3 ISG CES Wen / CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The Disarmament Conference at Washington Will Be a Failure Only by the Abolition of Neutrality Can War Be Quickly and Forever Prevented ! LUIGI CARNOVALE Author of ‘““Why Italy Entered Into the Great War,’’ Ete. 2. alex Up, i ae CHICAGO. 0) Y ue \ \ a By the Same Author: A Visit to the Artist Andrea Cefaly— With Prefatory Letter of Cefaly Himself (Italy). ° My Mother (/taly)— The Dream of Francesco (Chicago, U. S. A.)— Journalism of -Italian Emigrants in America— 211 Pages, with cover designed by the artist E. Di Pinto (Chicago, U. S. A.) . Why Italy Entered Into the Great War— 673 Pages in English and Italian, with Tavola Clesiana and Map. Large 8vo. (Chicago, U.S. A.) Only By the Abolition of Neutrality Can War Be Quickly and Forever Prevented— : (Chicago, U. S. A.) In Preparation: Tommaso Campanella. The Omnipotents. The Disarmament Conference at Washington Will Be a Failure Only by the Abolition of Neutrality . Can War Be Quickly and Forever Prevented Hic vobis bellum et pacem portamus; utrum placet, sumite. LUIGI CARNOVALE Author of ‘‘Why Italy Entered Into the Great War,’’,Etc. Second Edition ITALIAN-AMERICAN PUBLISHING CoMPANY 30 North Michigan Avenue Curcac6, InLiNors \\: U.§. Ay SIGS Vike Ly CONTENTS Pace The Disarmament Conference at Washington will be a failure. . . . . ..,.. 3 Preliminary Notes .......... =~5 “Human Solidarity’ . ........ 6 Complementary Notes. . ..... . . 20 Extracts from Press Reviews of the book “‘ Why Italy Entered Into the Great War,” from which the chapter entitled ‘‘Human Soli- darity,”’ here reproduced, is taken ... . 23 AU 2OFO 3% x 1963 C4 Pez COPYRIGHT, 1921 By LUIGI CARNOVALE ‘ Price, 25 Cents feo ain THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE AT WASHINGTON WILL BE A FAILURE Just as the Paris Conference was a failure, so the Disarmament Con- ference at Washington will be a failure. I mean to say that the Disarmament Conference—whether its final decision be in favor of a limitation of armaments or in favor of complete disarmament of all nations—will not attain the end (immediate cessation of wars, with general and lasting peace) for which it was staged in Wash- ington with such a pomp of religious and diplomatic solemnity. It will ‘Not attain its end, because the Jeit-motif of its academic discussions was based exclusively on the false presumption that armaments are the cause— and the only cause—of wars, and that the limitation of armaments could result only in the elimination of the cause of war and the cessation of wars with the consequent advent of general and lasting peace. The Disarmament Conference at Washington, based on such a gross error and allowing itself to be ruled by it, forgot, or feigned to forget, two indestructible historical elements which cannot and should not be - forgotten. First. Armaments never were the cause—and much less the only cause—of wars. Nations armed to the teeth almost always have lived in peace with one another and even on good terms with one another. Let us note, for instance, the period preceding the Great War. During that time, armaments reached the most montrous proportions, whether we con- sider expenditures, quantity of material, or power for destructiveness, that evil human genius ever conceived and produced; but they were not the cause of the Great War; the nations most powerfully armed lived in peace with each other for years and were even on friendly terms with one.another. Armaments—particularly such as those of the period preceding the Great War—were nothing, to speak plainly, but purely industrio-commercial expedients employed by governments in the spirit of favoritism for the fur- ther fattening of cruel and insatiably greedy capitalists and speculators. Second. The limitation of armaments never eliminated and never will eliminate the cause of wars; it never determined and never will determine the cessation of wars and the consequent advent of general and lasting peace. Much less could the limitation of armaments proposed and sup- ported by the Washington Conference do so, for the simple reason that the decision to reduce armaments, with the object of immediately stopping wars and of bringing in a general and lasting peace, would be nothing at the end of the story but the official recognition and moral consecration (moral in the governmental sense, it is understood) of the present national- international statu-guo. But the present national-international statu-quo did not arise from principles of justice. On the contrary, it is full of injustice due to the profound social differentiations which, in the complex struggle of life, favor unduly—with material commodities and joys of all kinds—the small minorities of the masterful, the selfish, the, brutally unscrupulous; while, on the other hand, they work too great injury—through material privations and sorrows of all sorts—on the great majorities of the humble, the good, the well-disposed. Such injustice is—today more than ever—one of the main causes, if not indeed the main cause, of wars. ‘The Washington Conference, therefore, deciding in favor of the limitation of armaments, would do nothing but decide, be it even involuntarily (I want to be optimistic), in favor of the perpetu- ation of one of the main causes—or of the main cause—of wars: an end diametrically opposed to the one for which the Conference was arranged and to the hopes which it has awakened throughout the world. Armaments never were and never will be the cause of wars. The reduction of armaments never eliminated and never will elimi- nate the cause of wars; it never determined and never will determine the cessation of wars and the consequent advent of a general and lasting peace. It has never been possible to eliminate the cause of war. Furthermore, it will never be possible to eliminate the cause of war, because such elimination would necessitate at the same time the pre-exis- tence, the existence and the inalterable continuity of a conditio sine qua non: the spiritual perfection of humankind. Such a state will never be reached by the race in general, but only by a part of it, and a very small part, alas! The experience of humanity through the ages teaches that the past can only repeat itself with exactness in the future. But if the cause of wars can never be eliminated, owing to the fatal existence of evil in eternal struggle with good, yet wars can be prevented. This declaration—considering the fact that wars result from certain determined causes, and that the effects cannot be prevented unless the causes which produce them are first eliminated—may seem like a paradox! But it is not a paradox! It is an absolute truth, and—considering the lofty end at which it aims—it is one of the most solemn of absolute truths. Wars can be prevented. I am demonstrating this fact very clearly in the present Monograph by presenting and developing an entirely new conception: the abolition of neutrality. According to my conception— reduced in this Monograph to a concrete plan which may very easily and very quickly be put into action—nations should not bind themselves in any way, each of them remaining free to arm or disarm at pleasure. But not armaments, nor the limitation of armaments, nor the complete disarmament of one or more nations, or of all the nations of the world, could ever prevent the end of wars with. the consequent advent of a general and lasting peace. Chicago, November, 1921. CHANCELLOR McCORMICK, University of Pittsburgh, Pa.: It is a strong appeal for the development of a common sense of justice among the peoples of the world rather than treaties or a league of nations. LLOYD’S, London, England: Such a collection of words, though they may be open to question, speaks vol- umes. . . . Meanwhile, Mr. Carnovale gives us something to think about. EVENING POST, Wellington, New Zealand: The theory is ingenious and well argued. PROF. AUGUSTO MURRI, University of Bologna, Italy: I am entirely and absolutely of your opinion. CARLO RIZZETTI, Senator, Rome, Italy: This monograph is very valuable and is written with great humanitarian sentiment and with a very high civil aim. EUGENIO SELVAGGI, Director of Museums, Lecce, Italy: _ You have touched a very important subject which deserves to be upheld and given wide propaganda. PRELIMINARY NOTES During the latter part of July, 1917, the Italian-American Publishing Company of Chicago (U.S. A.) brought out my bi-lingual book (English and Italian), WHy ITaty ENTERED INTO THE GREAT War.! In the Fourth Part of this book, and especially in the chapter entitled Human Solidarity, I said, among other things, that the only means by which war can be prevented is by abolishing the neutrality of nations, that neu- oo which corresponds exactly to selfishness, and even worse, in indi- viduals. My book was received with the greatest interest in the United States and in other parts of the world. But my idea regarding neutrality as expressed in the chapter entitled Human Solidarity—notwithstanding the fact that it touched a problem of the highest social importance, which I enlarged upon and treated with true intelletto d’amore—was not taken with the consideration which I believed it merited. And why? The reason for this is most easily explained. First—The main object of my book was to make Americans and others see, at the psychological moment, the geographical, historical, ethnographical, strategic, political, juridical, moral, and humanitarian reasons which deter- mined the entrance of Italy into the great war: the main object as I sum- marized it in my dedication which I here reproduce in its entirety: This labor of love, written in exile, I dedicate to the memory of the fallen and to the sorrows of the survivors, with thoughts reaching out toward the highest human ideals, to vindicate the honor of the Italian peo- ple in the minds of those who are in ignorance of the truth. My expressed hostility to the neutrality of nations was simply one of the accessory arguments used to better defend, and to give greater force to my main point, but it was one of the most important points which I used in the polemical part of the book itself. Second—Considering that the only means of preventing war is by the abolition of neutrality—according to my belief—it goes without the saying that any action to abolish neutrality must necessarily precede the breaking out of war. When I wrote my book in Chicago, where I have lived for several years, the great war had already been in progress for some time.? And when it was published, in 1917, the war had already raged for three years. ; d As soon as the war was over, in the first part of November, 1918, the attention of the world was quickly drawn to, and absorbed by, the plan of the League of Nations which was officially presented, discussed and approved by the allied governments at the Paris Conference. I republish herewith my chapter entitled Human Solidarity, confident that this time it will meet with better fortune; naturally not for my- own 1“Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” by Luigi Carnovale, 673 pages large 8vo, with Tavola Clesiana and map of Italia Irredenta. Italian-American Publishing Company, Chi- cago, 1917. 3The great war broke out, July 28, 1914. Italy entered it on May 23, 1915. My book was written in the latter part of.1915 and during 1916. 5 sake, but for the high humanitarian idea—more vibrant today than ever before—of which the chapter itself treats and which it defends. The causes which provoked the great war exist today; and they can never be eliminated, because they spring from the irrepressible passions which unfortunately are innate to restless human nature. War, however, can be prevented. But certainly not by the ineffective means devised and used during the past centuries and even continued to the present time; and just as certainly not by means of the League of Nations which, if it continues, will do nothing to allay the rivalries and hatreds between peoples, but instead will foment them more and more. Wars can be prevented, notwithstanding the natural and perpetual causes which tend to produce them, only if conscientious men, who fortu- nately abound everywhere, will receive with sympathetic interest my idea against neutrality; only if individuals and nations, who by the willingness, energy and perseverance of such conscientious men, will consider the aboli- tion of neutrality the most sacred and urgent duty to be accomplished, the most sublime ideal to be reached by civilization. “HUMAN SOLIDARITY.” 2 “The Italian people, on account of one of the natural laws which psy- chologically distinguish the human races from one another, have implanted in them two sentiments: a sentiment of sympathy for the weak, and a senti- ment of indignation against the strong who abuse and tyrannize over the weak. ‘These sentiments form, in the peculiar harmony of their spiritual essence and of their practical workings out, the granite-like foundation of their social life. “Glance for a moment at the history of Italy from the time of the famous republic of Magna Grecia, which has grown and blossomed in the southern part of the peninsula up to the present time, and one cannot fail to see that the Italian people were always moved by the condition of the weaker. ‘They embraced their cause in fact, and not alone in words, for magnanimous and not for selfish and material reasons, especially when their cause represented the trampling upon or simply the menacing of their national liberties by presuming tyrants. “And not only in battles of a collective public nature, but also in the altercations of a private and personal character, the Italian people have put in evidence—or better, into action—their innate sentiments of sympathy for the weaker and of indignation against the stronger (strong naturally, in the brutally physical sense of the word, be it understood). In.America, for example (particularly in the city where for many years I have lived), I have frequently witnessed disputes between two persons, usually for some trivial reason, which quickly ended by their coming to blows. No one among the bystanders ever moves to try to pacify the two disputants or even to prevent the weaker from receiving the worst of it. I have always seen the stronger throw the weaker to the ground undisturbed by anyone; stamp on his breast, his jaws, his nose, his eyes, transforming his countenance into a horrible bloody mass, leaving him half dead. The bystanders, even the acquaintances, friends, or relatives of the weaker, look on with indiffer- From the book “Why Italy Entered into the Great War” by Luigi Carnovale. 6 ence (as if it were a moving picture) or with vile voluptuousness at the doglike fight, seeming to feel an admiration for the stronger. “In Italy, particularly in my native Calabria, which with good reason is called strong and generous, nothing of this kind could occur. There the bystanders, even though they might be strangers, from the first word of altercation interpose themselves between the disputants. And if they are unable to calm them with reason and re-establish peace between them and thus prevent the bestial fight, they immediately sympathize with the weaker; they openly and resolutely take his part; they will not permit that a hair of his head shall be touched; they prefer even at the risk of death to themselves to receive the blows from the stronger, on whose head will descend, sooner or later, a general execration. “Now this people, so sensitive, so just, so humane, having at their command a sufficiently formidable army and navy, could not remain inert before the violence committed by the strong and tyrannical Austria against little Serbia. They could not remain inert before the incomparable crime committed by the strong and tyrannical Germany against little Belgium. They could not remain inert before a scowling and brutal Teutonic mili- tarism which menaced with growing and strengthening gravity that repub- lican France which had poured out rivers of her blood for the unity and independence of her Latin sister and for the triumph of democratic prin- ciples in all of Europe. They could not remain inert before a scowling and brutal Teutonic militarism which menaced with growing and strengthening gravity that England which even in a time of general reaction gave hospi- tality with generous and affectionate liberality to the great exiles, to all the great Italian political refugees from Giordano Bruno to Ugo Foscolo, from Mazzini to Malatesta; to that England which, with its battleship Intrepid and Argus, protected and facilitated in the spring of 1860 the memorable landing of The Thousand at Marsala (a disembarkation which decided the national unity of Italy); that England which received Garibaldi like a god when the Hero in April, 1864, went as a representative of the people of the new Italy to visit London. They could not remain inert before the scowling and brutal Teutonic militarism which menaced with growing and strengthening gravity that Russia whose great men such as Turghenieff, Tchernichewsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky always admired and glorified Italy; that Russia which was the first to send her sailors to Calabria and Sicily to succor the people struck by the terrible earthquake of 1908. “If the Italian people had remained inert, they would have negated their incomparable moral personality which is composed of altruism and gratitude ; they would have obscured their most radiant traditions of thought and action; they would have done that which is worse: at the moment when death was preparing to shape the new life of the world on the battlefields of old Europe, they would have betrayed the cause of humanity, which must stand above every personal and national interest, as the physical life of the universe stands perennially above the single parts of which it is composed. “Tt is useless to deny it. ‘The word, opposed to the fact, has never been of value. And it never will be so long as in the depths of certain human souls there dwell, as the morchia at the botton of jars of olive oil, as feccia in the bottom of wine casks, as lime in the bottom of wells, those turbid and wicked instincts which are in open antithesis to the sentiments of purity, compassion and love upon which every civilization should lean and from which it should evolve. “The plea has always been made, and in every tone, to the potentates of Europe, not to strengthen militarism; but they have strengthened it— and alas, how well | “The potentates of Europe have been counseled in every manner not to provoke war; but they have provoked it, and how well ! “Must one ignore the fact in this, the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, that the imperial soldiery, atavistically imitating the hordes of Alaric and Attila, invade the territories of small and independent nations, mas- sacre men, outrage women, mutilate children, seize the fruits of so much labor, burn homes, raze entire cities to the ground; in such a manner for example, as the Turks have been allowed to treat the Armenians for years and years? “If these things must be forgotten, then farewell to human solidarity. “After so many promises, after so much enthusiasm, it could not be other (except for the weak who have the simplicity to believe and expect it) than an archaic, empty and scoffing phrase, resurrecting once again the ignoble farce of pulpiteers (both priests and laity) who know only how to preach well and practice badly. ‘The pulpiteers who, when put to the test, know only how to put in practice their selfish doctrine which is encased in the parabolic formula, ‘Lontana da me, e dove va va." “The great crowned heads would not have wished anything better! “Fortunately the Italian people, with their awakened intelligence, understood that words could not supplant the facts. And they threw them- selves into the war (they, the Italian people, with their childlike hearts) to meet facts with facts, action with action, physical force with physical force (a species of similia similibus curantur), to teach the mob of querulous doctrinaires that the trampled rights of the weak must be defended, not with words, but at the sacrifice of life itself; that the innocent victims of bar- barism (militaristic and non-militaristic) must be avenged, not with words, but at the sacrifice of life itself; that the true brotherhood of nations, the ideal to which the human soul incessantly aspires because of an immutable natural law, must be affirmed, be exalted, be perpetuated, not with words but at the sacrifice of life itself. “The Italian people know well that after the great war they will have no other reward than that of starvation, scorn and oblivion worse than before. But of what importance is this? With spirits eminently poetic and philosophic at the same time, inured to every privation, to every ingrati- tude, to every sorrow, they will be convinced of having opened the way, with their purest blood—given the present order of things, the only way— that could lead to the longed-for universal peace. And such knowledge will be sufficient to render them content, happy, and blessed. “I have said, ‘given the present order of things.’ I have said, ‘the only way.’ And I will explain. “The life of a nation, nowadays, notwithstanding its complexities, depends in great part on essentially industrial bases constructed by the peo- ple, not for their own advantage, but for the advantage of a big-bellied and cruel minority called plutocracy, which has nothing else in common with the people except their simple Darwinian origin. “Such national industrialism, in order to maintain itself and prosper —always to the benefit of the big-bellied and cruel minority called plu- “4°Tt may go where it will if it does not touch me.’ tocracy—must necessarily push itself into commercial competition against the industrialism of another nation, or other nations, and vice versa. But commercial competition, in order to give financial results proportionate to the insatiable greed of the nationalist plutocracy, must be incessantly and strenuously favored and defended by the State. “Does a State government of the present day lend itself to a partisan- ship so bold and iniquitous? “Certainly it does! “And why shouldn’t it, if the State government of today, be it covered by a mask surmounted by a royal crown, or be it a mask surmounted by a republican cap, is none other than a being voluntarily placed at the service of the big-bellied and cruel minority called plutocracy? “Now a Government thus made, frankly, could not without injury to itself put in action the military forces, which are the positive forces of the State, except for the protection of its master; or more correctly speaking, for the protection of its mistress (plutocracy in the Italian language is in the feminine gender). The war which today rages in Europe is one pro- voked for no other reason than that of jealousy of the German plutocracy for the English commercial supremacy in the world.t “In causes of a purely humanitarian character—that is, where the intellectual, moral and economic elevation, justice, liberty and the happi- ness of the people are involved—the government of today never puts into action the military forces of the State. And this is natural; for if the mili- tary forces were to make the humanitarian causes triumph, only one effect could follow: the end of plutocracy; the end, that is, of inequality, of all injustice, of-all social tyrannies: an effect, as one can see, completely opposed to that for which the military forces of a nation exist today. In causes of a purely humanitarian character, the Government of today em- ploys only the negative force of the State: diplomacy, which would have no other result than that of chattering; stirring up confusion; tangling the skeins of yarn as much as possible; throwing dust in the eyes of the masses; anesthetizing the nation; reducing every heart throb of collective life to status quo; to this most convenient Latin ellipsis, (convenient for the strong, but wickedly disastrous for the weak), which is fossilized and is fossilizing. “Must the nations continue to face a situation so evident, so tangible in chronic evil, opposing the murderous facts of the deaf and ferocious pluto- crats with only the usual innocuous words? “T£ so, the people could not do other than rivet to themselves the chains of servitude; they could not do other than perpetuate war, always to the advantage of the more astute, who idly reap all of the benefits, and to the damage of the credulous, who labor-and who suffer. “So long as nationalistic industrialisms with their respective commer- cial competitions exist; so long as plutocracies exist which have in their hands to dispose of at their pleasure all of the positive forces of the nations (from financial to military), duly legalized by governments and blessed by religions, which are also, by the grace of God, at the service of the strong; so long as plutocracies provoke war because of a thirst for riches and domin- ion, originated by innate hardness of heart; so long as all this exists, the inertia of the people, armed only by old lachrymose and even scornful rhetoric, is not other, to my mind, than an, incongruity, anachronism, folly, “12The other causes which determined the great war (pan-Slavism, French revenge, Italian Irredentism, etc.) were all of secondary importance.” 9 suicide. It is the fragile glass that would resist the powerful blow of the sledge hammer, the soap bubble that would resist the rock. “The way must be changed. We are in a century in which one must reasonably believe in only a single truth: that which teaches—or better, is demonstrated by—positive science. One must therefore live a little less in the nietaphysical world of dreams, and a little more in the physical world of reality. “The people must have facts. They must, without distinctions, cre- ate among themselves a solid spiritual alliance (prodrome of their universal political union) : and establish as a fundamental principle of justice, invio- late and invariable, that when a controversy between two nations degener- ates into war, each of the peoples not involved in the controversy so degen- erated must @ priori impose on their own government an armed intervention in favor of the weaker nation which one finds on the side of reason. On the side of reason, not according to the porcine point ‘of view of the big-bellied, cruel minority called plutocracy; not according to verbose partisan laws voted by parliaments and sanctioned by kings, emperors or presidents of republics; not according to the fantastic and complacent sentences flung by petticoated comedians of the different arbitrary tribunals of the Hague. But on the side of reason according to the judgment that springs spon- taneously, free from preconceived ideas and passions; from free intellingence, from the candid conscience of the people themselves: above all, according to the natural guide of life which makes the cause of. the weak always beautiful, sacred, and worthy of victory. “Only in such a manner for the present can one curb the aggressive mania of the stronger. Only in such a manner can wars be prevented. “In fact, if the Government of Francis Joseph, for example, could have known in anticipation that the peoples of Europe, even of the whole world, would rise up and intervene promptly with all of the positive forces of their nations in defense of little Serbia, the Government of Francis Joseph, however powerful and arrogant, however much upheld by that mili- tary colossus, the German Empire, would never have dared to dictate to the little Balkan nation who was defending her own independence. It would not have had the insane temerity to send to it in July, 1914, that ultimatum which unchained the most terrible inferno in the world’s history. “But the spiritual alliance of the people (prodrome of a universal political union) can never be effected if from the first the two most ad- vanced groups of doctrinaires, which have an extraordinary moral ascend- _ ancy over the people, do not know how to adapt effectively their pacifist theories—freed from every dogmatic sophism—to the events which day by day unfold themselves. ~ “The first group: those who limit human progress to the struggle between classes (the economic problem) are in favor of war only in the case where it is necessary to defend from an invading foe the country in which all the material interests of the national proletariat are concentrated. These are the Conditional Neutrals. “The second group: those who await the destruction of every political, judicial, military, economic and religious authority by revolution and are opposed to all wars, because wars are made only for the round-bellies of their masters. These are Absolute Neutrals. “The members of these groups are doubtless animated by right motives. They aim at the high purpose at which every open and active mind and 10 sensitive heart aims: the emancipation of all oppressed. beings. I therefore wish to reason calmly with them.2 “And I say to the Conditional Neutrals: “The theory of war only for national defense, which you sustain, is in open contradiction to the doctrines which you say that you profess,—doc- trines which in their idealistic contents are conspicuously and rigorously international and do not admit of restrictions of any sort. The cry, ‘Work- men of every nation, unite!’ in which are synthesized those doctrines which cannot be interpreted exclusively in the economic sense as you seem to believe, must be interpreted logically in a much wider sense, at least if one would not wish to belittle the merit of him who launched it; must be inter- preted in a sense embracing every social problem from which the economic problem cannot be eliminated without disturbing the harmony or absolutely breaking the compages of things which regulate and perpetuate human progress. , “Because the social question is many-sided. And the economic prob- lem is none other than a part of the social question, one face of the poly- hedron each part of which is intimately connected with the others; and the economic problem is even dependent upon the others and it comes from one cause: ignorance. ‘This was clearly demonstrated three centuries ago, dur- ing the most horrible torture of the lay and ecclesiastic inquisition, by that most daring father of universal communism, my encyclopedic fellow- countryman, Tommaso Campanella. “According to the belief of this giant precursor of the civil redemption of humanity—a belief which has been fully confirmed by the facts of the social situation, our maladjustments come from the following causes: “First—I gnorance, which, preventing the knowledge of true vices and of true virtues, generates and nourishes evil, ‘under which the world chafes and weeps.’ Second—Blind Self-love; that is, Egotism, worthy son of Ignorance. “Third—Tyranny (false power), Sophism (false science), Hypocrisy (false love), the three extreme evils (the triple lies) which have ‘root and fomentation’ in blind self-love. “Fourth—Famine; that is, misery (the economic problem), wars, pestilence, envy, deceit, injustice, luxury, sloth, disdain, all derived from the three extreme evils to which they are hierarchically subject. “Therefore, the economic problem cannot be detached from the others; cannot be settled independently of the others. If it could thus be resolved, its isolated solution could not attain its object (the moral betterment of the world) toward which the whole question tends. And the proof of this, my assertion, which at first seems a paradox, comes to us by means of this same plutocracy in an unanswerable manner. “It is a fact, and I trust that on this point there will be.no divergence of opinion, that plutocracy is composed of flesh and bone, is of exactly the same species as the proletariat. “The plutocrats have splendidly solved the economic problem to their own advantage. I trust that on this point there may be no difference of opinion. “aT do not occupy myself with the other groups of pacifists, because they—being an emanation more or less direct from the plutocracy—cannot be logical. et us not speak of them, but look and pass’.” (Dante, Inferno, Canto III.) “But has the solution of the problem which has brought all of the luxuries, all of the sensual pleasures of life within the reach of the pluto- crats,—has it brought to them a proportionate betterment? “Absolutely it has not. “The solution of the economic problem (luxuries and sensual pleasures ad infinitum) has instead brought to the plutocrats a fearful moral retro- gression visible even to the blind. It has taught that this solution, when unaccompanied by the solution of the other social problems, is not and never can be the panacea which is preached by superficial and short-sighted the- orists. It has demonstrated once more, today more than ever, the posi- tive value of the truth which was proclaimed in the difficult and dark ages by that great apostle from Stilo, Calabria, who was, with Vinci, Pom- ponazzi, Telesio, Bruno, and Galileo, one of the creative geniuses of modern positivism; of that positivism which for the voluble authority of the word substituted the solid authority of facts; of that positivism culminating in our day in the monumental works of that other pure Italian who is the living pride and glory of Italy: Professor Roberto Ardigo. “And if the cry which synthesizes the doctrine professed by you, Condi- tional Neutrals, has a content conspicuously and rigorously international, I do not understand with what conscience, or more, with what heart, you can restrict the war to national defense only, permitting the stronger nation, which is found on the side of wrong, to assault and devour at its pleasure the weaker nations which are found on the side of right. “Such a restrictive principle (war only for national defense) is an unheard of and selfish cruelty. It is the most repugnant ironic interpreta- tion of internationalism, or what calls itself internationalism. It is the absolute negation of every human and animal solidarity. I say animal, because even the animals feel and practice among themselves that which we humans call moral solidarity toward the weak. The example of the dog suffices to illustrate this. He continually risks his own life to a the weak and innocent sheep from the strong, arrogant and savage wolf. “And your own nation, my dear Conditional Neutrals, would not be long in falling a victim to the plutocratic perfidy and cupidity of some stronger nation; a victim of your own error. “Because it is not enough to wish to defend. One must be able to defend. Serbia also wished to defend herself against Austria. Belgium wished to defend herself against Germany. But each one, being too small, and in consequence too feeble compared with its aggressors, was constrained to succumb (for the time being), nothwithstanding the fact that it based its defense on its rights of independence and on points of honor more than sacred. “And if the social question embraces many other problems besides that of the economic, and if the emancipation of the oppressed depends on the parallel solution of all of these problems and not on the solution of only one of them, I do not understand why you, followers of the cry which syn- thesizes the social question in all of its idealistic entirety, must persist only in the solution of the economic problem. I do not understand how you can detach yourselves from or interest yourselves so little in the other problems when it is demonstrated that only the parallel solution of all, not the isolated solution of one, can eliminate evils ‘under which the world trembles and weeps’; the evils which retard the longed-for emancipation. 12 “One knows that nowadays wars are not waged to revenge the offended honor of Menelaus—who may be more or less crowned—as, for example, was the mythological war of Greece made against Troy of Homeric memory. “Wars nowadays, as has been hinted before and as you yourselves, Con- ditional Neutrals, recognize, are more for ends essentially economic; for ends such as the doctrines which you are said to profess tend toward, even when interpreted in their highest sense. “And if they are made for ends essentially economic, I do not see the reason for which you, followers of internationalism reduced even to its low- est terms, that is, to strictly economic terms, should abstain from inter- vention. “Because such ends, you object, do not touch the economic interests of our national proletariat. , “That the economic interests of a neutral nation are endangered— given the present industrial and commercial organization of the world— by a war between two or more nations, and especially by a war of such gigantic proportions as that which has just ceased to rage in old Europe and by reflection has affected the whole world, is a self-evident truth to every intelligence. “But even if—to take it as an hypothesis—the economic interests of the neutral national proletariat were not endangered by the war of others, you Conditional Neutrals should consider it equally your duty to interfere to defend the economic interests of the proletariat of the weaker nation which is assaulted by the plutocratically stronger, and this because of the factive elements and not the chatterings of the doctrines which you say that you profess. : “The sentimental scruples which will not permit you to intervene in war because you would be constrained to kill your brothers, must be elimi- nated. “In case of national defense would not the invaders be your brothers whom you would be obliged to kill? “Are not the scabs also your brothers, and brothers of your own nation whom you fight and kill during the strikes? “And these strikes themselves which you are continually making as de- fensive means in the class struggle, are they not substantially wars between brothers who are exploited, and those who are not; wars of hate between unionist and non-unionist brothers? “You unionist workmen strike, assault, and kill without mercy your non-unionist brothers. And why? To defend yourselves against their economic competition. But these non-unionists rarely take your places in your work for malignant reasons. In the majority of cases they are none other (and I know this only too well) than sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers reduced to extreme misery. They, not knowing to what saint to pray in their extremity or where to turn their heads, face your insults with desperation in their souls and run to the conquest of a mouthful of bread or a bit of coal which may save those dependent upon them from starvation. “You do not wish to face these facts. You do not wish to know the reasons, which are beyond their control, which force your unfortunate brothers to enter into competition against you. You know only that they injure your cause, and for this you fight to destroy them. “And the gunmen, so-called in America (I allude to the savage private 13 policemen charged to ‘maintain order’ during the strikes) are they not also your brothers? Why then do you fight and destroy them? “Because they do not hesitate to shoot you. Because they do not hesi- tate to massacre your women and children. “T compare the scabs to the conscript soldiers. JI compare the gunmen to the professional soldier. The unwilling action of the one (scab and con- script) is inspired as is the voluntary action of the other (gunman and professional soldier) by plutocracy and is stirred up by plutocracy and eventuates also to the advantage of plutocracy. “Now if you unionist workmen representing internationalism synthe- sized in the cry, ‘Workmen of all countries, unite!"—if you fight to destroy scabs and gunmen during strikes, why should you not fight to kill soldiers in time of war? ‘The scabs and gunmen, I repeat, are your brothers as also are the soldiers. The sins which the soldiers commit have the same root of evil as those of the scabs and gunmen; they have only one root: plutocracy. This is the new and real Pandora’s box. “And if, with the struggle of classes culminating in the murder of scabs and gunmen during strikes, you, Conditional Neutrals, economically defend your national proletariat interests against your national plutocracy, you must at the same time and for the sake of the international doctrine which you say you profess, not only admit the justice of armed intervention in every way today in defense, not only of the territorial integrity of your nation, protecting the material interests of our national proletariat, but, also in defense of the territorial integrity including the material interests of all of the other weaker nations assaulted by the common enemy (plu- tocracy) for conomic and insatiable greed. “Tf you will persist in your restrictive attitude, Conditional Neutrals, you will end by discrediting the cry synthesizing the doctrine which you boast that you profess, because this cry was launched to give a deadly blow by means of the union of workmen of every country, not to the plutocracy of one nation only, but to plutocracies of every nation. “If the plutocracies of every nation, instead of dying, continue to fatten on the blood of the workmen of every country, it signifies that your restrictive action (that of conditional neutrality) is not the right interpre- tation of the cry synthesized in the doctrine reduced even to purely economic terms. “And if, on the other hand, the workmen of five of the greatest and most advanced nations of the world (France, England, Russia, Japan and Italy)— those who have listened to the gospel synthesizing the. doctrine in the cry, ‘Workmen of all nations, unite!’"—had placed themselves militarily at the side of Serbia and Belgium, this would have signified that they repudiated the restrictive interpretation of conditional neutrality and reso- lutely put into practice, especially the Italian proletarians, all of the ideal- istic contents, conspicuously and rigorously international, which their cry represented. “You, Conditional Neutrals, must recognize the error into which you have fallen (error, considering the time in which we live, considering the formidable positive efficiency reached by plutocracies). You must follow the practical good sense of the people. If you do not do this, your ranks will continually become thinner; you will be swallowed up in the furious whirlwind of facts. 14 “If you obstinately refuse to follow the people in their practical good sense, it means that you do not understand their spirit. “And the people will abandon you, and they will give themselves to those who will know how to lead them by a less tortuous road to their emancipation. . “Because the people are tired of waiting. ‘Their physical and moral sufferings are growing in proportion to the commodities and sensual pleas- ures of plutocracy. ‘These sufferings have increased in constanf ratio to the increase of the sensual pleasure of the plutocracy. “The people are tired of waiting. - “Conditional Neutrals, meditate on these truths. “And I say to the Absolute Neutrals: “Tt is true, as you have held and as I myself maintain, that nowadays war is made for the round-bellies of the plutocrats. But who does the fighting? Is it the plutocrats who fight? The plutocrats only provoke and direct wars. ‘Those who in reality bear the brunt of the war are the people whom the plutocrats dominate. “Now among those who are at war are also Absolute Neutrals garbed as soldiers, not willingly so, but because of one of those partisan laws favor- able to plutocracy (military conscription) which has been spoken of before. “And if they are the people who must fight; and if they are your brothers; and if their industrial and collective lives are placed in jeopardy, how can you remain disinterested and inert? , “You could remain thus disinterested and inert, only if the plutocrats lived on a different planet from that upon which the people live, on which your brothers live, and where they could fight among themselves. “But from the moment that the plutocrats inhabit a planet inhabited also by the people, your brothers, and with the positive means at their com- mand to enable them at their pleasure to provoke and direct wars, it is nec- essary that you take an interested and active part in such wars. “Because the plutocrats lose nothing by wars; they always gain. It is the people, your brothers, the humble, those who have always striven and suffered day and night who in war lose everything. Your absolute neutral- ity—in the face of the weak massacred on the field of battle, before their ravished virgins, their mutilated children, their sacked and burned homes— places you in the same category as the authorities (sanctified afterward by the church) who retire to the solitude of the desert and,there, whistling at the oppressed, selfishly and stupidly think of nothing except the eternal salvation of their souls. “Your object: ‘But why don’t the people enter.into the sphere of our ideas which have no other reason for being than that of liberating them by means of revolution (it not having been possible up to the present time to do so by other means) from plutocratic tyranny which starves and incites them to fratricidal butchery ?” “Before responding to such a question I assert my belief that the indi- vidualistic régime of life, which you long for and defend, is possible. I believe it is possible, not because of a more or less doctrinaire pretension, but because most men—if not all, certainly a large part of them—have already touched the point of moral purity sufficient to bring about the afore- said régime from the theoretic to the practical stage. I have no need to search among the dead generations for proof of this assertion. It suffices 15 for me to look only among the living, and not farther than my native land, to find the corroborative proof of my belief and affirmation. Roberto Ardigé, Pasquale Villari, Teodoro Moneta, Guglielmo Marconi.1 Who would presume to say that these men, and others such as these or even of lesser intellectual qualities would have need of any sort of political, judicial, military, economic or religious authority to live among themselves in perfect peace and harmony? “Besides this, there are an infinite number of private business associa- tions (without speaking of tribes falsely called savage) which are satisfac- torily regulated by laws not written in any code; by laws which have no substantial authority other than that which each person feels within himself and obeys in his relation to others. “He who admits the law of evolution must honestly admit individ- ualism. “Because the law of evolution, morally speaking, implies nothing else than the study of human virtues; while individualism is nothing more than the exercise of human virtues. “Evolution is nothing more than the theory of civil life; individualism is nothing more than the practice of human life. “Individualism—so far as it represents the degree of moral perfection already attained by man and according to which he feels himself disposed to deal uprightly with his fellow man and even capable of this—is the supreme ideal of evolution; or I might say, is the complement of evolution, did I not know that evolution as a synonym of progress is infinite and there- fore cannot have a complement, at least in the absolute sense. “After making this declaration in honor of the truth, Absolute Neu- trals, let me say: the people do not enter within the radius of your ideas because they have not yet arrived at the intellectual heights necessary to comprehend the sublimity of the goal to which you wish to attain. And there are others who have reached such heights, but who do not wish to engage in a revolution, because of a repugnance for a means so violent and sanguinary; and more than this, such methods have never brought, as his- tory teaches, substantial results proportionate to the efforts and sacrifices made by revolutionists. Such methods have never destroyed as they should have, and they have not even arrested the sturdy and arrogant vitality of plutocracies which incarnate all of the evils of society. “But because the people have not yet reached the necessary intellectual height, and because they will not engage in revolutions, do you believe, you Absolute Neutrals, that you have the right to leave them to themselves during a war, or to leave them in the power of the more astute, of the stronger, of the more malicious? : “To tell the truth, such a vindicative plan, however negative it may be, is not compatible, a priori, with your principles of universal brotherhood. It is unworthy of your civil apostolate. Especially if one considers that you, outside of war (one means military war), do not hesitate to break the rigidity of your absolute neutrality—which should be invulnerable—by descending in the field to fight battles which are of a strictly economic character; battles which are not favorable to your individualistic theories. I am speaking of partial strikes. Why should one discuss general strikes, national or international, if, from the day that class struggle enters into a 1Since writing the above, Pasquale Villari and Teodoro Moneta have died. I substitute in their places the names, not less worthy, of Augusto Murri and Isidora Del Lungo. 16 practical phase, strikes of every category are only made by rhetorical and high sounding phrases? “You Absolute Neutrals have gone far afield, into absolutely hostile camps, to defend openly and energetically the rights of those who strike against the'cruel greed of plutocracy, the competition of scabs, the violence of gunmen. ot ix] “However, those who strike do not comprise all of the proletariat, but are only a small part of them (the privileged part, a sort of caste), the part which is the antithesis of your ideas. “Because, according to the idealistic contents of the doctrines which you say you profess, you work toward the entire amelioration of all op- pressed peoples without distinction (there are hundreds of millions outside of the unions) ; while the unionists who strike, work only to their own exclusive material amelioration. “You are working toward the destruction of plutocracies since you are justly convinced that on such destruction depends the solution of the entire social question. The unionists instead, as soon as they have attained the material betterment for which they struck, are quieted as was the famous Cerberus of Dante: “ “Cerberus, a cruel beast and strangely made, Barks out of his three dog-like throats At those who were there submerged. “When Cerberus, the great worm, saw us He opened his mouth and showed his tusks And quivered in every limb. My guide? . . . . took up earth: and with full Fists cast it into his ravening gullets. As the dog that barking craves and Grows quiet when he bites his food, for he Strains and battles only to devour it, so did Those squalid visages of Cerberus, the Demon, who thundered on the spirits so they would Fain be deaf.’? “And when the unionists believe themselves to be well paid, they no longer fight the plutocrats. They recognize the legitimate existence of the plutocrats; they make them more solid; they fatten them more and more. ‘They even come to a point where they admire, magnify, and idolize them. One can see this in a thousand cases. For the sake of brevity I will cite only two which are truly typical. One case, proving my first afirmation— that the unionists are selfishly quieted, after they have obtained the raise of wages for which they have struck; the second case proving my second affirmation that-the unionists, when they believe themselves well paid, rec- ognize even indirectly the legitimate existence of the plutocracy, and fatten the plutocrats more and more even though they do so involuntarily; they admire, they magnify, and they even idolize them hypocritically. “The first case: The unionists who work in the great clothing fac- tory of H. S. & M., of Chicago, Illinois, one day struck to obtain a raise “1Virgil. ‘8The epicures and gluttons of the Third Circle. Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto VI (‘Temple Classics’), ° 17 of wages H.S. & M. raised the pay, according to the demands of the strikers. These returned to their work satisfied. From that moment one saw no more life among them, they did not move again, not even when their unionist brothers (the other tailors of Chicago) were reduced to the most miserable economic condition and struck solidly and fought desperately for weeks to obtain for themselves a raise of wages from the other local manu- facturers.* “The second case: .The employees of the automobile manufacturer, H. F., of Detroit, Michigan, believe that they are well paid. But this fact does not prevent this good man from annually accumulating millions and millions of dollars for his own benefit from the work for which the laborers believe (bless them!) that the munificent plutocrat has paid them so well. “And besides this, the unionists do not even in the final count obtain for themselves the benefits for which they have struck. “When the plutocrats accede to their demands by augmenting the pay of the strikers, the latter believe that they have won. But this is simply an illusion. The truth is very different. And it is the plutocrats who lose nothing. ‘That which they give with one hand, they take with the other hand; they even retake double or more. (The plutocrats know arithmetic very well; intellectually speaking they know little besides arithmetic. ) “An example: the miners struck for a raise of wages. The employ- ers acceded to the demands and increased their pay. But they afterward sold the coal to the same employees with an increase of price, corresponding to or more than making up the raise of wage which the strike had obliged them to yield. Without considering that such raises of wages, which were wisely transformed by the plutocrats into a raise in price, falls on the shoul- ders also of unionists of the other categories of workers who have not struck; it falls also on the shoulders of the workmen who cannot or will not join the unions; it falls therefore on the shoulders of that eternal, use- ful, patient, and beaten ass: the people. “And who suffers the other inconveniences which are born out of strikes? Certainly not the plutocrats; instead, it is the just who suffer for the unjust. In the Chicago tailors’ strike of 1915, of which we have made mention for example, I personally knew many who at the beginning of the strike were without a penny in their pockets. These poor creatures, dur- ing the long weeks of the strike, did not receive one cent of assistance from the union of which they were a part; thus they and their families suffered from hunger; while the plutocrats (the employers who resisted the strike} did not miss their Lucullan meals any more than before the strike. It is true that a certain sum (a few thousand dollars) was collected at that time, but such alms (coming in great part from private individuals, certainly not from the proletariat, and I do not know with what conscience and dignity it was accepted by the strike leaders) was unequal to the needs of the strikers, partly because it was unequally distributed, not to say worse. “Now if you, Absolute Neutrals, take an active part in partial strikes to aid unionists who are substantially none other than the privileged minority of the proletariat, as plutocracy is none other than the privileged minority of the bourgeoisie, with much more reason should you take an active part in the war, which is made to aid the weaker nations to free ‘1During the tailors’ strike of Chicago in 1915 it was shown that some women workers did not receive more than $1.75 per week. Of this amount they were obliged to use daily ten cents for carfare to go and return from work, 18 themselves from the cupidity of the stronger; in wars which are much nearer to revolutions than strikes, especially if one considers that only theo- retically do you combat the unions, while you defend the weaker nations. You theoretically fight against unionist laborers, but practically you aid them in their strikes against their oppressors. In fact, you preach one thing and you practice another. “How much this system has damaged your cause you yourselves can well imagine, especially if you consider that by aiding the unionists in a strike you do not destroy the positive forces of the plutocracy, but instead, you augment and perpetuate them; while aiding the weaker nations in war you destroy the positive forces of plutocracies; or if you do not destroy them, you begin to destroy them, which amounts to the same thing. “The groups which, inspired by the individualistic doctrines, are hop- ing to reach their goal by means of partial strikes, are like those who grind water in a mortar; the groups which obstinately remain in a verbose and virulent inertia during such a war as that of Europe—a war which opens a new historical epoch—are groups which are not in touch with life, are against life, and in consequence against humanity which loves life, against humanity which is life. “They will be struck by the fatal law of elimination because of their own fault. They will perish. “Absolute Neutrals, meditate upon these truths! “The Italian people believed that the theory of conditional neutrality, (war only for national defense) and the theory of absolute neutrality (peace at any price) if put into practice would have driven humanity back into the primitive chaos of barbarism where nothing but brute force reigned; would have trampled under foot the foundation of every idea of justice and civilization. “Because the tyrants, always thirsting for more riches and dominion, commit at their pleasure any sort of crime, secure of immunity. Who indeed could punish them if the people of the nation who are not impli- cated in wars (wars incited by the stronger nation which is in the wrong, against the weaker nation which is in the right), did not combine solidly and practically with this latter? “Non-intervention before an evil is committed, and the cry of peace after the evil is committed, would be a fine comedy for crowned and uncrowned villains. ; “In such way the mine owner could very well, for example, have his striking miners, with wives and children, killed by his gunmen; then he could demand peace and all would be happily ended. “What a festa! What a game! “The splendid example of practical human solidarity given by the Italian people, imposing on their own government armed intervention in the great war in defense of the weaker nations which were assaulted by the stronger, might be pondered upon and imitated by other peoples. “This example shows in a solemn manner how it may be possible, even easy, to bring about the spiritual alliance of the people, provided that the Conditional Neutrals and the Absolute Neutrals recognize their error. “Certain it is that the spiritual alliance of a people will not destrey miltary influence in twenty-four hours, but by strengthening, holding back skillfully and energetically these forces against the plutocracy which owns 19 them, the spiritual alliance of the people would be able immediately to put an end to war. “Do not in heaven’s name repeat the old ritornello: ‘This war will be the last. This war will signal the end of militarism. After this war we shall have permanent universal peace,’ etc. “I conclude: “As long as there are national industrial plutocracies with their related commercial competitions between nations, there will be militarism and there will be war. “Because militarism (I speak of the militarism of today) is none other than an organism created and maintained by plutocracies to defend the infi- nite interests of plutocracies, the infinite increase of plutocracies. “‘Plutocracies are the cause. Militarism is the effect. Can one destroy the effect without first destroying the cause? “And can one prevent war only by preaching peace and continuing to kneel at the feet of potentates? “War has existed since man existed. “Peace has been preached since war existed. “But the preaching of peace has never been able to prevent war, because war is a material fact, is action, while the preaching of peace is an immaterial fact; nothing but words. “If the preaching of peace could have prevented war, it would have done so from the first day or during the centuries in which peace has opposed itself to war. “And we cannot wait until the potentates themselves prevent it, be- cause war is the life of potentates. And the potentates are not so tender, nor even so foolish as to sacrifice their own lives for the love of peace. “War will be prevented only when the preaching of peace shall be transformed into a spiritual alliance of the peoples; only when it shall transform itself into the armed intervention of a people (allied spiritually among themselves) in defense of the weaker nation which is in the right, and which has been assaulted by the stronger nations which are in the wrong. “Only then the pure blood of the youth of Italy, and of the whole world, spilled in rivers on the fields of Europe for the past three years, can seriously prelude universal peace so longed for by humanity, and a lasting universal peace which is so necessary to humanity.” CoMPLEMENTARY NOTES. First Note: How can one determine wrong from right? Because of the unceasing struggle between men since their savage state up to the present civilization (so-called), they are not in ignorance of the elements which constituted and which themselves now constitute the causes which have provoked and now provoke struggles. It is just in consequence of such knowledge—the result of the fratri- cidal experience of thousands of years—that men have learned to form a clear and definite idea of the moral essence summarized in the words wrong and right. ‘Thus those two antithetic words have emerged from their orig- inal abstract and vague significance into a concrete and solid form, which the mature intelligence of man can discern without the least effort. 20 _ _ Second Note: How can one judge, when a war breaks out, who is in the wrong and who is in the right? If men know, from the fratricidal experience of thousands of years, the difference between wrong and right, it is easy for them to judge, when a war breaks out, which side is wrong and which is right. It is easy, also, because human judgment instinctively seeks individual self-preservation, which is social preservation. And social preservation could not survive if men, in formulating their judgments, did not hold scrupulously to the most rigorous equity: if they should forget, or pretend to forget, that weaker human beings have finally the right to live and to enjoy the blessings of life with the stronger, or even more than the stronger. Third Note: How can one discredit, how can one give a mortal blow to the traditional principle of neutrality? Neutrality has always been considered as a right legitimately exer- cised by people who were not involved in war. And during wars, neutral countries have enjoyed the advantages of immunity and even the respect of the victims, that is of the weaker nations which have been provoked, assaulted and trodden upon by the stronger ones. If, however, the truth is no longer hidden from the people; if it is said to them that neutrality, instead of being a right legitimately exercised, is an act of collective and cruel selfishness which encourages and perpetuates war: an act of shameful collective cowardice which makes a neutral nation an accomplice of the strong who wish to, and do make war; that it is the grav- est sort of a crime which is committed against society; that it is the gravest sort of crime committed toward that spiritual substratum which should regulate the life of society and assure its progress toward the more sincere and practical ideals of human brotherhood: a crime for which neutrals should be proclaimed enemies to humanity by the public opinion of the world, and as such should be morally condemned to contempt and execra- tion, and materially, should be condemned to commercial boycotting, to starvation: then neutrality will lose its prestige, and, with its prestige, its reason for being. Fourth Note: How can a neutral people force its own government to take part in a war, when it breaks out, in defense of the right side? The people taken en masse do not belong to any party; they do not serve any privileged class.) They are free. They are powerful. “Its own are all things between earth and heaven,” says Tommaso Campanella. Consequently they are impartial: that is to say they are inclined by natural impulse to judge with perfect honesty between wrong and right in a war which may break out between two or more.nations. It was just this inflexible rectitude—maintained uncorrupted and un- daunted through the social storms of all ages—which created the well known and significant phrase vox populi, vox Dei, which fully symbolizes the idea of human justice. ‘The people, being free, powerful and impartial, are also generous; they feel the offenses offered to others as if they were offered to themselves, and an irresistible and heroic force, which I have called human solidarity, always impels them to take the side of the weaker who have been provoked and assaulted by the stronger. Therefore it would be easy for a people, in case of impending war, to force its own government—which would obstinately keep the nation neutral 21 in the interests of the belligerent side which is in the wrong—to armed intervention in favor of the side which is right. _ That this was not difficult of accomplishment, was proved by the Italian people in the spring of 1915 in a manner now written large in his- tory; in a manner which can well be an example to all peoples and an admonition to all governments, present and future, in all parts of the world. Fifth Note: What reason have I for the belief that only by the abolition of neutrality can war be quickly and forever prevented ? Three thousand four hundred and sixteen years elapsed between the making of the first treaty known to history, that of the Amphictyones in 1496 B. C., up to breaking out of the great war July 28, 1914. During this time there were fifteen hundred treaties stipulated in the world, various ones of which were called leagues. A treaty was signed on an average of once every twenty-seven months. ‘Treaties of peace, arbitra- tion, division, alliance, confederation, composition, commerce, friendship, concord, union, reconciliation, navigation, subsidies, etc. “Treaties of per- petual confederation, perpetual peace, perpetual alliance, perpetual union, good friendship, definite peace, etc.? But all of these things have not succeeded in preventing wars. And much less could the League of Nations succeed, formed, as it was, during the year 1919 as a corollary of the great war. No treaty can prevent war. No treaty could ever prevent war. Be- cause the present treaties, including that which is called the League of Nations, are nothing other—and treaties of the future could be nothing other—than a repetition of preceding treaties. Because the present treaties, including that which is called League of Nations, do not represent, and future treaties could not represent, the genuine will of the people, but they do represent and could represent instead, as have the preceding treaties, the authority of the governments which always have been emanations of the privileged classes and not the emanation of the people, as I positively demon- strated in the chapter entitled Human Solidarity; and, indeed, as has been too well confirmed by the facts officially and publicly laid before the world from the day when the peace negotiations were begun at the Paris Con- ference up to the present time. Only my idea against neutrality—a conception which never before has been advanced in any part of the world nor in any epoch—can quickly and forever prevent war. Only by this newest conception, based exclusively on the just authority of the people and not on the partisan authority of the governments, can finally—after thousands of years of hate, struggles, bloodshed, extermina- tion, sorrow, mourning and misery of every sort—be initiated on the earth the true and perennial kingdom of peace, love and happiness. 1The number 1500 includes -only the “principal” treaties, not those of “secondary” im- ortance; not the permanent tribunal of international arbitration at the Hague instituted ‘uly 29, 1899; not the national and international peace societies and Congresses which flourished before and after the above tribunal. : 22 Extracts from Press Reviews of the book, “Why Italy Entered Into the Great War,” from which the chapter entitled “Human Solidarity” here reproduced is taken. THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN (Manchester, England): “Why Italy entered into the Great War.” By Luigi Carnovale. In English and Italian. Chicago: Italian-American Publishing Company. Pp. 673. To the deep love of country which has inspired this book is added the pathos of exile. The writer who cannot be in the midst of the fighting and struggle in his native land, has put into his work a burning zeal and energy. Others will fight better because of him, he hopes. Italia chiamd. Alas! all his care in documentation may go unrewarded yet awhile, for the world is reading newspapers, pamphlets, and brief! impressions, and has hardly the time—or rather the patience—for such fundamental work as Signor Carnovale’s. But he writes for a judicial time, which shall surely come; and he has given himself space and leisure in stating the whole case of his country. Such a book has permanent value as a source of reference, from the very completeness which may frighten hasty readers today. So we have the whole story of the relations -of Italy and Austria from the middle of the eighteenth century told in great detail, with copious notes and documents. The tale of the Trentino, the tale of Trieste, the old memories of the Risorgimento and of the martyrs are here to rouse the heart that sinks a little under the rather poor story of official Italy under the Triplice: It comes down to the entry of Italy into the war, and contains much that English readers did not find in their newspapers. * * * This crowded and enthusiastic book may strike some as fanatical should they happen on the reference to Meucci, “the defrauded inventor of the telephone which today is called the Bell.” But Signor Carnovale’s own theme is too absorbing to admit of many irrelevances—it is the only one—and his duty too clear; to justify the fighters throughout the generations, and to win for them not merely reasoned approval but the recognition of their glory. THE LONDON TIMES (London, England) : The author writes this book to defend his country from the charges made that Italy had been guilty of treachery in declaring void the treaty of the Triple Alliance. OXFORD JOURNAL (Oxford, England): Sig. Canovale gives the full text of the communications which passed between the Great Powers in the last few days before the war commenced. This fact alone renders the work of permanent value. BRISTOL EVENING NEWS (Bristol, England) : All students of European politics should read “Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” by Luigi Carnovale. It is one of the most valuable works which has been issued since the outbreak of the war. BRISTOL TIMES AND MIRROR (Bristol, England) : A glance only at Luigi Carnovale’s volume, “Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” will be found enough to convince the most sceptical of the right- eousness of Italy’s action. EDINBURGH EVENING DISPATCH (Edinburgh, Scotland) : * * * The book is passionately patriotic. * * * The general reader will find enough to clearly understand the Italian’s motive in entering the war and will follow the operations on the Italian front with more interest and deeper sympathy. THE EVENING NEWS (Edinburgh, Scotland) : = * * * From a chapter showing the splendid patriotism which prompted ou Allies’ action the writer goes on to show that the love of humanity had much to 23 do with the decision. * * * The refutation of the charge that British and French gold held sway forms an enlightening chapter. THE GLASGOW HERALD (Glasgow, Scotland) : oes ; Sig. Carnovale has carried out with meticulous care his self-imposed task of justifying to the world the action of his native country in entering the war. * * * Part IV recapitulates with all of the author’s idealistic fervor the actual reasons which plunged his country into the strife. THE EVENING TIMES (Glasgow, Scotland) : In a handsome volume of almost 700 pages Signor Luigi Carnovale justifies the action of his native country in breaking the Triple Alliance. * * * Of course the people of this country and France need no such justification. But Signor Carno- vale’s volume is none the less interesting and valuable. * * * ‘The present generation of readers knows comparatively little of what the Italian Peninsula passed through from the time of Maria Theresa down to the unification in 1870. * #* * Here in the first part of the book we have the story told briefly and in the enthusiastic language of intense patriotism. * * * The second part is of equal interest and perhaps of greater importance. * * * In the third part Signor Carnovale deals with the events leading up to Italy’s entrance on the field of strife. This section is of special value for the official documents which it includes. * * The fourth and concluding part is that most character- istic of the author’s fervid style. * * * It may be explained that the great bulk of this noteworthy contribution to the history of the war is due to the fact that it includes not only an excellent English translation, but the original Italian text. SCOTSMAN (Edinburgh, Scotland) : Sig. Carnovale’s volume is physically rather a heavy book because it appears in two languages—English and Italian, but there is no sort of heaviness at all about its literary or about its patriotic spent. THE CORK EXAMINER (Cork, Ireland): @ * * Jt is evident that the author caused much examination of conscience in the United States even before that country joined in on the same side as Italy. THE HAMILTON DAILY TIMES (Hamilton, Canada) : This is an ambitious and important volume, one half of which is in the English language and the other half in the Italian language. It is a defense of Italy’s participation in the war by Luigi Carnovale, the Italian author and statesman. THE AUCKLAND STAR (Auckland, New Zealand, Australia) : The author of “Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” an Italian by birth, living in the United States, possesses the special qualifications for his task in that he knows intimately the feelings and aspirations of the Italian people, and at the same time, because of his residence in America, is able to bring to bear upon recent events something of the judicial spirit which is diffi- cult to preserve in the midst of the popular excitement that prevails in a country actively engaged in a great war. Signor Carnovale vigorously resents the suggestion that Italy entered the war from a selfish desire to acquire Trent and Trieste, or that she was guilty of an act of treachery in declaring void the treaty of the Triple Alliance. He shows that the sentiments which irre- sistibly pushed Italy to war were sympathy for the weak nations whose liberty and honour were assailed by the Central Powers. * * * ‘The author sustains his contentions by copious quotations from public documents. His book is a valuable contribution to the history of the war. LE RAPPEL (Paris, France) : There has been called to our attention a large and fine volume by Luigi Carnovale, published in Chicago in English and Italian, “Why Italy Entered into the Great War.’ * * * The question of irredentism is treated in a masterful manner. REVUE BLEUE (Paris, France): The object of the work -by Luigi Carnovale is to explain to the Americans 24 the reasons for which Italy entered into the war against her ancient allies. * * * One of the most important points which the author brings out is a respect for the rights of the weaker and love for humanity. DIARIO DE NOTICIAS (Lisbon, Portugal) : Of all of the works on the war which have passed through our hands in these tragic years, none has seemed more complete, more minute and more con- clusive than that written by Signor Carnovale. * * * It clears many points which at first seemed complicated even in the eyes of the best educated. * * # We recognize in the work of Signor Carnovale a burning love of country, an aoe of defense which was necessary to confute the adversaries who accused taly. LA RAZON (Buenos Aires, Argentina) : Signor Carnovale with a vast erudition and a clear historical vision narrates in “Why Italy Entered into the Great War” events from ancient times to the great national and international movements which preceded the consolidation of the Italian unity. * * * The author of this interesting book shows himself to be an Italian inamoured of his country and of the ideals of its history, and he shows himself to be an historian of exceptional value. His work will serve to increase the love and respect of the public for the great Italy which is fighting and triumphing, THE JAPAN TIMES (Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan): Mr. Carnovale’s former book on the immigrants in North America has won him a reputation as a student of international affairs and a capable writer. THE UNION (Shanghai, China): This work of 673 pages gives the history of Italy. It is full of illuminating reading and exceedingly interesting. The book is well worth reading. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST (Hongkong, China) : Mr. Carnovale’s book is very readable and should interest everyone who is interested in Italy. The author has a consummate grasp of Italian history. SHANGHAI MERCURY (Shanghai, China): To those who wish to know why Italy entered into the great war, we recommend this well written and valuable work. English and alien readers will find it well worth studying. The author, who is proud of his country, in issuing this book has bestowed on Italy an excellent deed which deserves his country’s thanks. THE CHICAGO EVENING POST (Chicago, Illinois) : The author gives an historical justification for Italy’s entry into the war that is complete. He gives this not only as an historian but as an Italian; that is to say he puts over the actual feeling as well as the intellectual position of the patriotic Italian. And lastly he writes as a philosopher whose vision is not bounded by the war, who does not visualize war as something good in con- tradistinction to something puerile called pacifism, but who can see pacifism as a good which is to be won through the present war. * * * Mr. Carnovale, who, according to an announcement, will shortly give us a life of the great Italian thinker Campanella, is himself what might be called an Utopian phil- osopher. He sees this war as the logical result of a system of life that has been contemptuous of Utopian dreaming and he sees the futility of the age-long efforts to reform it. * * ® Mr. Carnovale’s pages reveal the typical Italian as a man with a vivid historical sense as well as the artistic sense, with which alone we credit him. He is emotional, it is true, but when he puts his emotions into “lost causes,” causes which he knows send their adherents to martyrdom, people of slower blood must take off their hats. * * * To read these pages is to understand very thoroughly and to sympathize deeply with Italy’s aims in the war. To read the concluding chapter is to realize that after Kultur has been put into its place, the Latin spirit may have momentous contributions to make to our revolving human life. In the past our educational orientation toward Germany has given us a very incomplete share in European culture. France we have known fairly well, but of Italian thought | we have known very little. Mr. Carnovale may do much to correct our perspective. 25 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE (Chicago, Illinois) : Mr. Carnovale has been thorough in his explanations. * * *® In the con- cluding chapter the author says that “the present war is the logical and natural epilogue of the evils committed by the privileged class during their long dominion over the world.” ‘This privileged and dominant class must pass away, Mr. Carnovale declares, and “from the ruins of this great war, saturated by the blood and anguish of all the human family, will arise a breath of new and vitalizing energy. This breath will create a new order of men, who will be omnipotent, and who will be called the Omnipotents.”” The function of this high order will be to defend the rights of humanity—“their work will be like the gradual, fruitful virtue of the sun which appears every morning on the horizon.” * * * Upon this note of poetic vision the book closes. This uplift of hope and ardor of expression should not be regarded as in any way an indication of careless historic research or record. It is rather the effort of a creative and eager mind to lift itself above the dark chaos and agony of the present time. THE CHICAGO DAILY JOURNAL (Chicago, Illinois) : This is a book with a double text, English and Italian * ® ® and a very interesting book it is. CHICAGO HERALD AND EXAMINER (Chicago, Illinois) : Mr. Carnovale has a strong, firm grasp on history, and he goes back many decades to trace the evolution of causes behind Italy’s union with the Allies. * * ® This volume should be a valuable addition to the library of any person who would delve deeply into the motives behind the war. THE WOMEN’S PRESS (Chicago, Illinois) : In reviewing “Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” by Luigi Carnovale, one feels a debt of gratitude to the author for those details of Italy’s history of which most of us are in ignorance. The history of Italy lacks the dramatic quality of France. The French emotionalism makes for picturesqueness. The Italian temperament is rather one of passionate loyalty, a dogged belief in its rights, and the firm adherence to those rights, which is the making of martyrs. The book on the whole is a valuable acquisition to our ever increasing war library. In the author’s purity of diction, his precision of execution and his unbiased but patriotic point of view, he has given us a document of enormous value, not only as a book of reference, but as a work of history which an eager army of knowledge seekers will glady welcome. UNITY (Chicago, Illinois) : Our own Chicago Carnovale has produced in “Why Italy Entered into the Great War,” what is unquestionably the most valuable contribution to European political history that has been inspired by the war. It is a book that will stay on the shelf of the student, and whoever undertakes to deal with Italian subjects or interests will have to reckon with this book. * * * It is not alone to this portion of Mr. Carnovale’s book, however, that today’s student of international affairs should turn, but particularly to his very remarkable chapter on “Human Solidarity,” in which he sets forth a point of view as interesting as it is unique. * * * In a phrase, the solution offered for the prevention of war is the abolition of neutrality. Mr. Carnovale urges that every nation, when a weaker nation is attacked by a stronger, should leap to arms in defense of the weaker nation, on the ground that “the cause of the weak is always beautiful, sacred and worthy of victory.” Had the Central Powers, he contends, known that no nation would remain neutral, but that instantly, upon the attempted infringe- ment of the independence of Serbia, the world would have taken up arms in her defense, they would never have entered upon their disastrous enterprise. * * * It, of course, is obvious that the weaker nation may not always be in the right, but it must be remembered that it is the people, and not the governments, upon which the author is relying for action. It is that fundamental sense of justice and right, that almost instinctive feeling for human liberty, characteristic of the masses of the people everywhere, which he believes could be depended upon to determine whether the weaker nation involved in any given case is right or wrong. * * * This deep, spontaneous, untaught wisdom of the people puts to shame the self-seeking diplomacy of their rulers. Just as in the late war, the people of Italy, cognizant of the human issues involved, forced their govern- 26 ment to enter the conflict in behalf of little Serbia and Belgium, so it seems probable that the people of any nation, since the people are always far ahead of their governments in love of liberty and devotion to justice, might in any given case force such action upon their governments as would bring about inter- vention on the side of right. It is this divine common sense of the people of the world which Mr. Carnovale embodies in his phrase, “Human Solidarity.” It is, of course, only in this spiritual entente of the peoples of the world that the hope of the world lies today. The need is for them to learn how to make this force effective that they may more readily contro] their governments instead. of being controlled by them. Then one might hope, not only for the defense of a weaker nation, but for such action on the part of the people of an aggressor nation as would prevent its aggression. THE DIAL (Chicago, Illinois) :+ A work of marked value for the study of one phase of the present world- conflict is Luigi Carnovale’s bi-lingual volume, “Why Italy Entered into the Great War.” * * * Mr. Carnovale has a reputation as a journalist both in Italy and America and is one of the younger school of radical reformers. * #* * As a resident of Chicago he casts his eye not only over the Great War, but over some of the lesser wars, which in our own city and country have been caused by economic injustice. +tNow of New York, N. Y. THE ROCKFORD DAILY STAR (Rockford, Illinois) : The latest book by Luigi Carnovale deals with Italian history in an orderly though very spirited manner. Signor Carnovale writes with fluency and force. His words have what is now commonly understood as “pep.” The text, printed in both English and Italian, will hold the reader in rapt interest, whether he may choose to differ with the author on sociological questions or not. THE JOLIET HERALD-NEWS (Joliet, Ulinois) : * #* * These are the reasons given by Luigi Carnovale for the appearance of one of the most careful and instructive analysis that we have seen, bearing upon the European war. Signor Carnovale, now a resident of Chicago and author of several noteworthy volumes, tells in English and Italian “Why Italy Entered into the Great War.” The painstaking research of Signor Carnovale has produced a volume valuable, not only for its complete justification of Italy’s course in the European conflict, but as an historical work. THE BULLETIN (San Francisco, California) : It is by far the most comprehensive volume on this subject that has thus far come to us and explains fully the position of Italy. LOS ANGELES EXAMINER (Los Angeles, California) : If ever there lived one peculiarly fitted to enact the role of advocate and apologist for the Italian people, that man is Luigi Carnovale, author of “Whv Italy Entered into the Great War.” It is a great book in some respects. * * * It is a mine of information in regard to the history of the Peninsula during the nineteenth century. True, this elaborate and comprehensive résumé is written with a pen dipped in vitriol; but the student of weltpolitik will not mind that on account of its value as history for ready reference. * * * These contributions to the literature of the struggle are important enough to entitle Signor Carnovale’s work to an important place in every international, diplomatic, public and well equipped private library in the United States. The book is scholarly, interesting and impressive. LOS ANGELES TIMES (Los Angeles, California) : No part of public school education is more deficient in fact than that relating to modern Italy; and as a result comparatively few Americans have more than the vaguest conception of an historical background. * * * Signor Carnovale, with the dramatic and temperamental enthusiasm of his race, has written this comprehensive book to show the reasons for Italy’s course. THE LOS ANGELES TRIBUNE (Los Angeles, California) : This book makes Italy’s case clear to the world and is one of the most important documents of the war. : 27 SOUTHWESTERN FREEMASON (Los Angeles, California) : An historical volume (“Italy and the Great War”) which is a pertinent contribution to the literature of these eventful times. OAKLAND TRIBUNE (Oakland, California) : Carnovale’s book is a hideous record, written with clarity, sanity, and deliberation, leading the mind to see a series of pictures beginning with old Roman days and proving the historic rights of Italy and the lands she claims today. The struggles of Dante, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour and other patriots to realize this complete unity are graphically and poetically set forth, for the author is a natural poet as well as a vivid historian. MERCURY HERALD (San Jose, California) : Flaming bursts of patriotism illuminate each chapter in spite of an evident desire to relate impartially the wrongs which Italy has suffered. It is good to know a patriot such as Signor Carnovale; it is inspiring to read his book, and long before one arrives at the final determination of Italy to enter the war in 1915 not a doubt remains but that it was high sentiments only which pushed the Italians to war against Austria. Beyond a doubt, Italy’s position has been vin- dicated long since, but if there remain any thoughtful Americans who still question it they should read this masterful volume. THE LOS ANGELES TRIBUNE (Los Angeles, California) : This book makes Italy’s case clear to the world and is one of the most important documents of the war. THE HARTFORD COURANT (Hartford, Connecticut) : The book is a valuable historical work apart from its prime motive, and contains a mass of information which should prove useful in justifying both to English and Italian readers the course taken by Italy in the present conflict. THE HARTFORD TIMES (Hartford, Connecticut) : This large and important volume gives in both English and Italian the reasons for Italy’s entrance into the war on the side of the Allies. Signor Carno- vale has made quite clear that the true place of Italy is with those peoples who fight for government by the people. WATERBURY REPUBLICAN (Waterbury, Connecticut) : Luigi Carnovale, the brilliant historian of Chicago, has just produced a bulky book, “Why Italy Entered into the Great War.’ ‘The author shows the artist's hand often in the marshalling of his facts. The passage of the death of the wife of Garibaldi is powerfully pathetic. Not long, however, does Carnovale rest on this or any other theme. There is a nervous energy, a stir of the library impulse surging through every chapter. WASHINGTON EVENING STAR (Washington, District of Columbia) : It is a brilliant exposition—argument, description, persuasion—with the fires of its own Italian spirit shimmering through it. Eminently worth one’s study and consideration is this fervid and eloquent study of Italy in the light of its present glorious contribution to the war for the world’s freedom. THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION (Atlanta, Georgia): The reader will find this one of the most interesting books that has been written during the war and it will take its place as one of the best reference books that has been published up to this time. THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR (Indianapolis, Indiana) : Carnovale’s book is printed both in English and Italian and is well written in a straightforward, connected narrative form. He presents the case of his country not emotionally, but calmly and judicially, but it is a story to excite the sympathy and to stir the heart of humanity. * * ® The author is a news- paper writer of experience and standing, and his work has the stamp of authority. THE AMERICAN FREEMASON (Storm Lake, Iowa): * © * The work has an enduring value, of interest beyond the period of the war. 28 THE COURIER-JOURNAL (Louisville, Kentucky) : The average American is abysmally ignorant of modern Italian history. He may have a smattering of French, English and German history in the past fifty years, but he knows little of the rise of the peninsular kingdom. To him Luigi Carnovale’s new book can be emphatically recommended. Signor Carnovale calls his volume, “Why Italy Entered Into the Great War,” but in tracing causes and effects he covers almost the entire field of Italian history. * * *% Signor Carnovale writes with a fluent pen, and if he errs it is on the side of patriotism and enthusiasm. * * * One of the most brilliant chapters is a philosophic dis- cussion of human solidarity. He states his case clearly and convincingly; his is a living and interesting presentation of the Italian point of view. “LIGHT” (Louisville, Kentucky) : Luigi Carnovale in “Why Italy Entered Into the Great War” has added to the world’s literature an interesting and instructive book. PORTLAND EVENING EXPRESS (Portland, Maine): Luigi Carnovale, Italian, is master of his subject and what he has to say about the great struggle into which his country was pushed to war will be of particular interest to American readers, *, * * His pages lack neither beauty nor senti- ment and from first to last they exalt Italy. THE NEW GUIDE (Baltimore, Maryland) : The author wields a firm pen, supported by assured knowledge, and when he is through with the subject nothing remains to be said. * * * The motive of Italy is vindicated. THE BOSTON ADVERTISER (Boston,. Massachusetts) : Luigi Carnovale’s book will be a revelation. * * * It will be a useful addition to war libraries. THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER (Boston, Massachusetts) : This warm, eager defense of the Italian people, based on historical facts, illuminated by illustrative incidents and inspired by an invincible hope that after the world anguish of the great war a new vitalizing energy shall purify the social organism and bring justice, peace, and brotherhood to all peoples without distinction, has been written by a journalist of Chicago. * * * The book is unusual in that it appeals equally to English and Italian readers. It will promote a better acquaintance with our Italian allies and their history. THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR (Boston, Massachusetts) : The publication of Mr. Carnovale’s book at the present time is particularly welcome and useful. * * * It is a welcome reminder of the lofty motives by which Italy has been actuated in the past. The fullness with which he deals with the Irredentist question sheds a light on Italy’s purpose in entering the war, and the justice of her cause, which those who have not previously given much study to the matter will find most useful. THE LIVING AGE (Boston, Massachusetts) : It is not surprising that the author’s nationality and temperament should make his literary style at times too fervent, or that his anticipations of future recon- ‘struction, not only for Italy but for the world should be extremely radical. The book has permanent historical value; and Americans who read it will feel a more earnest desire than ever that the results of the war may give to Italy ade- quate compensation for the wrongs which she has suffered in the past. THE WRITER (Boston, Massachusetts) : Writers on current topics especially need the historical and political informa- tion that Mr. Carnovale gives in a very interesting way. THE DAILY COURIER (Lowell, Massachusetts) : It is a formidable array of facts, and leaves one clear in the view that no matter what the present threat may be on the line of the Piave, the Italian armies will never yield to a foe that has been feared for more than a century. Students of Italian will find this book of double value. 0 29 DETROIT TIMES (Detroit, Michigan) : This is the first book written in English, which gives the Italian side of the question. The author is something of an idealist and predicts that when the war is ended there will be a reign of “the Omnipotents, who will work thru the active principle of love.” * ® ® This book is well worth the attention of the earnest student who seeks truthfully to understand the causes and the probable outcome of the war. As a history of Italy, it is a valuable book of reference. THE DETROIT FREE PRESS (Detroit, Michigan) : _This Italian author reviews the reasons which pushed the Italians into war against Austria. He shows that they were not inspired as has been charged, either by French or British gold, or because they were eager to acquire territory. Far nobler motives have been ascribed; the human solidarity of the humble and the weak; the rights of man violated under Prussianism. THE DULUTH HERALD (Duluth, Minnesota) : Most interesting) to American readers is the “human solidarity” factor. * * * Mr. Carnovale’s book is interesting not only for its discussion of Italy’s action, but for its summary of important historical matters. THE MENACE (Aurora, Missouri) : The whole volume is a most luminously thoughtful and authoritative treat- ment of vital and timely questions which ought to appeal to every thoughtful American. Not only everyone who wishes to keep abreast of the world events connected with the great war, but for true Americans the story of Italy’s long, heroic and finally triumphant battle against despotism is a volume of first importance, TRENTON TIMES-ADVERTISER (Trenton, New Jersey): This patriotic son of Italy has been plied with questions as to why his country entered into the great struggle. There have been intimations that she was guilty of infamous treachery. * * * The accusations have aroused the indig- nation of our author and he repudiates them with considerable display of spirit. * * * Mr. Carnovale’s effort must take a place of importance in the literature of the war. THE WORLD (New York, N. Y.): It is an impressive recital. a THE MORNING TELEGRAPH (New York, N. Y.): Luigi Carnovale, of Chicago, makes a most interesting contribution to war literature. * * * ‘The book is doubly valuable, for that it is published in Eng- lish and Italian. * * * The argument made by Mr. Carnovale seems to be unanswerable from any standpoint. NEW YORK TIMES (New York, N. Y.): Luigi Carnovale’s sturdy volume presents an eloquent defense by an Italian of Italy’s participation in the war. NEW YORK TRIBUNE (New York, N. Y.): Italy needs make no apology for her entrance into the great war. * * * Yet for renewed reminder, for reference, and for lasting record, it is well to have this compendious bi-lingual volume of Mr. Carnovale. It is the most com- plete statement of the Italian case and the most judiciously and authoritatively made, that we have seen. DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE (Rochester, New York): It is a work of much interest and considerable scope by the noted Italian writer whose present home is in Chicago. * * * Mr. Carnovale does his coun- try a great service * * ®, and his book is one of the literary products of the war that the historian must take into consideration when preparing his account of the great conflict, and one that those who aspire no higher than to be well informed concerning events as they pass, ought to have for handy reference. THE ROCHESTER HERALD (Rochester, New York): The book will be a useful addition to war libraries. 30 THE TROY RECORD (Troy, New York): _ The American reader will find the work well deserving a careful reading. It is entertainingly written and historical facts are given with vivid detail. I'HE POST EXPRESS (Rochester, New York): The book as an historical and political presentation of ‘Italy’s case well deserves study. * * * Luigi Carnovale is a talented and brilliant writer, and the enthusiasm with which he speaks of his beloved Italy will appeal not only to Italians but to the millions who are interested in the land which was so dear to Byron, Shelley and Browning. CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER (Cleveland, Ohio) : To many of Anglo-Saxon antecedents the book will seem a bit over-written, but it is, assuredly, a valuable contribution to the literature of the great war. CINCINNATI TIMES-STAR (Cincinnati, Ohio) : It is the first complete and authoritative history in English of the conditions and events that lead up to the momentous action of May 23, 1915. MORNING OREGONIAN (Portland, Oregon) : The literary style shown in the book is dashing and dramatic. Argument is piled on argument, until a stirring climax is reached. THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) : All that is necessary to say is that the book is an elaborate exposition of an important chapter in history, containing documents which will be of importance to the historian who when peace arrives, undertakes a calm survey of the whole situation. THE NORTH AMERICAN (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) : In Mr. Carnovale’s book this question of irredentism assumes its real aspect and volume as only one of many reasons that have determined the Italian masses to risk all in an attempt to become a world power. * * * Of the final outcome Mr. Carnovale’s work presents a significant forecast. THE SCRANTON TIMES (Scranton, Pennsylvania) : It is a painstaking work by an author who has. written interestingly and authoritatively upon Italy and Italians before now, and gives to the reader the real Italian viewpoint and arguments on the present war. * * * It is a work of the utmost value making for a more intelligent understanding of the Italian side. THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL (Providence, Rhode Island) : Unique in certain respects a volume just published in this country deserves more than casual attention. * * * Mr. Carnovale gives all the documents in the case, and he is wise to do this because without them it is impossible to com- prehend the situation with any degree of intelligence. THE GALVESTON DAILY NEWS (Galveston, Texas) : The volume is an especially valuable one for its historical contents not only as they directly concern Europe, but as they affected all Europe. DESERET EVENING NEWS. (Salt Lake City, Utah): The work is of unusual interest showing clearly the justification the Italian people feel in their part of the war; and the enthusiasm and impassioned defense by one of her noted scholars writes unmistakably, if unconsciously, a limitless confidence in her cause. HERALD-REPUBLICAN (Salt Lake City, Utah): With an unerring accuracy of logic the author proves his point. But this is no mere cold array of figures and statement of facts. It is written by an artist. THE NEWS LEADER (Richmond, Virginia) : The author whose fervid patriotism inspires a vigorous style leads us into most interesting and long roads of history, * * ® Nor is the least valuable feature of his work the information it gives regarding political evolution in Italy and its causes. 31 RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH (Richmond, Virginia) : The author is a distinguished Italian-American journalist and a leader of Italian thought in this country, and he brings forth a formidable array of proof that is historically incontestable to justify the course pursued by Italy. The book should be widely read as it throws much light on questions and motives hitherto not generally understood in America, even by native sons of Italy now citizens of the United States. THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW (Spokane, Washington) : This book is in the nature of a “Red Book” explaining the reasons of Italy’s change of front. MILWAUKEE FREE PRESS (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) : It is a painstaking and illuminating volume. THE LIVING CHURCH (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) : It is unfortunate both for Italy and the United States that we have habitu- ated ourselves very calmly to think of the Italian as a rough day-laborer. We will reap harvest in art, music, and the humanities through the Italian blood poured into the melting pot. Whoever reads this book, that founds all its claims on documents, will finish with deep sympathy for Italy and the Italians in this war. AMERIKA (Madison, Wisconsin) : A great work. A most convincing statement of facts and arguments. Mr. Carnovale knows his subject from a to z, and his style is fluent, forceful, filled to the brim with that vivacity of which the French and Italians’ are the masters. Both his fancy and his vocabulary seem inexhaustible. Nor does he lack equi- librium. He presents with the greatest perspicuity the sufferings and aspirations of the Italian people. * * ® The author arouses our sympathy for Italy and at the same time stirs our own patriotism to its profoundest depths. For this lesson in devotion to our country we owe Luigi Carnovale a debt of gratitude. 32 The disarmament conference at Washington