer be fomented. The fear that had nurtured it became a relieved derision. So hate sank into a state of suspended or submerged animation, not by any means incapable of being revived. The happiest feature of the situation is that no instinctive or racial antagonism existed to keep it active.
Add to this the surprising suddenness with; which the plum of victory tumbled into Italy's lap, a suddenness. which took even Italian breath away and which even. Italians attribute in part to the most amazing good luck. Add the speed with which the abandonment of sanctions came tumbling after, a speed well advised perhaps but none the less gratifying to -Italian self- esteem. Combine the three, ' and surely you have sufficient explanation for the most remarkable phenomenon of Signor Mussolini's regime, 'the total eclipse of the inferiority complex. The Italian of today feels that he can afford to condescend, and having an instinctive fondness for the large gesture he prefer§ to te generous. And I suppose that if injustice really could not be prevented, it is just as well that Italy should feel as she does.
Above all the last eighteen months have—witnessed an amazing personal triumph for Signor Mussolini, whether due to luck or good judgement. As I moved among individual ' Italians and Italian crowds, and as I remembered the barely concealed anxiety and doubt which were so evident at the beginning of 1935, I was irresistibly and I hope not irreverently reminded of the lines of a famous hymn : "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou shouldst lead me on," And again : •
"Keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me."
For indeed the last step has 'been a giant's stride, even though pride in it may for the moment blind the great mass of the Duce's followers to " the moor and fen, the crag and torrent " over which it still remains for him to lead them.
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