A Die-Hard Liberal
Cot'NT SFORZ,t is a die-hard Liberal, if we may be permitted the paradox. In the present book he surveys all the existing dictatorships--Italian, Hungarian, Jugo-Slav, Polish, Russian, Turkish ; he even discusses the incipient Nazi dictatorship in Cermany, and the defunct dictatorship in Spain. And every one of these regimes, except perhaps the Turkish, arouses equally his distaste. He has no use for shirts, whether black, red or brown. (Incidentally, why is it that the shirt— a somewhat humdrum article of clothing one might have thought—has become the symbol of intransigent extremism in politics ?) Count Sforza':; three chapters dealing with Italian Fascism tire, naturally, the best informed part of the book. They are anything but impartial, but Count Sforza's method of anti- Fascist propaganda is novel and effective. Instead of paying nuteli attention to Fascist outrages—although he writes with great feeling of his murdered parliamentary colleagues, Mai tioti and Amendola, the one a Socialist, the other a Con- fer, ative—he devotes himself to a studied belittlement of all the reputed achievements of Fascism.. Thus we are told that Fascism did not save the Italian middle class from Bolshevism ; that this had already been done by Giolitti and the author ; that 1 abC16:111.1ras not restored Italy 'n financial position that
. . . _ . Fascism has wasted golden opportunities for effective action in Italy's foreign affairs.
Particularly severe comments are made on the recent Lateran Treaty. Disasters for the Catholic Church are foretold as a result of its association with Fascism :
" In spite of the purely passive obedience which the lower clergy in Italy showed to the pro-Fascist orders of Pius XI after February, 1929; although those Bishops who have stood prudently aloof from Fascism outnwnber those who—following Papal instructions to the letter—have at least in 1929 and 1930 identified themselves with it ; ' yet it is to be feared that, when the Fascist scaffolding does ono day collapse, the world will witness an anti-clerical reaction in Italy such as has never been seen. I say purposely that • it is to be feared,' for even those who feel no link whatever with the Roman Church cannot but deplore—if they are good citizens and tolerant minds—that what might have been expected as a free evolution of spirits should degenerate into a string of Jacobin violence&
. .
"Verily, no enemies of the Catholic Church ever laid the fotmda. tions of future violence in the religious world, as successfully as did the negotiators of the Lateran Treaties of 1929."
Count Sforza has two chapters on the Soviet Union, which he has recently visited. His general description of Russian con- ditions tallies with much that has been written by other visitors of an attitude of mind similar to Count Sforza's. His account contains two errors of fact, however. The Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. numbers to-day about two million mein- hers, not one million, as he writes. The percentage of col- lectivized lands fell, after Stalin's "dizzy with success " speech of March, 1930, to thirty per cent —not ten per cent.
Incidentally, this chapter has the only important reference to Britain which the book contains. And it is a very witty reference, although the wit does not lack a barb. Count Sib= speaks of :
" the precious gift bestowed by divine grace upon the British people : the simultaneous action, in those islands (when a great British interest is at stake), of statesmen and diplomats coolly working to obtain some most concrete political advantage and, on the other side (and without any previous base secret understanding), clergymen and writers eloquently busy showing the highest moral reasons for supporting the diplomatic action which is going on in Downing Street. Such was the case of the Belgian Congo : Belgian rule had been in force there for yeses; but, at a certain moment, gold was discovered in the Katanga, the Congolese province nearest to the British South Africans possessions ; and Wallops and other pious persons started at once a violent press campaign to stigmatize the Belgian atrocities against the negroes. What is astonishing and really imperial is that those bishops and other pious persons were inspired by the most perfect Christian good faith, and that nobody was pulling wires behind them."
The other chapters of the book, an the smaller European dictatorships, are all informative, especially the one -devoted to the Jugo-Slav situation, with which Count Sforza is evidently very familiar. Altogether this is a work which no student of European polities should miss. Count Sforza, even though we may not be able to endorse all of his conclusions, shows us that there are still representatives of that cool, balanced and humane school of Italian statesmen, of which Cavour himself was the father.
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