of the imperialistic
competitions which have followed the War, Italy finds herself in a
state of profound psychological uneasiness.

France worries herself about one people only, since as a matter of
fact she has only one warlike race at her frontiers: Germany. Italy's
frontiers touch France, the German peoples, the Slav races. It is,
therefore, her interest to approve a democratic policy which allows no
one of the group of combatants to take up a position of superiority.
The true Italian nationalist policy consists in being against all
excessive nationalisms, and nothing is more harmful to Italy's policy
than the abandonment of those democratic principles in the name of
which she arose and by which she lives. If the policy of justice is
a moral duty for the other nations, for Italy it is a necessity of
existence. The Italian people has a clear vision of these facts,
notwithstanding a certain section of her Press and notwithstanding the
exaggerations of certain excited parties arisen from the ashes of the
War. And therefore her uneasiness is great. While other countries have
an economic crisis, Italy experiences, in addition, a mental crisis,
but one with which she will be able to cope.

France, however, is in a much more difficult situation, and her policy
is still a result of her anxieties. All the violences against Germany
were, until the day before yesterday, an effect of hatred; to-day they
derive from dread. Moral ideas have for nations a still greater value
than wealth. France had until the other day the prestige of her
democratic institutions. All of us who detested the Hohenzollern
dynasty and the insolent fatuity of William II loved France, heir of
the bourgeois revolution and champion of democracy. So, when the War
came, all the democracies felt a lively pang: the crushing of France
meant the crushing of democracy and liberty. All the old bonds are
broken, all the organization which Germany had abroad is smashed up,
and France has been saved, not by arms alone, but by the potent life
of free peoples.

Yet victory has taken away from France her greatest prestige, her
fascination as a democratic country. Now all the democratic races of
the world look at France with an eye of diffidence--some, indeed, with
rancour; others with hate. France has comported herself much more
crudely toward Germany than a victorious Germany would have comported
herself toward France. In the case of Russia, she has followed purely