PREFACE XI
than, c We will settle accounts with all.' Sixthly, there is r.
the stratagem of putting the burden of responsibility on the
other side. Illegal, unconstitutional, or outrageously un-
civilized acts are practised, promises and alliances are
disregarded, and when in the natural course of events,
resentment produces the possibility of reprisal or punish-
ment, the disturber of the peace declares that the responsi-
bility for the threatened violence in defensive or punitive
measures rests, not with the aggressor, but with the defender !
Seventhly, it is continually claimed that only constitutional
means will be used, but in fact there is such an accumulation
of arms and organization of terror, that within the con-
stitutional forms, men and women act contrary to that
constitution's spirit and intention. Eighthly, there is the
unqualified denial of sanctity or sovereignty to any standard
of justice, honour, pledged word or principle, other than
the personal and public interests of the dictator, finally,
there is the cool, deliberate annihilation, by imprisonment,
exile, maiming, and murder of those who in opposition
are brave to the limit.
When this has been said, Signor Rossi, without express
discussion, has made clear to us the spirit and aims of
fascist foreign policy. We are far from denying that inter-
national justice has not been fully conceded to Italy by the
great Powers. But over and above what is reasonable,
the temper and tactics sketched above have since 1922
been brought into action in world affairs with consummate
cynicism and selfishness, and delight in making mischief.
Mussolini's declaration just before his advent to power in
Italy that c the succession is open, and we must hasten to
seize it,' applied perfectly to the Italian fascist conception
of the international order. It has been expressed in many
forms, but always with the same frank brutality. Unfortu-
nately for our generation, British and French diplomats, and
we may even say the British and French governing classes,
did not realize clearly enough that after the war the world
was in flux, the balance of power disrupted, with axes and
levers everywhere unattached, that not merely a piece of
land here or there, or an unredeemed population was the
issue—but the very succession to the status of predominant