ITALY'S STRONG MAN

North Otago Times, Volume C, Issue 13180, 8 October 1914, Page 6

ITALY'S STRONG MAN

SAN GIULIANO; FOREIGN ' MINISTER. : NOT LIKED IN BERLIN. Tlio man of the moment, not only in Italy but in Europe, is tlio Marquis di San Clniliano, Minister for Foreign Affairs (says tlio Daily Mail of August lfltli). His voice ami views more than tlioso ol' any other man 'except Xing Victor Emmanuel will decide the immediate course of Italy's foreign policy. The niost difficult and delicate problem that lias over faced an Italian, statesman since Italy became free and united faces liini to-day.. But the author and prosecutor of the campaign against Tripoli is not the man to shrink from it. The marquis is a-iSicilian of Norman descent, some sixty-three years old, a senator and an inveterate student of international affairs. In nearly thirtyfive years, of political life he has held Imt four ollic.es, His appointment in lllOi) as Foreign Minister was not well received in Vienna and Berlin, lie knew .far too much for the comfort of his country's allies. Foreign and colonial questions- have been his hobby almost since boyhood; he has something of Lord (Jury,oil's old passion for investigating them on the spot and at first hand; Albania, the Balkans, the Trcntino, Tripoli,.jjUrythrea, all the districts,, in fact, which arc the special concern of the Italian Foreign Ollicc he has visited and explored, not as a mere sightseer, but, as his admirable writings show, as a keen anil comprehensive observer of men and affairs,

Happily tlic King, who• is Italy's wisest, statesman, and tlie inartjuis sec eye to eye. Both worked together to make the Tripolitaii adventure not merely' a success but the beginning of a new J talinn risorgimento (resurrection). Neither is a Jingo; neither seeks or wishes to revive those colonising enterprises that received so great .a check ,at Adowa; but each is convinced that Italian interests can no longer be jnaintained by a merely negative policy. "What Jine they will together map out in the presiint crisis will be known ill a very few days, Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that when the Marquis di Wan Giuliauo was the Italian Ambassador in London some six or seven years ago, he never disguised his I'ailli that the old friendship between Great Britain and Italy should be something more than a tradition, and should be cemented by practical, cooperation between the two countries in the sphere of European politics.