at all, for it gathers in Liberals,
Conservatives, Radicals, Clericals, Socialists even, provided they
accept the patriotic idea and are anxious to see their country raised
to a higher place in the congress of nations even at the cost of some
sacrifice.

Italy, according to Professor Sighele _(Il Nazionalismo ed i Partiti
politici_ p. 80 sq.), must be Imperialist in order to prevent the
closing up of all the openings whence the nation receives its oxygen,
and to prevent the Adriatic from becoming more and more an Austrian
lake, to prevent even the Mediterranean from being closed around us
like a camp guarded by hostile sentinels, and to provide a field of
activity for our emigrants wherein they will enjoy that protection
which they now lack, and which only a bold foreign policy, a thorough
preparation for war, and a clear Imperialist attitude on the part of
the rulers of the State can give them.

For some time the Government continued to appear impervious to the
Nationalist spirit and professed to regard the movement as a
schoolboy's game. But it could not long remain indifferent to so
wide-spread a feeling. Italy's relations with Turkey were rapidly
approaching a crisis. The new Ottoman regime, while it was proving no
better than the old in the matter of corruption, inefficiency, and
persecution of the subject-races, had one new feature--an outburst of
rabid chauvinism and of hatred for all foreigners, but especially for
Italians, whom the Young Turks regarded as the weakest of nations.
Never had Italian prestige fallen so low in the Levant as at this
period, and the Italian Government did nothing to retrieve the
situation. In Tripoli, above all, where Italy's reversionary interest
had been sanctioned by agreements with England and France, the position
of Italian citizens and firms was rendered well-nigh intolerable.
Turkish persecution reached such a point that two Italians, the monk,
Father Giustino, and the merchant, Gastone Terreni, were assassinated
at the instigation and with the complicity of the authorities, without
any redress being obtained.

The Nationalists since the beginning of their propaganda had agitated
for a firmer attitude toward Turkey, insisting on the opening up of
Tripoli to Italian enterprise. Italy was being hemmed in on all sides
by France in Algeria and Tunisia, and by England in Egypt; Tripolitaine
alone remained as a possible outlet for her eventual expansion. The
Turkish Government d