dmill that, disappear. It is inevitable under the reign of hfapitalism and during the transition from that to the do fommune. Towns cannot be simply the equals of the noountry districts, nor the latter of towns, under present "istorical conditions. The country must follow the town, ut thich inexorably draws the country in its wake. The hole question consists in knowing which class in the town shall ill be able to drag the country after it, and what form this irection will take." Oper prope Ting tag bundes nicia tart f being good to ut the 18 D Spent 1 Now, the only comment to be made on this is that 10 Russian, either in town or country, can be the qual of Lenin; and for that reason Lenin is the Red. Tsar. But coming back to ourselves, how, in the national according to our doctrine, can the principle of Association (while firmly preserving the distinction of lasses) be developed, over and above the welcome it gives to the new forms of labour, production and property? We answer: By justifying classes, private property, inequality, not in the classes or individuals, but in their social functions. These functions have implicitly a character which individuals and classes have not. In the past, classes and individuals appeared as if shut up within their special rights, They were not merely distinct, but divided. To-day, they are tending towards unity through their functions. Thus, when we look at the work, instead of merely the worker, this associative principle of ours may furnish a meeting-place of all. The doctrine of "functions," which is contrary to Socialism, but eminently social, has a universal importance. It will justify modern Capitalism and also the British Empire. When I hear cultivated persons condemn all those enormous national and international phenomena, such as Capitalism and Imperialism (only not the German!), I cannot help thinking of the law of Nature thanks to which the human race is continued. What crimes, corruptions, depravities, degradations, horrors have not existed by consequence or occasion of that law! Nature to through millenniums in light and darkness, burdening itself more and more with delinquencies, and will, perhaps, during other millenniums. But such is the law, without which the human race would come to an end. So is it with Capitalism. accused it? and how many iniquities we behold in it! But such, I repeat, is the law. In like manner with Imperialism. How Democracy condemns it, and how many wars it has provoked! Yet such is the law. Their functions are of Of how many horrors have not the t prime necessity for the nations and the human race. And there is no remedy. * After this exposition it is easy to explain how this doctrine of Nationalism enters into that great return to the salutary truths, which were treated with folly and disdain in the past century. It is bound up with a spiritual, as distinct from a materialistic, view of the world. We know well that human intelligence, when it had done with the formalities of scholasticism, brought forth the miracle of modern science. But from the triumph of science and pride of intellect issued that rationalism which made the world smaller, denying the part which it could not comprehend, that is to say, the greater part. In the same way, modern industrialism was a miracle of greatness, the power of production dealing with soil and subsoil; but from this issued the materialism which became another and even more serious diminution of the world. The rationalist joined hands with the materialist during the past century; they conspired to degrade the régime of the bourgeoisie, stripping its work, great though it was, of all nobility, and they desecrated human life. States suffered also from it, as did individuals, politics not less than art, national societies as well as the family. Men had no longer senses to apprehend, amidst tangible appearances, the flux of the infinite sea of existence and the divine music of the mystery encompassing the little words of our know ledge; and where they could hear nothing, there they set the bounds of the universe. We remember how country doctors and workers in laboratories smilingly maintained that nothing existed save that which fell under their lenses or scalpels. There was a time when such deplorable negations were regarded as possessing a sort of mystic virtue, and even as a shadow of religion. We remember the triumph of bourgeois civilization, rationalist and materialist, which thought it could produce at will ideal political systems for the race, like machines in a factory or ships in a shipyard. And while the triumph of mechanical civiliza tion increased outside, moral decadence went on within. All the ordinances and laws of human society, solidarity between classes, between State authority and citizens, between the labour of the hand and that of the brain, began to perish. Everywhere the humiliated spirit yielded to the reign of matter. The bourgeoisie gave birth to the rebellious son. Here is materialism, there rationalism 7 F lly an mere that proud voluntarism which disposes of the world ccording to its own pleasure, there the crowd of interational ideals and again Socialism. Every form of boureoisie which arrives at its last negation works against plain and punishes itself in its chief title to glory, the fruit of ats science and energy-modern production-the worth of ntelligence is denied, manual labour alone is recognized. Socialism is not the first chapter of a new story; it is the ast phase of a decadent and degenerate bourgeoisie. And hat must rise in a fresh form if it would not utterly vanish. Happily, the reign of the spirit is returning. We may hope as well as desire that, while of course not rejecting whatever is truly great and magnificent in science and economic production, this may prepare for an anxious and oppressed humanity a new epoch, a more complete and better civilization. orld Whe bros onal Li great sute Came Our Nationalism is, in the world of politics, the beginning of such a spiritual return. In all its doctrines the spiritual view appears. Spiritual is its whole conception of the national society, in which the principle of association subordinates the idea of classes and individuals to that of their functions. This last is already an ethical idea: from the notion of individual right emerges the greater one of social duty. Not only ought the right of property to exist so far as it is continually productive. Not only is it a right already constituted; it ought continually to be constituted; and there is but a single way to this, namely, by its altruistic, social and national function of production. From this view of function we derive motives which may persuade the legitimate owners to hold out in the class struggle. We have rude but pregnant aphorisms, such as these: "Property belongs to the strong"; "The right of property is nourished by the force of resistance." There exists one mighty form of property, not of individuals, but of nations: Empire. Even Empires, from the Roman to the British, according to the doctrines of Italian Nationalists, are justified by history, in so far as they are productive productive and pioneers of civilization in the world. Linked with the preceding idea, and profoundly spiritual and moral, is the conception of war-human, universal, historic and mysterious. The passions, the horrors, the faults, or the necessities and duties of peoples and States give rise to wars; but their origin is, according to our doctrine, far deeper, lying in that forza operosa, to use ઃઃ the phrase of a great Italian poet to whom England gave in But where the spiritual character of our doctrine appears 66 When the armies of the Central Powers invaded Italy after Caporetto, the women and children of Fonzaso, village in the occupied territory, turning towards Monte Grappa, which still remained to the Italians, cried out "Monte Grappa, thou art still my patria!" In the Nationalist conception the patria is not only Italy, a physical and geographical expression, or Italy as a political system, or Italy in history, or mystic Italy. It is above all, the living unity of all Italian generations. A spiritual entity, and real, with that spiritual reality which transcends all other. On these lines we would spiritualize ven the State and the government when the "parlia mentary administration" of bourgeois materialism has had its day. Our Nationalism as we said at the beginning, has a specially large number of followers among the young, and in particular in the universities. Not Not many years ago the youth of the universities flocked to the Socialist standard because it was, or appeared to be, the flaming ideal of the century. To-day, the Italian youths of the middle-class have greatly changed: they are not only patriotic, but more nstitutional and disciplined in national principle, which yes good hope of an early improvement in our governing Tasses. The older Italians who believe in Nationalism long chiefly to the professional and industrial classes, ith a few working men and many of the old nobility. at illustrious professors of the universities and higher. thehools, of Rome, Florence, Bologna, Naples, Genoa and etarin belong to it. Giacomo Venezian, Dean of the Oniversity of Bologna, who died heroically on the field of ttle, was one of the most ardent Nationalists. But the Association has also many bitter enemies, pa course among the Socialists, but also among the bourencoisie, and that for various reasons, not least because of Ele fierce polemics carried on by its leaders and writers, 20 whom not a few were originally Socialists and have and own equal vigour in fighting under the new standard. oreover, being a new doctrine, and aiming at the direct vision of the laws touching States and Nations, as well a critical method which restores lost truths to light and ys bare the sophisms in circulation, it is embraced with al and sincerity. In this sense it has been called a volution, in the sense, that is to say, not of instituons, but ideas. Revolutions, we know, in so far as they et with renovating forces, sweep away all the sediment, to speak, of falsehood contracted by ignorance and rruption which old régimes deposit in their institutions. hese may be called the corruption of use and wont. Those cieties in which corruption prevails are bound to perish. is a general law, observed in modern times from the fall the Monarchy of Louis XVI to that of the Empire of icholas II, and it brings the biology of States and Nations Lose to the biology of natural organisms. Nationalism, finally, has fought keenly and often bitterly gainst the old political parties. Like Socialism, it admits no compromise. These two cannot agree. With the iberals alone, who inherit an originally noble doctrine, nd who bestowed in the past great men on the government, re the Nationalists accustomed to make election agreeents, and they have shared with them the municipal ower in Rome. But they reproach Liberals with slackness the defence of the State and of the bourgeoisie against ocialism. And they add that the principle of Liberalism o longer serves our time, when the enemy is at the gate. Then the enemy is at the gate, this should be closed. The Nationalists show this in regard to the principle f the liberty of the Press. When, in the last disturbances |