What to Do With Italy

THERE is no more distinguished anti-Fascist Italian exile than Professor Salvemini, and no closer student of Vatican policies than Professor La Piana. Together they have briefed enormous evidence that the only legitimate government for Italy — “legitimate” in Ferrero’s sense — is a republic. Against this documentation they set another: the record of appeasement, in deed and word, of our State Department and the British Foreign Office toward the monarchy, the Vatican, and the Fascist regime as a whole. Every line of this book underscores the current doubts of liberals concerning our European diplomacy. Messrs. Salvemini and La Piana are not of the extreme Left, but in their view a democratic Italy cannot now be established or be long preserved unless the monarchy is deposed, Church and State are separated in fact as well as in name, the big monopolies are nationalized, and Fascist leaders and profiteers are held strictly accountable for crimes and disservices committed against the Italian people.