Idling in Italy Part 8

The procession slowly wound its way within the gates, and I supposed that they would be conducted and helped lovingly and tenderly to the pavilions ready to receive them; that they would be undressed and given hot, stimulating nourishment by nurses and orderlies recruited, perhaps, from those who had come before and whom nature had been kind enough partially to restore. But immediately they were confronted with a species of Italian bureaucracy which hindered their progress toward this haven of rest and of solace toward which they had been looking forward for many days, perhaps months. They were segregated in a large, barnlike structure a few yards within the gate, permitted to sit on rude, unbacked, uncomfortable benches, and compelled to await their turn until their names and their histories and an enumeration of their possessions could be recorded. I felt that G.o.d would have been kind if he had stamped across their brows the letter V to stand for virtue and valor, as he stamped the letter A upon the breast of Arthur Dimmesdale to testify to the people of New England the frailty of that Puritan parson, which was revealed to his paris.h.i.+oners when they gathered together to listen to the confession of his sins and to decide his punishment. There they sat, inanimate, inert, resigned, awaiting what the Italian Government might have in store for them with the same indifference as they awaited that which nature had in store for them.

Never again shall I believe that the victim of tuberculosis is optimistic and hopeful. It may be that their obvious and striking forlornness was the expression of starvation and not of disease. Only about thirty per cent of them, I am told, showed signs of active tuberculosis after the ravages of inadequate and unsuitable food have been overcome. I saw and talked with many of their predecessors, and especially those who had been there a number of weeks, sufficiently long for them to have gained in weight and in strength, but even they were still branded with that expression which hopelessness comes nearest to describing.

It occurred to me that perhaps these were the men who sat down on the sides of the road and in the fields before that great disaster in the Friuli and were resigned to being taken captive, and that the resignation which they then displayed had been stamped on them gradually day after day since then, until now it had become indelible. Life had had no joy or poetry for them. Neither the present nor the future had been tinctured with pleasure nor flavored with hope, and since that day they had been silently awaiting that which now seemed imminent-translation.

I could not but contrast the event of the morning with that of the evening. Probably every one of these boys and men had been brought up in the faith which the Holy Father claims is the only true one. They had been taught that G.o.d is Justice. They had been imbued since earliest infancy with the belief that, next to loyalty to G.o.d, their most sacred duty was to their country. In their own way they had done their best for both, and this was their reward. Their expressions of despair, their manifestations of hopelessness, their silent portrayal of their abandonment needed no explanation. The saint in the Vatican was having his reward on earth, and the sinners in Forte Tiburtino looked for theirs only in heaven.

"Ahi giustizia di Dio! tante chi stipa Nuove travaglie e pene, quanto io viddi?

E perche nostra colpa si ne sc.i.p.a?"

"Ah, Justice Divine! who shall tell in few the Many fresh pains and travails that I saw?

And why does guilt of ours thus waste us?"

CHAPTER XI WOMAN'S CAUSE IS MAN'S: THEY RISE OR SINK TOGETHER ...

"But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ: and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is G.o.d ... but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man."

Woman's position in the world, socially, politically, and economically was profoundly altered by the Great War. Every contact with the affairs of the world, save uxorially, was changed and I believe that one of the aftermaths of the war will be further to change that relations.h.i.+p, to extend her liberty, to enhance her privileges until every semblance of the cage that has confined her since time immemorial is destroyed.

Eye-witnesses of the political and social emanc.i.p.ation of women do not realize how extensively concerned with it the historian of the future will be. Even less do they realize how directly certain social and economic changes of the beginning of the twentieth century will be traced to the entrance of women into the political arena. The individual who would attempt to forecast the eventual effects of national prohibition upon a people would have no respect whatsoever for his reputation as a prophet. I a.s.sume there is little doubt that women initiated and in large measure accomplished that legislation. Small wonder they did. They had to bear the brunt and the pernicious effects of alcohol consumption. Man drank it, but women paid; paid in privation, in suffering, in disease, in ignominy-they and their children. There are many habits, conventions, laws that deal with women differently than they do with men. We may confidently antic.i.p.ate that woman in full possession of political privileges will soon turn her attention to legislation whose purpose will be to change this, to effect a like relations.h.i.+p of all human beings but especially of men and women.

The most ardent and pious Christian must admit that the practice of its principles is inimical to woman's welfare or woman's full development, using the terms welfare and development in the conventional sense of to-day. There are undoubtedly many intelligent, honest, serious women who subscribe to St. Paul's teachings of woman's duties and privileges and who take no umbrage at his p.r.o.nouncements. These were in a word that she should be man's aid, his servant, and his ornament; that she should minister unto his corporeal needs, and that she should be the instrument through which G.o.d permitted man to reproduce his image and perpetuate mankind. The Christian religion came gradually to be considered figurative in its practicability, an ethical system strict conformation to which would cause the individual to be looked upon as a victim of mental aberration, but ideally quite perfect. With this conception the restrictions put upon woman's activity gradually began to disappear, and those that remained, such as, for instance, being obliged to cover her head in church, were not only willingly accepted but were considered a prerogative in so far as they facilitated personal adornment and thus contributed to the realization of a fundamental, inherent ambition-to be attractive.

Opponents of feminism have busied themselves with extraordinary industry and tireless a.s.siduity to point out the differences between man and woman, always to the disadvantage of the latter. Their mental endowment is inferior to man; their physical strength is less; their moral caliber more attenuated; their emotional nature shallower. Why should any one take the trouble to deny any of these? He who maintains that every specimen of the human species endowed with average reasoning power should live in the enjoyment of freedom and liberty should not allow himself the trouble of denying them. He should admit it with the same readiness that he admits that there are anatomical and physical differences between the s.e.xes. But the opponents of "rights of women," to use the phrase that has now come to have a sinister meaning, are not satisfied with such admission. They want to have us admit that, in so far as these qualities are at variance with those of man, so in proportion is woman inferior. This no well-balanced, thoughtful, unprejudiced man who has had much to do with men and women for a sufficient period to ent.i.tle him to pa.s.s judgment upon the matter can possibly admit. One may say dogmatically that woman has not the potential or actual capacity of man in the field of politics and statecraft, in the field of art and literature, in the field of science and investigation, in the field of peace and strife. He may say it, but he can furnish very little substantiation of his statement. Neither will he be able to say it convincingly very much longer. It is not and will not be fair or just that any one should make ex cathedra statements upon such subjects until women have had the same freedom in fields of activity that men have had for countless centuries. No weight or credence need be given to statements that women are possessed of intellectual and moral qualities that militate against their fitness to occupy or adorn the important positions of life's constructive activities. Possessions or infirmities which many of their ill-wishers maintain unfit them for such places may disappear when they have had opportunity to indulge their freedom. These alleged infirmities may be merely reactionary to the restrictions of their environments since time immemorial, since it is notorious that the place often develops the man. No bird can tell how far it can fly until it tries its wings.

The American people are less astonished than any other nation to find that women have invaded every field of human activity save that of active warfare. They have long since thrown down the barriers that kept women from entering such fields of activity, and welcomed their entrance into them. They were encouraged to believe that they would give an earnest of their activities and they have accomplished it without loss of their s.e.x attractiveness. The matter, however, is quite different in the countries of Europe. There only the women of the lower cla.s.ses have earned their bread in the sweat of their brow, and particularly in the fields, in the mills, and in the shops. But to-day all that is changed. They drive tram-cars, load and unload s.h.i.+ps, they till the soil and work the mines, they make and deliver munitions; they have replaced the porter and the ticket-taker at the stations; they are the letter-carriers, cab-drivers, guardians of the peace; they direct and administer great mercantile houses; and they are forcing their way into every profession. They have not yet been in any of these activities a sufficient length of time to enable any one to say whether or not they can successfully compete with man. The prophets of old were stoned, and he would be a daring one who would venture the statement that man will successfully dislodge woman from all the positions she so satisfactorily filled during the war. In some countries she will have gained, before the end of the great social and economic adjustment which we are now attempting, the political privileges which more than anything else will put her on an equality with man, namely, the franchise. From such vantage-point she will most successfully hold what she has gained. It is too much to expect that woman will emanc.i.p.ate herself and come into the arena of man's activities with her handicaps and lack of training and not make mistakes prejudicial to her welfare. To expect it would be as illegitimate as to expect that a strong man who had never trained for a prize fight could enter the ring and successfully contend against a man equally strong or stronger who had been training for the contest for a long time.

No one was so fatuous as to believe in 1914 that the Central Powers, after having devoted a quarter of a century to the most a.s.siduous training and preparation for the war that they thrust upon the civilized world, would not jeopardize the liberty of the world. The Allied nations had been content apparently to risk their fate without such preparation merely because they had right on their side. They made many mistakes and some of them were so flagrant and enormous as nearly to have cost them their existence. Women likewise have right on their side in the struggle which they have waged against the mandates of Christianity and the usurpation of man. But right alone is not sufficient in such a contest. They must combine might with it and might these days spells organization. Without it nothing worth while can be accomplished. I venture to prophesy that the striking legislation of our country of the next generation will be accomplished largely by the influence of organized women. This war has given them opportunity to display their might and examples of what organization can accomplish. Unless I misconstrue all signs, they will never again be deprived of the privileges which they have at the present day. On the contrary, such privileges will become larger and more comprehensive until they are upon an absolute equality in every walk of life with man.

In the world of politics, society, economics, education, and religion the question of rights of woman may not be given the constructive attention to which it is ent.i.tled. In our country it is possible that women are sufficiently organized to present their claims and insist upon their being heard, and not only demand their rights, which are liberty and equality, but they will get them. In England I am not so confident of the result. In France and Italy I am still less confident; in fact, their cause in these countries as things are at present seems to me almost a hopeless struggle. The only thing that consoles me is history. When one recalls that all that which we now speak of as democracy flowed from one master mind in Cromwell's little army; that the Laoc.o.o.n hold which the church had upon the people in the Middle Ages was broken by Luther and a few similar masters whose spirits successfully carried the idea of liberty; that all that which is now spoken of as industrial ascendancy flowed from the activities of one or two supermen in the mill districts of northern England only three or four generations ago; then one is lifted above his depression. Liberty and tolerance have taken on a new significance. This is not due entirely to the war. The war minted the meanings, but the gold was ready for the stamp. Liberty has come to mean that woman and man are not only equal before G.o.d but that they are equal before man. And, now that this admission has been wrung from unwilling man and imposed upon governments one after the other, what kind of a life do we wish? What are our visions? What are our sane and legitimate aspirations? Are we willing to yield supinely to the tyranny of state or of money? Are we content further to tolerate the infirmities and impotency of present-day education? Shall we continue to close our eyes to the hypocrisies of the church? Shall we be willing to submit to the restrictions that are put upon us by law and covenant concerning marriage and its entailments? Shall we bow down to autocratic governments whose rulers claim, and apparently have their claims allowed, to have divine guidance? Shall we be content with the concentration of property or of private capitalistic enterprise? Shall we be callous enough to see countless thousands of G.o.d's own, the poor, deprived of the advantages of food and clothing, education and the gifts of hygiene-in brief, of everything that makes life worth living? I firmly believe that the rank and file of educated, thinking, serious-minded persons who are not immediately concerned with the possession or administration of any of these, will not tolerate them, and in so expressing my belief I do not feel that I label myself socialist. I feel that I enroll myself in the legion marching forward under the banner of liberty and the belief that enlightenment is followed by progress as unerringly as night is followed by day.

These things may be brought about by revolution, just as democracy was brought about in France after the teachings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the French encyclopaedists had blazed the way and the aftermath of the American Revolution had reached that country; but I am firmly convinced that one of the things that the World War will accomplish is that this social reformation and reconstruction will be brought about without violence and without revolution. Once a satisfactory integration of a large number of individual lives is brought about, then integration of the community and of the state is bound to follow. No one is so fatuous or so blind as to hope that integration of individual life can come to him whose creative impulses in any field are hampered or stultified, but when these creative impulses, whatever they be, are encouraged, nurtured, developed, facilitated, then the genus h.o.m.o will reach its full estate and we may confidently look forward to community and state integration upon which lasting reform can be carried out socially and politically. There is not the slightest advantage to be gained by what is called political and economic reform unless at the same time there is a reformation of the creative forces of life-education, s.e.x relations, and religion.

Any scheme of life that concerns itself only with life is bound to be a failure. Man is so const.i.tuted that he must have a philosophy from which he can form a creed that facilitates his craving for immortality. It is this belief in immortality, as fundamental a demand as life itself, which is the final conditioning impulse of all that is best in man and which gives him an inexhaustible strength and a lasting peace.

How any intelligent person can believe that the teachings of Christ as practised to-day, and I emphasize the word "practised," furnish such a philosophy or a system of ethics, transcends my understanding. The chief branch of the Christian religion stands for dogma to-day just as firmly as it did before the Renaissance, and it pretends the humility of Christ while maintaining the imperiousness of Caesar. There is scarcely a minister of the Protestant church who is not selling his birthright for a mess of pottage by not daring to get up in his pulpit and tell his flock that they must live up to the basic principles of Christ's teachings. These ministers are just as cognizant as I am that their branch of the Christian church has lost its hold upon the people except in so far as its alleged teachings are reconcilable with their pleasurable conduct in private and in public affairs. I do not mean to say that there are not many wholly sincere and devout believers in these churches who feel the inspiration of the teachings of Christ. But because they are paid workers in the vineyard of the Lord they dare not jeopardize their existence and take no heed for the morrow, and they dare not insist that those to whom they minister should conform their conduct to Christ's commandments, because it would hazard their very existence and provoke the starvation of their children.

Do the meek inherit the earth? Have they inherited it? Does any one rejoice and be exceeding glad when men revile him and persecute him and say all manner of evil against him falsely? Is there any clergyman to-day who is teaching and insisting that if any one shall break any one of these least commandments and shall teach men to do so he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven? Suppose we grant that the Sermon on the Mount is not to be taken literally, but symbolically, of what are these mandates symbolical? "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee." Why does one not give the same heed to these commands as he does to "Thou shalt not kill; thou shall not commit adultery"? The reason is that he who kills or commits adultery is liable to be punished by the law, and he is deterred by the fear of such punishment or of the social ostracism to which he would be subject. Christ referred to the fact that "It hath been said that whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement, but I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, save for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery." But the present-day mandates of Christianity are in no way in keeping with this.

As a matter of fact, every one must admit that the only conformation which Christians make to the commands and counsel of the Sermon on the Mount is a repet.i.tion of the verses following on "After this manner therefore pray ye," and those commands which are at variance to-day with statutory and conventional laws.

I am not railing against Christianity. I am of those who firmly believe that if we were to conform our lives to the tenets of the ethical and moral teaching of Christ we should not have the need of social reconstruction which we have to-day. I am contending against the hypocrisy of those who proclaim themselves Christians from the housetops and who persecute others who do not conform to those trivial doctrinal modifications which one sect maintains are the only true interpretations of Christ's teachings. I am clamoring against the flimsy hypocrisy under which half the people of the civilized world live in regard to marriage, and who pretend to shudder and feel ill when you profess that you cannot look upon marriage as a sacrament. I am railing against those who believe that there should be one code of so-called morality for men and an entirely different one for women. If the code that is practically universally accepted to-day is proper for men, it is likewise proper for women, and I want to live to see the day when women will have as much freedom in their conduct in every walk of life as men have. The idea that woman's life centres in motherhood and that all her instincts and desires are directed, consciously or unconsciously, to that end is buncombe. It would be just as legitimate to contend that all man's instincts and desires centre in fatherhood and that his frenzied pa.s.sion to acc.u.mulate fortune, or his uncontrollable ambition to obtain fame, or his insatiate appet.i.te for power, or his insuppressible feeling to externalize his thoughts in music, in art, in poetry, in invention, were all secondary characteristics. The reproductive faculty of woman is incidental to her existence. If any one desires to claim it was the purpose of G.o.d in creating her, I shall not deny it, but as a student of human nature, and as a physician whose life has been spent with women-most of them, fortunately for me, honest and intelligent-I maintain that civilized, cultivated, thinking women do not find that motherhood satisfies their demands, their yearnings, their aspirations-in brief, their personal development. The creative will has other yearnings; not so imperative always in their demands for satisfaction, but nevertheless insistent on being satisfied if the possessor is to be spiritually content.

There are other reasons for the decline in the birthrate of the educated and civilized people of every country than the fact that motherhood does not completely satisfy the physical and mental demands of women-financial reasons, social reasons, and reasons that partake of both of them, yet not entirely of them, such as the occupation of women and the celibacy which comes of enforcement or from choice. These must be taken into consideration in our social renaissance when we shall erect our ideals of justice and liberty. The time will never come again when woman shall be man's willing or unwilling slave. The time has gone by when society shall require that the wife be faithful while the husband is faithless. Never again will the saintly, self-sacrificing woman who never questions her husband's authority but who yields supinely to his will be our ideal.

Woman may not be so strong as man. She may not be so truthful. She may be more impressionable to sinister influences. She may be less capable of erecting ideals and conforming her conduct to them. She may be less steadfast in the pursuit of any plan of life, or less capable of adhering to the ideal canons of conduct. She may or may not have any or all of the sins of omission or commission of which she is accused by man, but she is a human being made in G.o.d's image, of whom He may be more proud than He is of man. She has been rocked in the cradle of liberty and of freedom for the past five years, and to such purpose that at the present moment she is not only able to walk but to stride. In the future it will require the best effort of man to outdistance her, even though he has the benefit of ages of experience and the advantage of a start of forty thousand years.

We shall soon see whether Socrates was right when he said: "Woman once made equal to man becometh his superior."

CHAPTER XII POSTBELLUM VAGARIES

It seems incredible that we who have chanted "Peace on earth, good-will to men" for upward of two thousand years, professing the Christian religion and enjoying its benefits, should have in the year 1914 proceeded to discredit our professions and our protestations.

It is interesting to have lived in those times, for it brought into one's thoughts and imagination sentient recognition of qualities or characteristics of individuals and of peoples which, until the advent of the war, one didn't know existed. Students of events curious to know and to understand the factors and forces that had shaped the world, geographically, politically, socially, religiously, were obliged until 1914 to rely upon the written records of the past. After that they had but to observe daily events or read of them in the public press to become apprised of what is meant by world progress. It has been a universal belief that greater reform, politically and socially, flowed from the French Revolution than from any premeditated, organized violence that the world has ever seen. In the years preceding that momentous event the peoples of Europe, and more especially those of France, were living in a state of intellectual and physical oppression which is almost impossible for the individual of average intelligence and education to appreciate. Although republican forms of government had frequently existed and had been conducted in many instances with much success, there was no indication that any of them had left the smallest trace of democracy in Europe, and the idea of social equality on a physical, intellectual, moral basis did not exist. I fancy there is scarcely an observer of the events which transpired during the Great War, or a person who gives any concrete thought to the matter, who will not admit-indeed, who will not maintain-that the results which have issued and which shall issue from that conflict and particularly those that have to do with men's relations.h.i.+p to each other in every walk of life, whether it be governmental or individual, conductual or spiritual, will be so radically changed that the issues of the French Revolution will seem trivial compared with them.

It was vouchsafed me to be in a position during the last year of the war to see at short range and sometimes from a vantage-point the workings of the minds of a people who have had liberty, unity, and nationality on their tongues and in their hearts for half a century and more. The Italians were in the lime-light from the day Germany threw a brand laden with explosives and poison gases into the different Christian countries of Europe. Her conduct as a whole since that time has been one of dignity, honesty, responsibility, and the exponent of the highest ideals of nationality. Whether or not she succeeded at any time in gaining the complete and absolute confidence of her allies, it would be difficult to say. To get the confidence of an individual or a country you must trust them, and the more implicitly you trust the greater will be the confidence and the finer the quality. Every one knows that Italy's alliance with Austria was an unnatural one and the majority of her people have always believed that the issue of it would be disastrous. Even the most shallow student of history knows that Austria stood menacingly over Italy during the entire period of the unholy alliance, but never more insultingly so than in 1912, when she veritably defended Turkey, while Italy was at war with that country. When Italy decided to throw her lot in with the Allies, there is no doubt whatsoever that it was with the hearty approbation of the vast majority of her people. The treaty which her minister of foreign affairs, Sonnino, made with the Allies, and which is known as the Treaty of London, and which sets forth what Italy was to have when victory was hers, although not known to the people, was satisfactory to the government, and one who reads it now can readily understand why it was so. The question was-would it be satisfactory to other governments? Was it an instrument consistent with the new liberty? Was it not at variance with what was going to be considered a fundamental right of the people, the principle of self-determination?

Italy's conduct during the first two years of the war drew forth the approbation, the praise, and the admiration of the whole world. The quality of approbation was undoubtedly merited. Whether the quant.i.ty was merited is another question. Then came their colossal disaster of Caporetto, the explanations of which have been many-some partially satisfactory, others not at all. One of the undeniable results of it was that upward of a half-million of her vigorous fighting men were marched into Austrian detention-camps and prisons. The results of this defalcation upon Italy and upon her internal resistance everybody knows. It was a greater shock to Italy and far more sinister in its effect than it was upon the Allies. Following it, she gave an example of capacity to put her house in order, and to present a solid front, the like of which has rarely been given by any country of the world. She cleaned her house to good purpose. How thoroughly she cleaned it no one can possibly know who was not permitted to enter it. The account which she gave of her courage and her strength when the enemy attempted to cross the Piave, in June of 1918, and which she gave in maintaining her lines in the mountains against an enemy infinitely superior in numbers, was the earnest of her honesty and determination.

There were, however, some things that awaited, and still await, satisfactory explanation. When the war began Italy had a population of about thirty-six millions, Austria-Hungary about fifty-four millions. Italy had an army of upward of four millions of men. It was currently estimated that Austria-Hungary had an army of between six and seven millions. It is believed by the Italians that the greater part of the dual monarchy's army was on the Italian front, and Italy convinced herself that she was standing out practically alone against an army of greatly superior numerical strength and larger military reserves. She admitted that a few Allied divisions were with her, but she maintained that she was giving far more to the western front than she received from all the Allies. There is no doubt that there were a hundred thousand Italians in France, both in the lines and behind them, and there is likewise no doubt that there was no such number of Allied soldiers in Italy. She had called to the colors boys born in 1899 and 1900. Indeed, youths of the 1899 cla.s.s were sent to the front after the military reverses of October, 1917. Italy looked upon this in the light of a sacrifice which she was obliged to make in order to resist the forces of the empire which was at her throat. She believed that the Italian front was of signal importance to the alliance as a whole, and she made no secret of the fact that she was counting on the immediate a.s.sistance of American divisions. Her government frequently said that very nearly a tenth of her entire population was in the United States, and that America had always been her most trustworthy friend, and that two hundred thousand American soldiers would not only be a great moral force, but would impart fresh vigor to the national resistance.

No one denied the truth of these statements, but cogitating on them one is led to certain reflections, and they are: With an army of four millions of men, why is it they were able to put only a million and a half on the front? I understand that men were needed for munition factories, for the essential industries that provide for war consumption, and for the maintenance of the civil population; that fields must be tilled, mines must be worked, water power must be guarded, and railways must be manned. These things have to be done in every country, but soldiers do not do them. Other countries have militarized workmen, but they do not count them when they are enumerating the man strength of their army. In reality Italy had called to the colors all her healthy men between eighteen and forty-five in order that she might more easily manage them, govern them, discipline them.

The outsider who sees Italy through the veil of her statesmen's oratory and polemics knows her only pleasantly masked. One is led to think sometimes that they are more concerned with the appearance than the substance. It often looks as if they were banking too much upon her great and glorious past, and not looking to the furthering of conditions that make for the happiness and efficiency of their people. The conditions produced by the war have reminded the politicians in control that the people love their government in proportion to the benefits they derive from it, and I fancy it has at times felt that the people were not giving it that strong support which is rooted in love and consideration. "Four-fifths of the Italians have always lived on the war footing," said Prime Minister Orlando in one of his speeches to Parliament. He meant to convey that the Italians, being accustomed to hards.h.i.+ps and sacrifices, could stand war better than others. He claimed to see in this a source of strength. Yet he must have known that the soldiers lying down by the roadside in the days of Caporetto, awaiting with Mohammedan indifference the coming of the Austrians, were replying to the officers who were urging them to retreat to some place of reorganization: "We have always lived on polenta, and we shall always have it, and it will always taste the same even if the Austrians win." Though not responsible for the sins of the past, it seems incredible that the authorities were not aware of this wide-spread feeling among the people.

It is in the hour of great trial that our conscience shows us, as in a mirror, all our past shortcomings, and it admonishes us that we reap what we have sown. Reviewing the past, the Italian Government must have known that it could not have the unswerving loyalty of a people who for fifty years had been fed on promises, big words, and magniloquent speeches covering illiterateness, oppressive taxation, obstacles to activity, and necessity of emigration. It is not with words alone that one gives happiness to a nation and receives love and support. Emigration and Bolshevism are the two symptoms of the disease that threatens the nation. Nearly a million Italians emigrated in 1913, and socialism has a firmer footing in Italy than in any other country. Surely these facts have far-reaching significance. The conclusion is that there can be little doubt that men had to be called to the colors so as to manage them better with martial discipline. Possibly it was a wise measure and a necessary prologue to the rigid censors.h.i.+p and to Sacchi's decree, which was a kind of lettre de cachet.

I have often asked myself, What is the Italian's most dominant characteristic? What is his most conspicuous idiosyncrasy? One day I answer it in one way, another in another. But on mature reflection I think it is that he believes what he wants to believe and that he does not trust any one implicitly. He trusts his own fellow citizen least of all. He says he trusts him, but when he puts him in a position of trust he puts somebody in to watch him and to report on him. The Italian has not that confidence in his fellow human beings that a normal man has in his honest wife, that a normal mother has in her dutiful child, that a normal lover has in his trusted innamorata. I am so prejudiced in the Italian's favor that I must defend even his infirmities. For centuries Italy was divided and weak, and countless times she has been the tool of the ambitious, the insatiate, and the predatory. She has been used over and over by more powerful nations as tongs to get their chestnuts out of the fire. For every favor she has received she has had to pay dearly, and she has learned by sad experience that promises are usually made of fragile material. Leaving out the treatment she received from France and England in the nineteenth century, more particularly during the years when she was big with nationality and unity, and during the period when she gave birth to these beloved terms, the treatment she received from these nations in 1911 and 1912, while she was waging the Libyan War, still rankles in her bosom. Despite Salisbury's promises and his parable of the stag, they recall England's disparagement of her initiative and of her conduct of her righteous War. They recall the sinister frenzy that France displayed when they took the S. S. Carthage into one of their ports because they believed she was carrying aeroplanes to the Turks, and the S. S. Manouba because she had Turkish pa.s.sengers camouflaged as doctors and nurses. She recalls also that when the Hague Tribunal practically decided in her favor, neither France nor England displayed the slightest graciousness.

Despite these stabs of yesterday, Italy must purge herself of distrust, which is the ferment and leaven of weakness. She must make good her alleged trust of France, her professed confidence in England, her hail of the United States as her deliverer. It is difficult for me to believe that often she has not had one language on her lips and another in her heart. The time has come when she must make the words of her heart and her tongue one. The moment has arrived when she must put her cards upon the table and say: "That is my hand and I play the cards face upward." If she can be made to realize it, Italy is big with the prospect of a glorious future and her delivery will not be long delayed.

Nothing impressed me so much in Italy during the momentous last months of the war as her ideas of nationality, the ideas that found dissemination, if not birth, in the prophetic soul of Mazzini and which began to germinate nearly a century ago. "Great ideas make peoples great, and ideas are not great for the peoples unless they go beyond their boundaries. A people to be great must fulfil a great and holy mission in the world. Internal organization represents the sum of means and forces acc.u.mulated for the performance of a preordained mission without. National life is the instrument; international life the goal. The prosperity, the glory, the future of a nation are in proportion to its approximation to the a.s.signed goal." These words were written by Mazzini several years after his ideas had made Italy great, and during the war they were on the tongue and in the pen of every constructive statesman who was satisfied to live only under liberty's banner.

For fifty years or more, but particularly since that fateful day, the 20th of September, 1870, when Italian union became a reality, she had professed the profoundest sympathy for the oppressed nations of her hereditary and actual enemy, Austria-Hungary. Since the beginning of the World War the proud spirits of these oppressed nations, now commonly spoken of as the Czecho-Slovaks, had been active in devising plans that would liberate them and their peoples from the jaws of the monster. The whole civilized world who love liberty were in sympathy with them. No one denies that they accomplished results that were almost miraculous. Those who had real knowledge of what was going on in the world knew that in a measure we owed to them the secrets of Germany's diabolic machinations in our own country when we were on terms of amity with the Central Powers. It was not denied that Italy's success on the Piave in June, 1918, was in some measure at least due to the information that the Czecho-Slovaks were able to give the Italians.

In April, 1918, there was a congress of Czecho-Slovaks in Rome, which was warmly received by the Italian people and by some representatives of the Italian Government. This congress formulated the principles upon which it was waging war against Austria-Hungary. It set forth in language that even a child could understand its ideas of nationality. It put before the democratic nations of the world the ideas that they represented and proposed to represent. Their claims received the approbation of the prime minister of Italy, but for some inexplicable reason the stamp of approval of Italy's minister of foreign affairs, the only one who was in a position to represent the government authoritatively, was withheld from them. It was necessary, apparently, to bring the country to the brink of dissolution of its government by a public agitation of the question initiated by the Corriere della Sera before Sonnino's official approval of their aims could be secured. Despite the fact that France, England, the United States, j.a.pan had in turn accorded to the Czecho-Slovaks the right of nationality, and despite the fact that it was well known that that organization called into being by Italy's n.o.ble, loyal sons known as the Fascio was warmly and industriously championing the cause of these oppressed people, yet the governmental hand had to be forced before she would put it on the table and play her cards face upward. When the Corriere della Sera was able to throw off the manacles of the censors.h.i.+p and bring the subject of discussion into the public arena, the influential journals that represent the standpatters in the government, such as the Giornale d'Italia, the Epoca, and even the Messaggero, denied that there was any dissension or shadow of dissension between the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs, and they continued to deny it in the most determined and deliberate way up until the very last moment. Sonnino's champions maintained that the position he took was necessary that Austria-Hungary's intrigues be rooted up and killed. The fear was expressed that the new policy favorable to the Jugoslavs might circ.u.mvent the stipulations of the Treaty of London, which were favorable to Italy, and sacrifice them to the exaggerated claims of the Jugoslav ideas of nationality.

The Corriere della Sera pointed out the futility of too great adherence to the Treaty of London and asked: "Can we expect Wilson to feel bound by the I. O. U. given to us in London if he did not sign it?" It insisted that the maintenance of the London treaty in full force was incompatible with a policy favorable to Czecho-Slav aspirations. This embittered those holding the opposite view. The Tempo rejoined: "An attempt is made to make Italians believe that there is a conflict between Rome and Was.h.i.+ngton due to our 'imperialistic ambitions,' which are looked upon with distrust by Was.h.i.+ngton. It is for this reason, they tell us, that the United States is loath to give us the help of their forces on our front. The nation rebels against this and will not allow anybody to put a noose around her neck and blackmail her by any such dilemma: either we must have a change of policy, with consequent revision of the London stipulations, or abandonment on the part of the Allies. We are not defending Sonnino, but what is much nearer our heart-the interests of Italy. We defend the Pact of London as the only guarantee of our interests. You can't tell us that an effort is not being made to diminish those stipulations: It is not true...." (Here the censor intervened.) "We entertain no prejudice against the Czecho-Slavs provided they do not insist stubbornly on crossing our path, and prove that they can do what is necessary in their own interests instead of expecting sacrifices from us. Let them meet us halfway by implicitly recognizing the integrity of the rights guaranteed to us by the Treaty of London, which are the reasons for our having entered into this war."

In the same paper, August 20, 1918, appeared this editorial statement:

"Either this war will make us secure in the Adriatic or it will be a complete failure as far as we are concerned. In politics there are no friends. There are interests only. The friends of to-day may be the enemies of to-morrow. It doesn't profit us to take away the control of the Adriatic from Austria to give it to those who up to yesterday have been the bitter enemies of our race and who now, because it is convenient to them, pose as our friends. We are not surprised that this is of no concern to Mr. Steed (the English pro-Jugoslav journalist, for many years correspondent of the London Times in Italy and now its editor). Were we English instead of Italian we also would not mind to see the Czecho-Slavs inherit the vantage position of the Adriatic held to-day by the Central Empires. This may be sufficient for those who only see in this war an Anglo-German conflict, but it is not sufficient for those who look only at Italian interests. It is easily conceivable that others may be interested in perpetuating our weakness in the Adriatic which will prevent our further development, but it is absurd that Italians should blindly follow such foreigners. Ask our navy officers, defenders of Italy, what they think of those who advise us to give up our just claims to the Dalmatian coast and islands, which is not only a pistol aimed at Italy's head, but a series of machine guns. The Treaty of London covers also our rights on the aegean islands, eastern Mediterranean, and colonies. If we establish the precedent that this treaty can be abrogated or diminished, we do not know where this may lead us-all our interests protected by it may be questioned sooner or later. This fact has surely not been grasped by those who intoxicate themselves with demagogic magniloquence, who believe that after the war men will go to play the bagpipe in the shade of ilex-trees, and that the kingdom of Saturn will be restored. It can be understood only by men still in possession of their full mental powers, who know that this is a conflict of political and economic interests, after which men will continue to forge weapons for the great compet.i.tions in the vast world, resuming the struggle for the control of colonial markets and supremacy of the seas. Only such men understand the necessity of defending unguibus et rostris, even against our allies, the juridical ground we have conquered. The London treaty must not be discussed, as it is the only justification for our war, conceived as a war, for national development and balance of power among the nations which will const.i.tute the new world which will be born out of this conflict. Whosoever thinks differently is a traitor to his country."

This is what may properly be called "tall talk." After this climax of virulence, a tendency developed in the press tending to mitigate the effect of such rancor. An attempt was made to show that the variance of opinions was more formal than substantial, and that it was for Parliament to decide. Even the Idea n.a.z.ionale expressed this opinion, though for years it conducted a campaign to undermine the authority and prestige of parliamentary inst.i.tutions in Italy.

The Tempo, however, did not back down, but asked: "Is it true or not that during the meeting of the oppressed Czecho-Slavs in Rome no territorial agreement could be arrived at because the Czecho-Slav representatives did not want to accept the Adriatic limitations involved by the Treaty of London?" It also sarcastically remarked that the Treaty of London is now being called the "Pact of London," that somebody has already started to call it a "memorandum," and that it is to be expected that soon it will be called a "laundry list." And it continued: "Is it true or not that our requests, contained in that doc.u.ment, are an indispensable minimum to insure our safety in the Adriatic such as will justify the enormous sacrifices we have made in this war? Are we not right, then, to distrust this policy favorable to the Czecho-Slavs which tends to postpone the solution of geographic points without first recognizing the Italian claims as being fundamental? Let the Czecho-Slavs first recognize our right to safety and let them dispel our legitimate diffidence. All this discussion seems to have been the pleasant outcome of those who entertain the jolly notion that we are waging a poetic war instead of trying to solve in our favor vital military and political problems, and that we should be perfectly unconcerned about knowing whether on the other sh.o.r.e of the Adriatic there will be either Germans or Slavs, Republicans, Catholics, Orthodox, Conservatives, Democrats, musicians, or poets."

Gradually the thunder-clouds began to disperse and a conciliatory element was introduced into the discussion. "Rastignac," who drives an authoritative quill, and who is one of the leading and much-listened-to journalists and lawyers of Italy, wrote in the Tribuna, the newspaper identified with Giolitti:

"Would it not be better to keep silent instead of creating currents of ideas hostile to Italy, all on account of the Pact of Rome between an Italy which is still invaded by Austria and a Jugoslavia which still exists in dreamland? Is this new pact, born through the efforts of the Anglo-French friends of the Czecho-Slavs, capable of diminis.h.i.+ng the Treaty of London, which is fundamental for our interests? Poor Italy, if this should prove to be the case. We are quarrelling as if the war had ended, Austria had been conquered and dismembered, and as if we were already seated before the green table for the signature of that treaty which will a.s.sign to this or the other power the shreds of Austria. Meanwhile we forget that there are seventy-two Austrian divisions on our soil, and that the war is continuing without the possibility of foreseeing when it will end. I am well aware that our friends of England and France, prompted by their great love for Jugoslavia, seem quite ready to sacrifice the Treaty of London to the new Pact of Rome. These friends are strongly inclined to be very generous, at our expense unfortunately. We are being lulled into the belief of a sure dismemberment of Austria, on which dismemberment is based this new creation of our allies, i. e., Jugoslavia. It is strange, however, that there are in France some political parties who reproach Clemenceau for having ruined the rich possibilities of which the letter to 'dear Sixtus' was full.... It is no mystery that tradition is not easily uprooted in England and that one of the deepest-rooted of them has always been that of friends.h.i.+p with Austria. There are roots much older and stronger than the new ones of the "Society of Nations." ... Let's not base our policy entirely on a hope which will last we do not know how long, i. e., the destruction of Austria. Do not forget, please, that this, the greatest conflict of history, is nothing but a conflict of interests ill-concealed under the rosy cloak of the highest and n.o.blest idealism. Its true essence remains a struggle for political and commercial supremacy. It is no time now to read the 'Fioretti of St. Francis.' We shall have time later on for this."

The Corriere della Sera stuck to its guns. It was neither blinded by the rhetorical dust which the pro-Sonnino organs kicked up, nor was it asphyxiated by their noxious gases, and Sonnino had to line himself with England, France, the United States, and j.a.pan in according the Czecho-Slovaks nationality and rights of allies.

Italy's trials, ill fortune, and good fortune since then are much better understood if they are contemplated in light of that discussion and of her momentous election of the autumn of 1919.

CHAPTER XIII WORLD CONVALESCENCE

We had become so habituated to war and its machinery, its incidents and horrors, its demands and entailments, that when we were thrust suddenly into a new world with whose conduct and ordering we were unfamiliar we had the sensation of one who comes from long tenancy of a dark room into the glare of sunlight, the feeling of unreality of one who emerges from a delirium. The abdication of emperors, their flight and their fate distracted us for a moment; the abyss into which the Central Empires of Europe had been hurled arose before our eyes; the needs of the unfortunates in the devastated districts and of those struggling to get back to their native land made appeal to us; thoughts of future work and play occurred to us, but none of them engrossed us. Though saturated with the joy of deliverance no one gave himself over to revelling in it. Groping in darkness as we have been for so long, we blinked and gasped, trying to accustom ourselves to the divine light of the new day that had dawned, and to discern and define beauties which the new world would present. We were like a person who had suddenly been liberated from a danger that not only threatened his life but made existence insupportable. Utterance could not give such thoughts relief. Only appreciative silence could express his grat.i.tude.

In the lull or convalescence that came after the world's injury and long illness, peace terms were formulated, indemnities exacted, the map of Europe remade, and compacts formulated and signed to prevent another holocaust. Thus the greatest venture the world ever embarked upon will end. Then will come the great task-reconstruction of the world's inst.i.tutions.