BOOKS
459
more apt to give matter-of-fact opinions than Gaetano Salvemini. His
one-man struggle against fascism has been carried on for twenty years
by the force of sheer moral passion and documentation. Before
fascism, Gaetano Salvemini struggled against State corruption and
party politics in Italy on the basis of a very dogged kind of positivism,
maintaining that social and political questions were not a matter of
ideologies, but "problems", and problems had to be studied on the
bas~s
of facts, and that was all. This was his main contention in his
polemics against socialists. In America, he published
a
little book on
"Historian and Scientist"; its point is that the historian is an honest
man looking for truth and that little more can be said about history.
Honesty, for him, is the first and last word about every human problem,
and honesty, he would probably add if he cared for general statements,
cannot be taught. The story goes that once, in his young days, Gaetano
Salvemini was listening to a discussion about ethics at the Philosophi–
cal Society of Florence. Young and elderly professors said many
things about Kant, Maine de Biran, 'Croce, etc. Finally, they asked
Salvemini for his opinion. He stood up and said: "Frankly, I don't
understand a word of what you are saying. To me, ethics is an
honest man. And I can tell one when I meet him," then sat down.
To understand such an attitude, one has to remember that Sal–
vem.ini is a peasant from a very poor section of Southern Italy, where
people think much, say little and have big dreams which they know
cannot be realized. Salvemini's passion for facts and unmeasurable
scorn for party ideologies and theoreticians come from those roots.
One could accuse him of being narrow-minded, and even of a com·
plete lack of understanding of the true nature of social problerps.
Nobody could ever deny that his truthfulness knows no limits or
compromises. He once served as a deputy, and the late Prime Minister
Giolitti (whom he had called "the Minister of the Underworld" be–
cause of certain electoral method s which clearly foreboded fascism)
used to say of him in his own suave way: "Salvemini is my best ally.
When he makes a speech the whole Parliament turns against him and
forgets my humble person". More recently, I remember Sal vemini in
Paris, in 1935, making a very short appearance on the platform of
the Congress of Antifascist Writers. It was organized by Stalinists,
and everybody knew it; but since the line was democracy and the
united front against fascism, they had invited all kinds of people, from
Gide and Malraux to A. Huxley, E. M. Forster and Thomas Mann.
Salvemini had been invited too. The clue of the Congress was the
presence of a Soviet delegation apparently led by Alexis Tolstoi.
Everything was fine. Everybody made his little speech in praise of
democracy and tolerance, avoiding, even if only out of politeness, the
Soviet issue. Then came Salvemini. He said just a few words very
