Italy After the Risorgimento

A London Liberal journal, commenting last May on a speech by Mussolini, remarked that II Duce ‘had evidently never heard of II Risorgi-mento, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi. A very sweeping assertion, this, and typical of the irresponsibility of some of our journalistic mentors. So persistently have the names of Cavour and the rest been dinned into the ears of all Italians, that you would more easily find one who has never tasted maccaroni than one who has never heard of them. Benito Mussolini is the least likely of all Italians to yield a surprise in either respect. The rise of Mussolini and Fascism is due precisely to the surfeit of Risorgi-mento, Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi which Italians have endured for fifty years, and which at the last brought Italy perilously near to ruin.The proverbial insularity of Englishmen is never so apparent as when Italy is in question. To the average Englishman the name of Italy suggests Italian opera, coils of spaghetti, organ grinders, and ice-cream sellers : that is all. But even so, it is an improvement on the prejudices of sixty years ago, of which Justin McCarthy writes : ‘It is much to be feared that the popular enthusiasm for the unity and independence of Italy which (then) flamed out in England was only enthusiasm against the Pope. Something, no doubt, was due to the brilliancy of Garibaldi’s exploits in i860, and to the romantic halo which at that time, and for long after, surrounded Garibaldi himself; but no Englishman who thinks coolly over the subject will venture to deny that nine out of every ten enthusiasts for Italian liberty at that time were in favour of Italy because Italy was supposed to be in rebellion against the Pope.’