BRITAIN TO ITALY

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 86, 9 October 1915, Page 14

BRITAIN TO ITALY

AN INTELLECTUAL MESSAGE. A notable letter has been addressed to the Italian nation, signed, on the invitation of Lord Bryce, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Lord Reay. Sir George Trevelyan, and Mr. Robert Henry Benson, by more than a hundred and fifty people of distinction and authority in Great Britain. The list of signatures is headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and includes ten members of the Order of Merit, fifteen Lord Mayors or Lord Provosts of the greatest cities in the realm, five Chancellors of Universities, and an array of authors, painters, scholars, scientists, statesmen, and divines. It runs thus :—: — "We desire to place on record our admiration and respect for the conduct of Italy at this supreme crisis in the history of the world." " Italy and Great Britain are now companions in arms fighting side by side for the triumph of the same cause. Circumstances drew our own country into the conflict from the beginning, while the ghastliness and the magnitude of the task before us were still only dimly manifest. Yet none of us will forget the crisis of decision through which we passed in the first days of August, 1914. " Italy has had a still harder path to tread. Immediate action was not her part, and she had to bear the strain of nine months' suspense before her hour of decision arrived. During these nine months she saw all the established regulations and mitigations of warfare swept away by the enemy's systematic and cold-blooded resort to methods of a cruelty to non-combatants unprecedented in modern history. "Yet, in spite, or rather because, of all which she knew 'she would have to face in a conflict with the Germanic Powers, Italy nerved herself to the ordeal, resolved to do her utmost towards securing that such horrors as Belgium saw, and as the ocean has 6een, 'should never again threaten the civilised world. " She made her decision at a moment when the prospects of early victory seemed remote, and only the arduousness and the imperative necessity of the task were apparent, and she had to reach this decision through a series of the most complex diplomatic negotiations, which demanded the coolest judgment and most perfect mutual confidence from both Government and people. "At last the suspense is over. Since 20th May, 1915, Italy stands in arms at our side; and we feel that an expression of this comradeship on the part of a few among her British friends — we say [ a few, because everyone in these Islands is Italy\s friend — would be both welcome to her and congenial to ourselves. " The Italian people- is at war to liberate its own brethren from an old oppression, and to avert from the whole of Europe the threat of a new military domination. Italy has staked all that she has foT the same principles of nationality, humanity, and public right that inspire our own endeavours in this wax. We hope, with all the earnestness in our hearts, that her national aspirations will now be consummated, and we wish the heroic Italy of 1915, to know from our own lips that we feel towards her as our fathers felt towards the heroic Italy of the Risorgimento."