FUTURE OF ITALY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25673, 23 October 1944, Page 2

FUTURE OF ITALY

DEMOCRACY’S CHANCES POLITICIANS DISCUSSED The only current which in Italy showed (in the past) a continuity of purpose and practice was the antiSocialist current, writes C. M. Franzero in; an article in . the Fortnightly, London. I deliberately abstain from calling it a party because that current could from time to time be identified with each of the large parties, or rather groupings of parties, which govern Italy. This is the puzzling question: Has that political physiognomy changed? Let it be noted that Mussolini was overthrown, for the benefit of the nation and the people, by the throne and by a palace conspiracy which could be described as reactionary—and not by any effort of the Socialist and other leftist sections. Whatever their “secret” feelings might be, they certainly left it to the “ despised ” monarchy and the “guilty” bourgeoisie to do what they had been promising for a long time they would accomplish—one day. Now we are quite accustomed to, not to say weary of, refugees who, posing as impromptu politicians, talk very glibly of what they had always “felt in their heart” and of the leadership they had in “ underground ” affiliations. The first batch of politicians who came to the fore in post-Fascist Italy still believed that the political battle of a new Italy could be won through vociferations. They cried, “The king's head on a platter, or we stay out.” The same mentality 20 years ago prompted the democratic opposition to cry: “Mussolini’s head, or we stay out.” Twenty years ago they said that they “ had retired upon the Aventine Hill ’ —that petty histrionic fondness of Italian politicians at all times for empty rhetorical expressions which is the incurable disease of political life in Italy! Because of this one feels prompted to ask: Will Italy ever be a democracy in the British sense? I have heard people in England say that democracy is the privilege of politically mature peoples. In some cases that may be so. Many Italians, however, would reply that democracy—real democracy, this is to say, real freedom of the people’s true Government—seems to be the privilege of wealthy countries, which help to make wealthy and powerful nations. When there is wealth—natural wealth and sometimes also conquered wealth —there is freedom from want and freedom from fear, and then democracy is possible, in its truest and largest sense. Political maturity is only a secondary point. Italy has 2000 years of political maturity, yet poverty has always denied hsr that democracy which the young and immensely wealthy United States of America perfected so soon.