Note 61 — Chapter V · PATRIOTISM AND POWER IN WAR AND PEACE

Quoted by Mr T. L. Stoddard in an article on Italian Nationalism, in the Forum, Sept. 1915. One may hope that the outcome of the War has modified the tendencies in Italy of which he treats. But the quotations he makes from Italian Nationalist writers put Treitschke and Bernhardi in the shade. Here are some. Corradini says: ‘Italy must become once more the first nation in the world.’ Rocco: ‘It is said that all the other territories are occupied. But strong nations, or nations on the path of progress, conquer.... territories occupied by nations in decadence.’ Luigi Villari rejoices that the cobwebs of mean-spirited Pacifism have been swept away. Italians are beginning to feel, in whatever part of the world they may happen to be, something of the pride of Roman citizens.’ Scipione Sighele writes: ‘War must be loved for itself.... To say “War is the most horrible of evils,” to talk of war as “an unhappy necessity,” to declare that we should “never attack but always know how to defend ourselves,” to say these things is as dangerous as to make out-and-out Pacifist and anti-militarist speeches. It is creating for the future a conflict of duties: duties towards humanity, duties towards the Fatherland.’ Corradini explains the programme of the Nationalists: ‘All our efforts will tend towards making the Italians a warlike race. We will give it a new will; we will instil into it the appetite for power, the need of mighty hopes. We will create a religion—the religion of the Fatherland victorious over the other nations.’

I am indebted to Mr Stoddard for the translations; but they read quite ‘true to type.’