ITALY'S POLICY OF ADVENTURE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 83, 21 November 1911, Page 3

ITALY'S POLICY OF ADVENTURE.

ITS ORIGIN AND EVILS. Writing on the present situation between Italy and Turkey an English journal says: Whatever delusions may have possessed the minds of some Western statesmen as to the import of the Turkish revolutions of July, 1908, and April, 1909, their true significance was clearly understood at Rome, and the prospect of a facile acquisition of Italy’s share of the carass of Islamic i\orth Africa indefinitely receded. The victory of the Young Turks was a nationalistic and patriotic one, a virile military reaction against the ignomy of the ilarnidian regime, widen was compounded of espionage and terror at home and dismemberment abroad. The hostility of its leaders to Italian colonial aspirations in Africa has been marked and incessant—they, of course, could not be expected to recognise the “special” position in Morocco which Italy claimed for Jjerself; a series of incidents, each ol minor importance, "but which have in the aggregate wounded Italian self-esteem, culminated in a refusal to allow excavations in Tripoli under Italian auspices while permission was freely given to the American Government.

.Now Italy, too, since 1908 lias had her “SToung Turks.” A new national, not to say Chauvinist) party, eiucn.y composed of literary and professional men, has arisen and loudly asks what is the use ox an expensive and powerful navy it Italian foreign policy is to consist of a series of humiliations; it clamours for the occupation of Tripoli. A new generation of Italians nas arisen to whom the calumnious issue of African adventure under Depretis and Gnspi is but a vague tradition. Moreover, it must be rememoered that the Italy of the twentieth century is not the Italy of the past eighties. The amazing economic and financial risorgimeuto in North Italy since 1900, with its decade of expanding revenue and the handsome surpluses, is a potent factor in the situation, and a Government already in diuiculties with an unpopular proposal for a State insurance monopoly and an electoral law which would add millions of illiterates to the electorate may well be tempted to divert attention by the initiation of a “spirited” foreign policy. it is, however, earnestly to be hoped that the sound instinct of the mass ot the Italians will render such a policy impossible. Italy has nothing to gain and much to lose in an attempt to hunt witli the lion in colonial aggrandisement. She has small reserve or wealth to fall back upon; her population is heavily, too heavily, taxed already; she has an Africa within her own boundaries—the poor, uneducated, half-fed millions of Clio south. She mis a vast population to whom bread and salt are luxuries; she lias whole provinces where illiterates number 70' per cent of the population, where education is starved and ignorance so profound that the most elementary aygieiiie. precautions against cholera •no regarded by the peasants as subtle attempts of tne Central Government to spread the disease in order to reduce their numbers, and are resisted with bloody and savage violence. Italy’s troubles would only begin with the outbreak of an attempt on Tripoli, anil the ultimate disaster would impel il the very existence of the monarchy and tempt her old enelny to pusn down the Dalmatian coast from Gat taro and make the Adriatic an Austrian lake. It would strengthen the Socialist party and heal the broach between itepublicans and Socialists. That party is the only organised body able to voice the bitter Hostility of the working class to perilous adventures in the sandy wildernesses of Africa; for the democracy of Italy, preoccupied as it is with the economic emancipation and social redemption of the labourer, is profopndiy peaceful, and already tiie capitalistic press is bidding the Premier, Giohtli, in elephantine type to choose between Italy and Dissolute (the Socialait leader who recently refused a seat in the Cabinet). It is hard to believe i.iuu Giolitti, wiio kept Italy out of .;u- Hulks*.;; imbroglio in 1908, will set

ino East ailamu for the sake of a A'orth African desert. The Italian peasant obstinately refuses to colon-

ise the shores of Abyssinia and Somaliland, which are now and will lonja;

remain a charge on the national Exeiicqner; lie turns in his tons and Hundreds of thousand to the lands of promise in the West, to the United States and to Argentina, and will never turn from his Eldorado across ihe Atlantic for a barren African protectorate. To the present masters of 'turkey the loss of the last remaining province of the vast Osmali Empire in Africa would be an irreparable disaster, and they would resist an armed Italian occupation to the utmost. The strain of a European \Bar would wreck the line .fabric of Italian national credit, so patiently and laboriously built up through years of selfdenial'and economy in her people, and nipple her linanecs for a generation.