APPENDIX III.
TURATI & CO. IN ITALY.
The copies of the Italian newspaper Il Soviet, referred to above, fully confirm all that I have said in my brochure regarding the error of the Italian Socialist Party, which suffers in its ranks such members and groups as Parliamentarians. It is still better confirmed by a layman, in the person of the Rome correspondent of the British bourgeois Liberal newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, whose interview with Turati is published in that paper on March 12, 1920.
Signor Turati, writes this correspondent, is of opinion that the revolutionary peril is not such as to cause undue anxiety in Italy. The Maximalists are fanning the flame of Soviet theories only to keep the masses awake and excited. These theories are, however, merely legendary notions, unripe programs, incapable of being put to practical use. They are useful only to maintain the working class in a state of expectation. The very men who employ them as a lure to dazzle proletarian eyes find themselves frequently compelled to fight a daily battle for the extortion of some trifling economic advantages, so as to delay the moment when the working class will lose their illusions and faith in their favorite myths. Hence a long string of strikes of all sizes and with all pretexts, up to the very latest ones in the mail and railway services—which make the already hard conditions of the country still worse. The country is irritated owing to the difficulties connected with its Adriatic problem, it is weighed down by its foreign debt and by its inflated paper circulation, and yet it is far from realizing the necessity of adopting that discipline of work which alone can restore order and prosperity.
