The Dominion MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1919. TROUBLE IN ITALY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 230, 23 June 1919, Page 4

The Dominion MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1919. TROUBLE IN ITALY

One or two glimpses are given today of somewhat disturbing developments in Italy. A message from London speaks of disorders in that country "culminating in the sensational defeat of the Government by 259 votes tq 78." Dr. Dillon is quoted briefly to the effect that. Italy is seething with discontent, (hat revolutionaries are seeking to establish a communist republic, and that the outlook causes uneasiness. There is another cablegram which attributes the defeat of the Orlando Government to the failure of, its leader to induce the Peace Conference to endorse Adriatic claims, and also to irritation at dwindling food supplies and high prices. The suggestion that dissatisfaction with the handling of the Adriatic question is largely responsible for the downfall of the Government is hardly consistent with the statement which follows in the same message that Signor Orlando is expected to form a new Cabinet, omitting Baron Sonnino. Of the political leaders whose fate is now in question Baron Sonnino stands out as pre-eminently the un-. compromising champion of Italy's Adriatic claims. The Italian Foreign Minister is a diplomatist of the old school, set in the ways of that school, and probably is as little disposed as any man to admit that claims for which it was possible to state a good case in the early stages of the war are now invalid. It has been said, and there is no reason to doubt it, that in pressing the Italian claim to Finnic Signor Orlando readily made large concessions ovar the Dalmatian clauses in the Treaty of London (the treaty of-1915 under which the whole of Daliruitia was guaranteed to Italy), while Sonnino consented to these concessions very reluctantly. His removal, from the Government at this stage would imply amongst other things that the partyin Italy which desires at all costs to press the Adriatic claims in their most extreme form is falling into disfavour. It remains true, however, that whatever Government now assumes control in Italy will be called upon to cope .with extreme-' ly serious internal problems. The essential question raised is whether the Italian people are capable of exhibiting the steady fortitude and common sense which are needed to carry them safely through their present trials to a better future. The drain of war has been felt heavily in Italy, and she has suffered severely also in the conditions of restricted production and trade which still prevail in Europe and cannot speedily be remedied. She has no monopoly of such experiences, but they are to bo considered with the fact in mind that she litcks,. as yet, the settled national development of her principal allies, and that her political conditions are changing rapidly. Already she has moved a long way from the pre-war conditions in which Gioum maintained himself by corruption at the head of an all-powerful bureaucracy, but the party of sound reform is not as com-, pletely in control of events as could be desired, and its efforts to stamp out what elements of Bolshevism are astir in the country are made much more difficult than they would otherwise be by food-shortage and Us attendant evils. No really new development is implied in the attempts now reported to trade upon the social and political unrest of the Italian population m stirring up revolutionary disorders. As long ago as April 5, the Italian Socialist Parliamentary group issued a manifesto which went far to align it with the Russian Bolsliaviki. It demanded amongst other things "the union of all the proletariats" for the purpose of compelling the Paris Conference to respect the democratic programme with which the Entente entered the war, and for the purpose also of assuring to the proletariats of all nations the effective disposal of the executive power. In regard to Italy, it was stated, this meant "the reform of the Constitution by means of the widest suffrage, the direct representation of workmen's organisations, the abolition of every form of arbitrary power, the right, to the 'auto-convo-cation' of the Chamber, and the most extensive technical and administrative decentralisation." The total demand, obviously, is for the institution of that arbitrary control by the proletariat and by workmen's organisations which i'n Russia has overthrown freedom and introduced all the horrors of anarchy. The full text of the manifesto is not available, but according to an Kalian writer who summarises its contents in an article in the Manchester Guardian its authors speak, in the bombastic language that is common to the extremists of all countries, "of realising these reforms under the threat of methods similar to those which have brought Russia to ruin." The writer in question, Emilio Ceccki, declares

that the Socialist manifesto provoked an immediate reaction in the whole of the healthy and efficient mass of the people. Great reforms, he adds, must come, and arc partly coming already, to the Italian democracy, but it is absurd to think that the men who did nothing for the war and who during the struggle against German feudalism did not utter a word to encourage tho people to constancy and faith should now arrogate, control. Such details as Sigjtcr C'ecchi gives of the reaction against the disloyal manifesto show that it was broadbased. For instance: — The "Socialist Union," the Syndicalist groups which have strengthened thoif ideas of corporate bodies during tho war, the Radical-, who follow the "Serol'i," ilio Bound Liberals who follow the "Corriern delta Sera" and the "Tribuna," have replied with manifestoes and articles, and havo. immediately takijn up their fighting positions. And their power resides in their democratic spirit, seeing that nono of them protends to galvanise into lifn a regimo that has had its day. In a word, the Italy that is. sane and sound is defending itself against Bolshevism— not by showing that Bolshevism would destroy capitalism, but by demonstrating that it would destroy the proletariat anil dissipate, the conquests which the proletariat, with still a remnant of discipline and faith, is about to achieve. It is defending itself ngninst Bolshevism not by saying that the proletariat must not succeed, but by helping it to succeed, and 'to find its conquests not by means of nihilistic fury, but within the forms of its economic tradition and its national discipline. To what extent conditions in Italy have changed since these words were penned loss than two months ago is a matter of conjecture. Politically, the Italian Socialists have never hitherto been a powerful force. In 1913, seventy-seven Socialist deputies were elected out of a total of 508, and the pacifists responsible for the manifesto are a section only of 'this group, of seventy-seven. The power for harm of tho extremists is no doubt chiefly measured, however, by the degree of distress and' unrest prevalent in the country. The whole danger is that extremists, who are the worst enemies of reform and of international peace, may be enabled in conditions of food shortage and economic stringency to work with disastrous results upon the feelings of unthinking sections of an excitable Latin population.