Week 64 – January 12^th 1919

 

Out of its safest enclosures, political history opens on a vast borderland of voices, rumors, half spoken words, unspoken truths and confidential revelations. A world of its own, that one has to wander into, collecting treasures, trinkets and tales, since no description of political matters can survive on pure facts. But how far should we go? Before we find ourselves lost, committed to the tracks of some fantastic animal, which may very well not exist at all.

For its nature, the Italian political system – and I mean especially under the Monarchy – was ill-suited for an open discussion of greater political matters; so that even the most proper of historians have found hard to avoid looking for true substance in rumors. After all, many of the most famous episodes in Italian modern history are the result of spurious attributions, indirect testimony, or convenient rephrasing – and of many others, which may very well have happened, we have no direct evidence. A world where Kings exchanged forgiveness with their subjects by returning compromising letters was a world which valued discretion over the truth; and rumors worked often as a good compromise between the need not to tell and the need to be clear.

And, of course, rumors also matter in so far as they were believed, or taken as truth – or even not believed at all: why would he say that? What is he trying to achieve? They are wrong, I assure you of that. If only I knew who told them so...

And last, rumors were a convenient way to try the ground ahead – lest some hidden trap sent you tumbling down – to speak in confidence, knowing that such vows of confidence were going to be discreetly broken.

All this to say that throughout Italian history – and perhaps more prominently in the time period we are considering – rumors and voices, private and informal exchanges, have had a political life of their own and exerted an influence that extended well above their actual value. That they have been used, and believed – often beyond reason – within the political world and by political leaders of even greater stature. And it is almost impossible to disregard their influence in the events which will follow.

But one should keep in mind that they are always walking on uncharted land, and keep track of what they know – and of what they know to be false, even if the characters in the story thought it fact, or claimed it so – after all, Wickham Steed has already made an appearance in our tale. Which should help us remember that not all the things we believe are true.

 

In early January, Italy sent her delegates to the Peace Conference (or rather to the preparatory works which begun around the 12^th of January): V.E. Orlando, the Prime Minister – a man who believed in rumors and making use of them – and S. Sonnino, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – a man who believed in pretending not to hear them – led the delegation. Also with them, Antonio Salandra, the former Prime Minister who had brought Italy into the conflict (even if he had no official role aside from that of possible short notice replacement for either Orlando or – more likely – Sonnino), Salvatore Barzilai, the interventionist from Trieste, more famous for his twenty years as head of the press association, and Giuseppe Salvago-Raggi, recently promoted from Ambassador in Paris to Senator.

On January 8^th the Italian press correspondent, publicist and later senator Olindo Malagodi – a moderate interventionist despite his long personal frequentation with Giovanni Giolitti – managed to exchange a few words with Orlando. This conversation is included with many others in Malagodi's posthumously published Conversazioni della guerra, 1914-19: a collection of transcriptions made by Malagodi of his confidential exchanges with various notable political figures, edited together by historian Brunello Vigezzi.

Malagodi's transcriptions, while not drafted verbatim, are generally taken as an accurate representation of what the various personalities may have told him – there are notable examples of similar arguments and even similar choices of words found in private correspondence. And furthermore Malagodi had little reason to alter what served to him essentially as a private record.

Orlando begun with his understandable (aside from internal matters, Orlando had often to accommodate for the schedule of his three much larger Allied counterparts) frustration:

Look in what conditions I have to work! They await for me in Paris for the Conference, and I have to leave with the Government half in crisis […] Straight out of an age of heroes, and I have to keep fixing […] Nitti's meddling, and I feel like a Medieval knight in a council of cheesemongers. Nitti's squabbles are born, they spring out one another […] His conduct makes my life miserable, as a Government. Every time before I leave for Paris I meet him; he behaves and I leave hoping there's nothing going around. Back in Turin I find – it has been three times already! - a telegram […] where he offers his resignation […] over some issue of no relevance. It's like that man has no other goal than to torment those who work with him. I am not the one who asked for this role of first Italian delegate; but with Lloyd George for Great Britain, Clemenceau for France and Wilson himself for the United States, it was necessary to send the Prime Minister […] and in our system everything works depending on the Prime Minister. Just imagine what happens when the Prime Minister leaves behind one character that seems fully committed to raise obstacles and complications for everything...

Orlando had thought of a solution.

Of course I did! Under these circumstances I would be ready to leave the Government and dedicate myself to the needs of the Conference. But what Government may come after? Nitti is restless and keeps hitting his head on every wall, but he is unable to bring together a coalition. I heard rumors of a settlement, favored by the Corriere della Sera, for the creation of a Nitti-Salandra Ministry; but Nitti declares that, if Salandra is back to power, he'll rather turn into a Bolshevik...

Also Salandra couldn't stand Nitti.

Then there are those talking of a possible Nitti-Bissolati agreement.

Bissolati didn't like Nitti either – if we trust Malagodi's judgment.

Then you tell me: how, and with whom, can one form a new Government?

Nitti had jut offered his resignation again – a move that Orlando may have suspected was just a way of wearing him down.

Certainly! So that I'll be forced to spend a couple of days in Paris, and then go back to Rome for another couple of days to find remedy to the situation. […] Nitti claims that the Ministries of Justice, of the Navy and of War are poorly run, and he's right. But you know what are the miraculous technical replacements that he suggests? For the Navy [Enrico] Millo [at the time serving as Military Governor of Dalmatia], which would cause a crisis of the High Command, since Millo and Thaon de Revel [the other Admiral and a supporter of Sonnino's stance on the Dalmatian issue, who would become Ministry of the Navy in 1922] can't sit together in the same room, Fadda for Justice and Mortara for War.