* * * * Whatever may be said for the
relaxation in the treatment of Italy agreed on by Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt, Signor Benedetto Croce's demand that Italy should now be treated as an Allied Power, and assured the return of all her former colonies, is quite another matter. Signor Croce is asking a great deal; how- ever, it should be set to his credit, I suppose, that he is not asking for Italian possession of Abyssinia. Italy, on the whole, is working her passage home pretty creditably, but nothing is to be gained by obliterating history. Italy—not under a Fascist government—attacked Turkey in 1911 to get Tripoli. She came into the last war in 1915—not under a Fascist government—for what she could get, and got a great deal. She wantonly and brutally attacked Abyssinia in 1935. She wantonly and brutally stabbed France in the back in 1940. Now she has turned anti- Fascist and there is general satisfaction at the change. But the Italian State has not ceased to be the Italian State, and to don a white sheet does not, and must not, mean escape from responsi- bility from all the Italian State's recent crimes.
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