territorial conditions of the year 1914 and thereby in the end lands into a policy of world trade, colonisation and naval power, England’s future enmity with us will indeed be certain. Then Germany will suffocate economically under her Dawes burdens, politically decay under her Locarno treaties, and increasingly weaken racially in order finally to terminate her life as a second Holland or a second Switzerland in Europe. This can certainly be achieved by our bourgeois national and patriotic armchair politicians; for this all they need do is continue further along their present path of phrase mongering, shooting off their mouths in protests, making war on all Europe, and then crawling cravenly into a hole before every act. This then is what the national bourgeois patriotic policy of Germany’s resurgence means. Thus, just as our bourgeoisie in the course of barely sixty years has known how to degrade and to compromise the national concept, so in its decline does it destroy the beautiful concept of the Fatherland by degrading it also to a mere phrase in its patriotic leagues.
To be sure, yet another important factor emerges in regard to England’s attitude toward Germany: the decisive influence world Jewry also possesses in England. Just as surely as Anglosaxonism itself can overcome its war psychosis vis-a-vis Germany, world Jewry just as surely will neglect nothing to keep the old enmities alive so as to prevent a pacification of Europe from materialising, and thereby enable it to set its Bolshevist destructive tendencies into motion amid the confusion of a general unrest.
We cannot discuss world policy without taking this most terrible power into account. Therefore I will deal especially with this problem further in this book.
Chapter 15
ITALY AS AN ALLY
Certainly if England is under no compulsion to maintain her wartime enmity toward Germany forever on grounds of principle, Italy has even less grounds to do so. Italy is the second State in Europe that must not be fundamentally hostile to Germany. Indeed, her foreign policy aims need not cross with Germany’s at all. On the contrary, with no other State does Germany have perhaps more interests in common than precisely with Italy, and conversely.
At the same time that Germany tried to achieve a new national unification, the same process also took place in Italy. To be sure, the Italians lacked a central power of gradually growing, and ultimately towering, importance, such as Germany in the making possessed in Prussia. But as German unification was primarily opposed by France and Austria as true enemies, so likewise did the Italian unification movement also have to suffer most under these two powers. The chief cause, of course, lay with the Habsburg State which must have and did have a vital interest in the maintenance of Italy’s internal dismemberment. Since a State of the size of Austria-Hungary is unthinkable without direct access to the sea, and the only territory which could be considered for this — at least in regard to its cities — was inhabited by Italians, Austria necessarily disapprovingly opposed the rise of a united Italian State for fear of the possible loss of this territory in case of the founding of an Italian national State. At that time even the boldest political aim of the Italian Folk could lie only in its national unification. This then perforce also conditioned the foreign policy attitude. Hence as Italian unification [that through Savoys]
slowly took shape, Cavour, its brilliant great statesman, utilised all possibilities which could serve this particular aim. Italy owes the possibility of her unification to an extraordinarily cleverly chosen alliance policy. Its aim was primarily to bring about the paralysis of the chief enemy of unification, Austria-Hungary, indeed finally to induce this State to leave the north Italian provinces. Withal, even after the conclusion of the provisional unification of Italy, there were more than 800000 Italians in Austria-Hungary alone. The national aim of the further unification of people of Italian nationality was at first bound to undergo a postponement when, for the first time, there began to arise the dangers of an Italian French estrangement. Italy decided to enter the Triple Alliance, chiefly in order to gain time for her inner consolidation.
The World War at last brought Italy into the camp of the Entente for reasons that I have already discussed.
Thereby Italian unity had been carried a powerful step forward. Even today, however, it is not yet completed.
For the Italian State, though, the great event was the elimination of the hated Habsburg empire. To be sure, its place was taken by a Southern Slav structure which already presented a danger hardly less great for Italy on the basis of general national viewpoints.
For just as little as the bourgeois national and purely border policy conception in Germany could in the long run satisfy our Folk’s vital needs, equally little could the purely bourgeois national unification policy of the Italian State satisfy the Italian Folk.
Like the German Folk, the Italian Folk lives on a small soil surface which in part is scantily fertile. For centuries, indeed many centuries, this overpopulation has forced Italy to a permanent export of people. Even though a great part of these emigrants, as seasonal labourers, return to Italy in order to live there on their savings, this leads more than ever to a further aggravation of the situation. Not only is the population problem not solved thereby, but it is sharpened rather. Just as Germany through her export of goods fell into a state of dependence on the ability, potentiality and willingness of other powers and countries to receive these goods, likewise and exactly did Italy with her export of people. In both cases a closing of the receiving market, resulting from events of any kind whatsoever, perforce led to catastrophic consequences within these countries.
Hence Italy’s attempt to master the problem of sustenance through an increase of her industrial activity cannot lead to any ultimate success because, at the outset, the lack of natural raw materials in the Italian Motherland robs her in great measure of the required ability to compete.
Just as in Italy the conceptions of a formal bourgeois national policy are being overcome and a Folkish feeling of responsibility is taking its place, likewise will this State also be forced to deviate from its former political conceptions in order to turn to a territorial policy on a grand scale.
The shore basins of the Mediterranean Sea constitute, and hence remain, the natural area of Italian expansion.
The more presentday Italy departs from her former unification policy and goes over to an imperialist policy, the more will she fall into the ways of ancient Rome, not out of any presumption to power, but out of deep, internal necessities. If today Germany seeks soil in Eastern Europe, this is not the sign of an extravagant hunger for power, but only the consequence of her need for territory. And if today Italy seeks to enlarge her influence on the shores of the Mediterranean basin and ultimately aims to establish colonies, it is also only the release ensuing from sheer necessity, out of a natural defence of interests. If the German pre War policy had not been struck with total blindness, it would necessarily have supported and fostered this development with every means. Not only because it would have meant a natural strengthening of an ally, but because it might perhaps have offered the only possibility of drawing Italian interests away from the Adriatic Sea and thereby lessened the sources of irritation with Austria-Hungary. Such a policy, in addition, would have stiffened the most natural enmity which can ever exist, namely that between Italy and France, the repercussions of which would have strengthened the Triple Alliance in a favourable sense.
It was Germany’s misfortune that at that time not only did the Reich leadership flatly fail in this respect, but that, above all, public opinion — led on by insane German national patriots and foreign policy dreamers — took a stand against Italy. Especially, moreover, for the reason that Austria discovered something unfriendly about the Italian operation in Tripoli. At that time, however, it appertained to the political wisdom of our national bourgeoisie to back every stupidity or baseness of Viennese diplomacy, indeed if possible to undertake stupid and base acts itself, in order thereby to demonstrate the inner harmony and solidarity of this cordial alliance before the world in the best possible way.
Now Austria-Hungary is wiped out. But Germany has even less cause than before to regret a development of Italy which one day must necessarily proceed at the expense of France. For the more presentday Italy discovers her highest Folkish tasks, and the more, accordingly, she goes over to a territorial policy conceived along Roman lines, the more must she run into the opposition of her greatest competitor in the Mediterranean Sea, France.
France will never tolerate Italy’s becoming the leading power in the Mediterranean. She will try to prevent this, either through her own strength, or through a system of alliances. France will lay obstacles in the path of Italy’s development wherever possible, and finally she will not shrink from recourse to violence. Even the so called
