MR LLOYD GEORGE ON MAZZINI

Evening Star, Issue 18045, 12 August 1922, Page 9

MR LLOYD GEORGE ON MAZZINI

WISDOM STILL TOPICAL. “I read Mazzini when I was young. I am glad that this meeting has been an inducement for me to start rereading him,” Mr Lloyd George declared at a celebration held recently in London in memory of the Italian liberator. “I had no idea how topical he was, how up to date he was. Joseph Mazzini, dead fifty years, and lying in Italian soil, is written for this hour. Listen to this phrase, and I ask all those who have special dealings with the ditticulties of Europe to think how true this phrase is j ‘Themorrow of the victory has more perils than its eve.’ The day after the victory is more dangerous than the day before it. (Cheers.) How true that is! It is not the spirit of gratitude for freedom, it is the spirit of remorseless pride that is the danger, and in the condition of Europe there is no greater menace to the life of the newly nucuttea nations than racial hatreds against and between neighbors; and the great ideal of the brotherhood of nations, which I hopo to see embodied and enforced by me League of Nations, is what will save the world from a repetition of what lollovved the great Napoleonic wars from 1815 up to 1860. (Cheers.) “ Thera are men who blame Mazzini for the present position of things. He is not responsible for tho frenzied nationalism which is the peril of to-day —the extravagant nationalism, the nationalism which fins no respect for tho rights of others. Mazzini never taught that. His career was an embodiment and a symbol of the good feeling and good understanding that exists between British and Italian democracies. He called ths his ‘second country.’ Here he - found refuge, protection, encouragement, support, friendship. “ The friendship of Britain for Italy, and Italy for Britain, which was cemented in those dap, continues arid grows, and I hope it bore some fruit in Genoa. There Italy and Britain conspicuously worked for the great end of peace and brotherhood which was tho ideal of Joseph Mazzini. I ventured to say at Genoa that the interest of Britain is a strong Italy, and the interest of Italy is a strong Britain. We have tho same common aims, the same common ideals. We can work together, we ought to work together. However powerful any one of us may be, wo are more than twice as powerful if we act together. It is imperative wo should work together. Let us continue to do so in a policy, not of selfish interest, not of greed, but in a policy of co-operation amongst free nations for the benefit of mankind.” (Cheers.)