As our readers know, our sympathies are strongly with the
Italians, and we have felt great indignation against the way in which criticism of them has been expressed. But though we think that the English correspondents ought to have given far more prominence to the provocation received by the Italians, and so in essence may have been unjust, we are sure that this injustice was not intentional. They were genuinely horrified at the nature and extent of the executions. Further we must repeat our belief that in the excitement and in the not unnatural exaggeration of the extreme danger of the Italian position the reprisals went much too far. We say again, however, that all this cannot for one moment justify the excited and violent language in which the Italians have been assailed. The language which has been used towards them would have been too strong even for the Armenian massacres at Constantinople, the massacre at Adana, or the Macedonian horrors.
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