The Italian people cannot be talked about as being again normal—ready for "normal government." How would you feel with regard to normalcy if at this moment, having put $1,000 into your bank sometime ago, you were to draw a check for $200, go to the cashier and say, "Kindly give me twenty $10 bills" and have the cashier retort, "Sorry sir, but you are overdrawing your account. You only have about $185 in this bank." Nor can you accuse anybody of taking that money away. Nobody has stolen it. It has gone, disintegrated. A lira is worth less than one-fifth of what it was before. People who planned to support themselves, their entire lives on earlier earnings or inheritances, cutting coupons, all sorts of pensionati who thought that they were sure that in their later days they could quietly live and think of the time when they served their government, their public utilities, their firms, now find themselves practically on the verge of starvation. You cannot speak of normalcy when a country is situated as Italy is at present. Under such conditions it is obvious that the granting of stability, of class cooperation, of a prosperity comparatively high even if far below American standards, can be paid for by the temporary sacrifice of an outworn ideal. But there is more. No matter which attitude we may have with regard to the theory of Fascism, or its existence beyond the Alps, (since I am discussing Fascism in Italy and not the doings of the Bavarian Fascisti or the British Fascisti or the Mexican Fascisti, for whom I hold no brief and for whom no real Italian Fascista should hold any brief,) the sheer evidence of facts, gathered not only by a few tourists but by statesmen, bankers and scholars proves in a thousand ways, that Italy may have paid dearly perhaps in freedom of expression, in democratic institutions, but has by that heavy price obtained a spiritual resurrection which goes beyond the actual matter of dollars and cents, of lira and centesimi, and amounts to nothing short of the rebirth of a nation.
It is amazing to see, as you travel from Ventimiglia to Fiume, from Chiasso down to Syracuse, a new spirit animating the Italians. They are proud and they are gay. The people again are talking to each other, the signore with the contadine, as they never did before. And the middle class, which is said to be on top in Italy now, is unprecedentedly idealistic. Class fights used to be continuous, especially at election time. Now the classes no longer fight—perhaps because there are no elections!
But, let us see. Few of us are quite happy at election time and say, "Now I have found the ideal candidate, the machine I was working for all my life. I had always wished it might come. Now I am happy again; I can see that nothing is wrong in this organization." With downcast eyes, a great many of us go toward the fulfillment of our political duties, wondering whether after all the vote that is being cast for certain unknown individuals sponsored by machines who have to reward loyalty more than ability, popularity more than honesty, is a vote ultimately for the good of the country and of the world.
14
