ITALY'S STRONG MAN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2283, 17 October 1914, Page 8

ITALY'S STRONG MAN

THE MARQUIS DI SAN GUILIANO

The Marquis di San Guilano, who is stated by the cable messages this morning to be seriously ill, is the man of the moment in Italy, and his voice and views, more than those of any other man except King Victor Emmanuel would in the ordinary course, of ovents decido the immediate course of Italy's foreign policy. The writer of a recent character sketch in the "Daily Mail", said of. the Marquis:—The most difficult and delicate problem that has ever, faced an Italian statesman since Italy became free and united .faces him today. .But the author and prosecutor of the campaign against. Tripoli is not the'man to shrink : rfrom l ,it..'|,'. ..i' , '•,,.. ' The Marquis is .a .Sicilian of Norman descent, some sixty-throe years old, a senator and an inveterate student of international alfairs. In nearly thirtyfive years of political'life he has held but four , offices.' His appointment in 1905 as Foreign Minister was not well received in Vienna and, Berlin. Ho knew far too much for the comfort of his country's allies, foreign, and colonial questions have been his hobby almost since boj'hood;' ho has something of Lord Curzon's old-passion for investiKatiug them on the spot and at first hand; Albania, the Balkans, the Trentirio, Tripolij Erythrea, all the districts, in fact, which are the special concern of the ■ Italian Foreign Office ho has visited and oxplored, not as a mere sightseer, but, as his. admirablo writings show, as a keen and comprehensive observer of men and affairs.

Happily, the King, who is Italy's wisest statesman, and tho. Marquis see eye to eye. •,Botn worked together to make' the Tripolitan adventure not merely a success, but the beginning of a new Italian "risorgimento" (resurrection). Neither is a Jingo; neither seeks or wishes to revive those cplonising • enterprises that • received so great a check at Adowa; but each is conA'inced that , Italian interests can no longer be maintained by a merely negative policy. • '■.■■■ . What.line they,will together map out in tho present crisis will be known in.a very few days.: Meanwhile, it is worth remembering that when the Marquis di San Guiliauo was the Italian Ambassador in London somo, six or seven years ago, ho never disguised his faith that the old' friendship between Great Britain. arid ' 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.