Has the Mission of the Monarchy in Italy Come to an End?

The article in Popolo e il re in Italia,1 published in no. 35 of this journal, raises so many interesting issues that perhaps some few further remarks are not out of order. The information reaching us from southern Italy is so scanty as to preclude an exact assessment of the value of the ideas and trends of thought coming to the fore in the part of Italy that has been freed from the Germans, the only area where different opinions can freely be voiced. The interviews with Benedetto Croce and Count Sforza by correspondents of English newspapers2 may have given the impression that Italian political life is fully concentrated in these two men, but as Dr. W. St.3 rightly observes, their influence on the new generations cannot clearly be evaluated. Furthermore, it is worth noting that these two eminent figures are not the only two men who forge a link between pre-1922 Italy and the country as it is today and who offer the new generations the benefit of prolonged experience, having held government office in the earlier period, displaying staunch=resistance to fascism subsequently. Benedetto Croce is in an exceptional position, standing above the parties and the diverging currents of thought. He is not only the greatest living philosopher and one of the major contemporary historians, but throughout the twenty years of fascism, during which he remained uninterruptedly in Italy, he was the most determined spokesman for the idea of freedom. The fascist regime dared to touch neither himself nor his journal La Critica, nor did it venture to touch the circulation of his books, limiting itself to excluding the journal and the books from the purchasing lists of public libraries.