ITALY AS A GREAT POWER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1722, 10 April 1888, Page 2

ITALY AS A GREAT POWER.

A gentleman who has recently travelled through Italy describes hn impressions of that country in a I'imphlet, in which he remarks that t u e dismal condition to which modern I ■ aly has been reduced, mainly through i a military ambition, is terrible and videspread; Especially pitiable is I lie' condition of the agricultura» population. For example, during the t j aimer of 1884 a meeting of the merchants of the Campagna was held, and amongst the resolutions adopted v. as the following: "That dead animals be buried in quicklime to prevent tlie peasants from digging them up and eating them, as often happens!" This is no isolated or extraordinary fact. Those who have seen these unhappy persons moving in gangs at errly dawn towards the fields where they are to work, conducted by an overseer on horseback, can scarcely have avoided a mental comparison between them and the slave droves of former times. Respecting the .miserable state of Italy, M. Emile de Lavaleye writes: —" Military and bureaucratic centralisation crushes these poor people who scratch the earth. Is it surprising that Socialism and Nihilism should arise to throw down all these engines of pauperism? How many villages have to be ruined in order to construct one war-steamer such as the Lepanto and its famous 100 ton guns? The official personages who order these formidable ironclads, the pride of Italy, do they think of the tears, of the sickness, and the ruin which they have cost? The disease, to which the name of pellagra is now applied, has largely incrtiled in late years throughout Italy. The pellagra is caused by wretched food and want of salt; and so it must remain as long as salt continues to bt a highly-taxed Government monopoly, regarded by the peasant as a luxury for the cattle. Italy has the ambition to be reckoned a Great Power. With a view to being strong she so arranges her affairs as to consign tens of thousands of the flower of her population, for generation after generation, to the pellagra and its frequent result, the madhouse, and to despairing agonies which result in wholesale suicides. She knows right well that the supplies voted for her absurdly bloated and useless armaments are raised by taxat tion which is crushing the nation into increasing poverty from day to day. Had Italy, during the past ten years, devoted one-fourth of the energy expended on sustaining the role of a Power to the amelioration of her material condition, her hills might have been rewooded, and her waste.' lands reclaimed, whereas she haa squandered her treasures upon useless vessels of the type of the- Italia, Lepanto, &c. Many believe they will render no service, and that they are. the destined prey of torpedo-boats and steam-rams. But no matter; Italy will have armour ships, and these monsters, which no one knows how to manage. ' Floating coffins' was the sarcastic term applied by a French naval commander to one of the newest of them, at anchor in the Bay of Naples. /On no account would I risk my person on one of them in a rough sea,' he, suggestively add*/. Well migh fc M. Lavaleye . exclain, "Poor Italian cultivators ! Whs misery, what sufferings, what teart yea, what vices and crimes, are repre sented by the hundreds of millions ot francs that four of these iron clad i ships have cost! What colossal and culpable folly ? "—Herald of Peace.