.

The Bolshevik government could not be recognized: it gave no
guarantees of loyalty, and too often its representatives had violated
the rights of hospitality and intrigued through fanatics and excited
people to extend the revolution. Revolution and government are two
terms which cannot co-exist. But not to recognize the government of
the Soviet does not mean that the conditions of such recognition must
include that the War debt shall be guaranteed, and, worse still, the
pre-War debt, or that the gold resources and the metals of Russia
shall be given as a guarantee of that debt. This morality, exclusively
financial and plutocratic, cannot be the base of international
relations in a period in which humanity, after the sorrows of the War,
has the annoyance of a peace which no one foresaw and of which very
few in the early days understood the dangers.

Even when there was a tendency favourable to the recognition of the
republic of the Soviet, I was always decidedly against it. It is
impossible to recognize a State which bases all its relations on
violence, and which in its relations with foreign States seeks, or
has almost always sought, to carry out revolutionary propaganda. Even
when, yielding to an impulse which it was not possible to avoid--in
the new Italian Chamber, after the elections of 1919 not only the
Socialists, but above all the Catholic popular party and the party of
Rinnovamento, of which the ex-soldiers especially formed part, voted
unanimously an order of the day for the recognition of the actual
government of Russia--I did not think it right to give, and did not
give, effect to that vote, impulsively generous, which would have
invested Italy with the responsibility of recognizing, even if it were
_de facto_, the government of the Soviet.

I have always, however, rebelled and would never give my consent to
any military undertakings against Russia, not even to a participation
in the undertakings of men of the old regime. It was easy to foresee
that the population would not have followed them and that the
undertakings were doomed to failure. However, all the attempts at
military revolts and counter-revolutions were encouraged with supplies
of arms and material. But in 1920 all the military undertakings, in
spite of the help given, failed one after another. In February the
attempt of Admiral Koltchak failed miserably, and in March that of
General Judenic. Failed has the attempt of Denikin. All the hopes o