458
On
Italy
WHAT TO DO WITH ITALY.
By
Gaetano Salvemini and George La
Piana. Duell, Sloan and Pearce. $2.75.
The Nemesis that under various names has been scourging Europe
for thirty years has now accomplished a new deed of retribution. The
Italian State is dead.
The Third Italy, or the Third Rome, as they used to say. It was
represented by a prosperous goddess with a star on her forehead and
a tricolored mantle around her waist. The star was meant to symbolize
a particular brand of good luck; thanks to the astuteness of her rulers,
she would eventually always find a way out.
It
was the Savoy brand
of luck, the ability to be a parasite of history.
Now the game is definitely over. The Italian State, born and
expanded out of a shrewd game of power politics, has been torn to
pieces by power politics, collapsing in such swamps of shamelessness,
double and triple betrayals that its nauseating agony finally does not
matter at all. The disproportion between the events and the behavior
of princelings, priests, generals, diplomats and bureaucrats is too
enormous. Until the very last moment, and after, they tried to cheat
history, frantically weighing lesser evils against blood and ruins. To try
to give an account of their minds one should perhaps go back to those
obscure pedants of late sixteenth century Italy, machiavellians gone mad
from too much hairsplitting over the idea of treason, who considered
themselves political thinkers, and solemnly gave advice that "When a
tyrant is threatening, it is better to fl ee, but when life is safe one should
stay and say that he wants to save the fatherland." The truth is
simpler. Those men never had anything in common with their peo–
ple, were never anything but individuals with special privileges. Now
they have fled, or have been swept away by the tornado. Somebody
may have a use for them, but the Italian people certainly have none.
T_he Italian people are left alone with death, destruction, hunger
and despair. Such company is not new to them, and is at least not
dishonorable. Now they can be received with full rights into the
great brotherhood of European misery. One can only hope that they
fully realize how alone they are, and that they won't expect salvation
from the outside.
What about the future?
I myself am only too inclined to think that after 1940 there is not
much room left anywhere in Europe for reconstruction plans and
concrete proposals, and that people will simply go on refusing obedi–
ence until the last vestige of the old powers has disintegrated. But I
know that this is not a "realistic" attitude, and I am very eager to
listen to matter-of-fact opinions.
So far as Italy is concerned, I don't know of any person who is
