letter from the Pope which reinstated him, but he refused to show this
letter. He was anxious to preach on the following Sunday; the bishop
declined to allow him. Then came unto the bishop the chief of the
Italian soldiery and he said unto him: "Either thou shalt permit this
man to preach or I will cause thine office to be taken from thee."
Unfortunately the bishop yielded, and the sermon, as one would imagine,
was devoted to the greater glory of the Italians. Sometimes the
Italians, since their occupation, have made a more humorous if not more
successful use of the Church. On Palm Sunday, after the service a number
of peasants, in their best clothes, were walking through a village
holding the usual palm leaves in their hands. They were photographed,
and a popular Italian newspaper printed this as a full-page coloured
illustration. It was entitled: "Dalmatian Peasants on their way to pay
Homage to Admiral Millo."
This policy of a grenade in each hand and a knife between the teeth
makes a powerful appeal to the munition firms. And others who feed the
flame of Italo-Slav hatred are, as Gaetano Salvemini, the
anti-chauvinist, pointed out in the _Unità_ of Florence, those
professional gladiators who would lose their job, those agents of the
Italo-German-Levantine capitalism of the Triest Chamber of Commerce who
want to be rid of the competition of Rieka and think that this can only
be obtained by annexation, and also those Italian Nationalists who
believe that the only path to national greatness is by acquiring
territory everywhere. No light has come to them from the East; the same
arguments which are now put forward by such societies as the "Pro
Dalmatia" could be heard in Italy before she possessed herself of
Tripoli. One heard the same talk of strategic necessities; one heard
that nearly all the population was waiting with open arms for the
Italians; one heard that from a business point of view nothing could be
better; one heard that the Italians without Tripoli would be choked out
of the Mediterranean. And what have been the fruits of the conquest of
Tripoli? No economic advantages have been procured, as Prezzolini wrote,
no sociological, no strategic, no diplomatic benefits. A great deal of
money was thrown away, a vast amount of energy was wasted, and thousands
of troops have to be stationed permanently in the wilderness. That
expedition to Tripoli, which was one of the gravest errors of Italian
politics, was preceded by clouds of forged documents, of absurdities, of
partial extracts out of consular reports, of lying correspondence which
succeeded in misleading the Italians.
WHY THE ITALIANS CLAIMED DALMATIA
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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