Italy for the Italians

IN the early summer I was asked by the Atlantic to visit some countries in Europe which lay under the shadow of war — the Baltic States, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, and, later, Italy and Turkey. My task was not to seek out the political sentiments of statesmen or their ‘attitude’ towards the impending conflict, but to learn what the peoples of these countries thought about the future and its dangers — in short, how the prospect of war affected their words and doings in the present and their hopes and fears for the future.

For me it was a novel and interesting assignment. It was true that in Russia — and in France during the last war — many years of residence had made me familiar with the thoughts and feelings of the masses as well as of their leaders, but my work had always been concerned primarily with the major lines of politics and economics. Now it seemed I was to put that in the background and turn my attention to the changes which coming events might bring to humble lives. I thought I could learn much from this new departure and welcomed it accordingly. But even at that time there was one drawback to the program that looked so inviting — the feeling that war might break out before inquiries were completed. I must admit that I did not think it would. I did not believe that Germany wished to fight against France and England, and I was sealed to the conviction that France and England would take up on behalf of Poland the gauge of battle refused for Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, that uneasy feeling persisted, and the event proved it was more warranted than I had thought.

I was making, you understand, a slow tour through Eastern and South Central Europe. At Budapest, in August, I had already booked passage on the airliner to Milan when the first sound of thunder came from the cloud which I had seen no bigger than a man’s hand two months before from Warsaw. So I hurried instead to Paris, and there, a few days later, the storm broke. In consequence I did not reach Italy until the German armies were already marching victoriously across the sun-baked Polish plains. Somewhat surprisingly, as it then appeared, Italy had as yet no part in the struggle, but it was evident that the tone and subject of my story must be changed.

Although Italy held aloof, half of Europe was at war, and it was inevitable that the thought and topic of war must dominate the minds and conversations of all Italians, small and great. In other words, I found that political issues now bulked so large in the foreground that the lesser things of daily life were almost hidden by their shadow. The men and women of Italy’s towns and villages were possessed by deeper perplexities than how they should eat and work and enjoy the fruits of their labor and marry and rear their children. Willy-nilly, they were forced to think first and most of the problems of their country: Was the ‘axis’ with Germany a steel bond of union or a flawed and sordid figment? Why had Italy not fulfilled by action the terms of the alliance which had been signed so lately with resounding pledges and fanfares? Where now did Italy stand — on whose side — for how long? And a host of other questions, about Hitler’s pact with Stalin, and the state of affairs in the Balkans, and Turkey and Tunisia, and the army of France, and England’s fleet, and opinion in America.

‘Because they were tired of uncertainty?’ said the old man incredulously. ‘That seems no reason for war!’ We wore sitting on a bench in the Italian frontier station near the mouth of the Simplon Tunnel. I had come through from Paris on the Rome Express and been gratified to find that it was the one train in France or England which is fully lighted — inside — with sleeping cars and restaurant. Of course the corridors are darkened, but you can have lights in your coupé. It is hard until you have tried it to realize how tiresome is travel alone in a ‘blacked-out ‘ train.

The old man was a retired brickmason who had lived in France and spoke the language well and liked the French people, except, he Said, they failed sometimes to appreciate the full merit and value of Italy and the Italians. He had asked me why France went to war, and I’d said I really believed that the French were fed up to the teeth with the last two years of alarums and excursions and crises and mobilizations, and therefore had decided to put an end to it all. ‘You see,’ I added sententiously, ‘the French are a logical race and have a neat and orderly mind. They like to plan things in advance for themselves and their wives and children. And so France went to war because she was tired of uncertainty.’

The old man tugged his beard, which was white but not too clean. ‘And we,’ he said, ‘are we not Latins too? But don’t you know, cher monsieur, that we for many years have used uncertainty each day to flavor our soup for dinner? He’ —the way he stressed the word left no doubt of whom he spoke— ‘he had said that Italians must live bravely and be ready at any moment to die for Italy’s sake. And so there is hurry and rush, and men are sent here and there and dragged away from their vines to build ships of steel at Spezia or make roads in Libya or fight in Abyssinia. I am old and I don’t care, and the young ones don’t care either. But the others grow tired of running and want to think more of their homes and less of Italy’s glory. This country, I tell you, is tired — no matter what he may say.’

Just then my train hooted for leaving, which ended our conversation. That annoyed me very much, because always, especially when one is making a tour of inquiry like mine, the next most important thing to learning what people say is to learn why they say it. I mean that so many people everywhere are prone to speak of their country in terms of themselves, a trap which foreign seekers after truth must rapidly learn to avoid. As if a Republican banker might say, ‘No decent American has any sympathy or respect for the present administration or will vote to retain it.’ That remark was made to me a few weeks before the last election — and therefore needs no comment.

As the train ran down through the mountains past Locarno (‘Briand’s folly,’ as someone has cruelly called it), through Stresa (another pipe dream of peace), I wondered whether the old brickmason said that the country was tired because he was tired himself, or whether Mussolini was right and Stalin was right and perhaps even Hitler was right: that you can catch and train the young ones and spur them on with words of pride and regiment them all for a single purpose in the name of a sacred cause, — Mohammed, for instance, and the Crusades, — or for liberty, as Napoleon did, and, more lately, for the state and racial-nationalist patriotism.

‘What strikes you most about Italy?’ asked a young man I met at dinner my second night in Rome. He was the confidential secretary of one of some thirty industrial leaders whom Mussolini had summoned that week to Rome. He was ‘of course’ a member of the Fascist Party — I didn’t press that point, but noted it with interest. I slid his question off. ‘That your towns and trains are lighted — it’s dark, you know, all over England and France.’

‘Hiding in the dark,’ he replied. ‘They tell me Berlin is still lighted.’ His tone was friendly, not sneering, which is one of the things you have to watch in Italy, where most people I found were less fond of the Germans than I had expected; but one never knew. So I said, ‘Oh, well, you see, that’s the disadvantage of being decent. I mean that the French and English can’t bomb German cities except perhaps as reprisal and even then they won’t like it, whereas what the Germans might do does not depend upon pity or the bowels of compunction.’

‘And what else do you see about Rome?’

‘Surprisingly few automobiles in the streets and no coffee,’ I replied.

‘Gasoline and coffee, yes, and wheat and coal and iron and rubber and cotton — all that means foreign valuta. I should like to ask you something: will England try to blockade us because we did not join Germany in war against the Allies?’

‘I hope not,’ I said, ‘but you know what it is — they are afraid of stuff reaching Germany. Anyway, what do you intend to do?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You heard what the Duce said — stand pat and keep our powder dry. But do you know that Italy was not overjoyed at Hitler’s deal with Stalin, and that we Italians have a sort of instinctive sympathy with the Poles and Hungarians and were not unduly eager to coöperate in German plans for smashing Poland and swallowing South Central Europe —whether that would involve war with France and England or not. We are not afraid of anyone, nor afraid of war, but . . .’

‘You’ve been at war a long time,’ I suggested. ‘Since ‘35 in Ethiopia, and Spain after that —rather tiring, don’t you think?’

He frowned at me with doubtful eyes. ‘Do you mean we don’t know what to do, or have no strength to do it?’

‘You spoke yourself,’ I answered, ‘about Germany’s deal with Russia and what that may mean to your interest in the Balkans. Of course I don’t doubt your strength, but a man uses strength for his friends, and are you sure of your friends?’

‘ Why emphasize the word “ friends ”? ‘ said an Italian captain who was dining with us. He had fought in Ethiopia and Spain and was also a member of the Fascist Party.

‘I meant are the Germans your friends — or the Russians?’ I said.

He laughed, ‘You may not believe it, but I was born at Delphi, and still I cannot answer that riddle. My father was Consul in Greece and my mother had got her dates wrong or something, but anyway it’s true that I was born at Delphi and still can’t answer your riddle.’

I thought their failure to answer might be an answer in itself — that not only they don’t know but Italy herself does not know where she stands and which are her friends.

‘It has been argued,’ said my host, ‘that the Pontine Marshes were one of the chief causes of the downfall of imperial Rome. They were a hothed of malaria which thinned the blood and weakened the energies of the Roman people.’ We were lunching in the garden of his villa overlooking what had been those marshes but now is fertile farmland with flourishing towns and villages.

‘I think,’ he continued, ‘this is perhaps the greatest achievement of our régime. It was a task of incredible difficulty, and it may interest you to know that we received most valuable advice and information from America — I suppose from what your people had learned at Panama.’

‘You have done great things in Libya,’ I replied; ‘made a garden of the desert. And in Abyssinia, too. A friend of mine who was there recently said the Italian network of roads was one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times.’

‘Yes, that’s part of our Roman heritage. I know that Americans don’t like dictatorships, but this regime has transformed Italy, put new spirit in our hearts and made an old people young. Centralization of power makes possible things like this’ — he waved his hand towards the smiling fields below us. ‘In a country that’s overpopulated, with few natural resources, we are stamping out disease and ignorance and poverty. Give us ten more years and you won’t see —

‘Ten years of peace,’ I interrupted. ‘But Europe’s already at war. Is that why Mussolini wants to stay out?’

‘You foreigners misjudge the Duce. You pay too much attention to what you call sabre rattling and fail to realize that that is part of his program to rejuvenate Italy. But he is a prudent statesman and knows that neutrality — if Italy can stay neutral — is not so easy for us as for the United States. I think you underestimate the effect upon this country of Germany’s deal with Bolshevism and what it may mean to Poland. Don’t forget that the Vatican is still a great force, a great force inside Italy as well as outside Italy.’

That conversation left me bewildered, but I thought I was getting somewhere. The job I was trying to do is like, in a minor degree, that of the Intelligence Service of an army in wartime. I mean that it consists in collecting all manner of apparently irrelevant details and putting them together and weighing them and selecting the parts that count; and then, after you’ve selected them, in deciding what they mean. In short, it’s a question of judgment, but there must be some guesswork as well.

I had not been in Rome for twenty years, and the thing which truly struck me most — omitting the lighted city after darkened Paris and London, and no private automobiles unless they had a foreign license, and not a drop of real coffee in even the best hotels — what honestly struck me most was the change in Italian girls. In looks as well as behavior, it’s a wonderful change for the better. They used to look dumpy and dowdy, and were Surrounded by chaperons and class prejudice if they belonged to the Social Register, and by shyness and superstition if their blood was less blue. Now, however, girls — at least as far as Rome is concerned — look and act like girls in America. Gay and athletic and free; not bold or bad, but friendly — companions and partners at games with their brothers and brothers’ friends. And so much better dressed than before! Italian rayon has done that.

This girl who was talking to me had worked her way by scholarships through high school and, of all unexpected things, through a college of veterinary science — or animal husbandry, as they call it at Ohio State University. She was also a first-class swimmer and might, I was told, have represented her country at tennis if she had given more time to practice. Her ambition, it seemed, was to make, or help in making, a second Texas or Argentina for cattle in the Abyssinian uplands. She talked good English, too, although she had never left Italy.

The first thing she said was, curtly, ‘I hear you come from Russia. We don’t like Bolsheviks here.’

‘Oh, afraid of the Balkans, are you? But I think that’s Germany’s rabbit — or a Russo-Turkish combination as well as Russo-German,’ I answered rather unkindly. Newspaper men learn, God wot, to suffer fools gladly, but this one wasn’t a fool and seemed to need sharper treatment.

‘What’s more,’ I added, ‘you mustn’t forget that your Duce learned something from Lenin and wasn’t unwilling to say so; and finally, last but not least, that Russia is playing her own game in this European imbroglio, not the German game. But never mind about that — I gather your work is with cattle, bloodstock and bettering strains, which must throw you to England’s side.’

She did not wait for me to ask why; she was, as I said, a smart girl. She said, ‘ Oh, yes, the Allied blockade — we couldn’t get stock from America, North or South, and the English is still the best.’

‘That’s just what I meant,’ I replied. ‘And even those dreadful Russians keep on buying English bloodstock, stallions and bulls and boars and rams and even rabbits. So of course you can’t fight against us.’

She looked at me doubtfully, then said, ‘But why should Italy fight? We have the wisest leader in the world,’ — she spoke with great sincerity and most Italians agree with her, and perhaps at that they are right, — ‘so why can’t we be friendly with both sides? We don’t much like the Germans, but I hope you won’t try to suggest that either England or France has treated Italy fairly from the Peace Conference up to now. “Dog in the manger” is, I think, the phrase we apply to them.’

‘Meaning Lebensraum ‘ I said.

‘Meaning nothing of the kind,’ she countered. ‘There is room in the world for all of us and enough possibilities of developing food and raw materials to make everyone contented. That’s what the Duce knows, and if only you’d understand—’

‘Wait a minute,’ I checked her. ‘Can your Duce stop this war?’

She tightened her eyebrows, frowning. ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure he would like to.’

She was quite young, that girl, and although her mind was good and welltrained she had little experience of life. But I thought that what she said was truer and made more sense, and perhaps represented better what Mussolini has in mind, than anything else I heard in Italy. The question the Duce must ask himself, however, and the question everyone asks, is ‘How can this thing be stopped — or is it not now too late?’

It was one of the meatless days in Rome, and business was brisk for the vegetable and fruit stores in the market. The patron of store number eight had a withered leg, and when he saw that I limped, too, that made a bond of union. So when the rush subsided we sat together and shared a bottle of wine.

‘I am fifty-five years old,’ he told me, ‘but I’ve never yet heard a shot fired in anger. On account of this, you see,’ he patted his withered leg. ‘The signor will understand because he too . . .’

I understood quite well — there is freemasonry amongst cripples.

‘But my son was young and strong,’ he said with sudden anger. ‘He was, you see, a Reservist and they asked for volunteers — for Libya. He had heard, my son Mario, my only son, that they gave new farms in Libya — all ready, you know, and irrigated, with cottages and tools and seed — everything all ready — that they gave them to volunteers — of course after two years’ service. So Mario volunteered.’

He looked at me with eyes that were burning and sad, but his voice was steady.

‘Do you know what happened then? They sent him instead to Spain — and somewhere there he was killed. They sent the paper to me; “Your son has died for his country” — in Spain. But my son volunteered for Libya, not for Spain, my only son. Died, I tell you. His name was Mario.’

Such cases were common enough, I gathered. And that, I thought, was the answer to those like my host in his villa overlooking the Pontine Marshes who spoke of the power of dictatorship and centralization and the duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the state. He too was wholly sincere, but the man in the market showed me the dreadful flaw in their totalitarian steel: that they don’t play fair with their people, because they don’t care to or dare to — I don’t know which is the worse. It is one thing to say, ‘You are cannon fodder, or small cogs in a big machine, or ants in a pitiless ant heap.’ I’ve seen that in Russia and Germany, and perhaps, from a practical viewpoint, it may bring successful results. But why lie to them? Why say, ‘Go to Libya and work and we shall reward you with farms’ — then send them to Spain to fight for a cause not theirs, and be killed?

I knew that he was an officer in the foreign service of the Vatican, which, I imagine, most diplomatic officers of any foreign service will agree is one of the best-trained and most efficient foreign services in the world. I did not know his rank or position in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, but he had a wider and tighter grasp of European affairs than any other man of his age — I should say between thirty-five and forty — I have met in the last ten years. He spoke with an assurance which I may envy but can never dare to emulate. Who am I, however, to rival — or question — infallibility, however diluted. He said, ‘Hitler’s deal with Stalin put a gulf between Germany and Italy which can never be bridged. I do not speak of what Poland meant as a Catholic country, nor of the future possibilities of Bolshevik influence in the Balkans, where Italian interests, as you know, are second only to those of Germany. I mean something deeper than that. Whether you believe it or not, there are such things as spiritual forces, the forces of darkness and light, the forces of heaven and hell. To speak in modern political language, I should say that Hitler has wrecked the ideological basis of his own platform for the hope of a material support which is neither certain nor sincere.’

‘Meaning that Italy is now pro-Ally?’ I asked crudely.

‘Not, I think, precisely that, but never again pro-German,’ he replied.

‘Not even if Germany’s winning?’ I insisted.

He did not answer immediately, and in those moments of silence I had time to think, perhaps unfairly to Italy, that here was the crucial point — a point, I may add, which has not escaped the attention of the Allied high command. Suppose the Germans won a battle or two battles, — they won more than that in the last war, — would Italy still stay neutral? I said that the Vatican diplomat waited before he answered, but when he did speak he spoke decisively. ‘No matter what happens, Italy cannot fight on the German-Russian side. Don’t you understand,’ he added quickly, ‘that even national interests cannot dominate? I mean that this country, my country, will not fight for the unholy alliance between Germany and Russia.’

I was much impressed by this conversation. To begin with, it was the first definite statement of the kind I had heard in Italy, where most people walk warily and watch their steps and words. Nevertheless, I think that what he said is the view of many Italians, many small ones and also some great ones.

Alexander Woollcott once said to me, as if he had discovered a great new truth, ‘I always talk to taxi drivers.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ I replied so quickly as to take Mr. Woollcott aback. ‘You think it’s because they see dozens of people daily and life in its seamier fringes, but I go further than that. I like them because they represent the higher levels of the industrial proletariat, plus an individualism so marked as to be almost anarchistic.’

At least that was true of one taxi driver in Rome. He said, ‘Italy go to war? I had too much war. They said it wasn’t war, but colonial expedition, to get new land and resources. But me, I lived in Chicago, and because they called them pineapples didn’t mean that they didn’t explode. Wars — wars — I tell you, mister, the way to win a war is to stay out of it till the last minute and then come in on the right side. We made that mistake before — as a matter of fact, I came back here myself and fought on the Isonzo. That was a battle, if you like. They talk about Verdun and the Somme, but the Isonzo was a battle. Did it do us any good? Of course not. The mistake Italy made in the last war was coming in too soon. Say we’d waited another two years and — ‘

I checked his volubility. ‘So now you won’t come in.’

‘ I hope not, ‘ he said. ‘ And why should we? We’ve done quite a lot already and we aren’t just “wops” any more. You wouldn’t know what’s been done in the last twenty years in this country, but I’ve seen it — they’ve done a lot. Why waste all that for a war?’

We had reached our destination, so the driver could turn around and look at me.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘Wars don’t pay — at least not a war like this. And we Italians ain’t dumb — you won’t see us again in their war.’

I didn’t think he knew much, but I didn’t think he was ‘dumb.’

They told me stories in Rome about dissension between the blackshirts — that is, Fascists — and the army: that the blackshirts were paid too much and the army too little, and that therefore the army pay had been raised and the blackshirts’ pay had been lowered. Which caused, I was told, some friction, and maybe that was the reason why Italy did not fight.

That Italian internal affairs did seem to require a certain degree of revision would appear to be indicated — you’ll forgive me if I speak like the English ministry of information, but that is the effect of war censorship — by the recent shuffle in the Italian cabinet and Fascist Party command. Italian national policy, which had been playing, shall we say, this way, found itself suddenly called upon to readjust itself that way — which was most confusing, not only to a foreign seeker for truth but to the Italians themselves.

I met, for instance, in Rome an officer of high rank who had fought in the last war and in Abyssinia and Spain. He was rather bitter about Spain because he did not understand what Italy had achieved there or what she had gained there except, as he put it, ‘some experience which may be valuable and a pain in the back of our head.’

‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that in the last four years Italy has sent one million men overseas — Libya and Abyssinia and Spain — all together?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you got experience, didn’t you, about modern war? And you still have Abyssinia and Libya. But then what? Where do you stand? That’s what I came here to ask: on which side is Italy anyway — for Germany or the Allies?’

‘For neither,’ he said simply, ‘but for Italy — and in that we trust the Duce.’