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many it is ascribed to the "German disease." Mr. Herbert Agar, oneof our own purple philosophers, who sees ahead America's "Timefor Greatness," explains the evil of aggression among the Germansas due to the historic fact that Germany grew up "outside thestream of Latin culture." This handy diagnosis, of course, cannot beapplied to Italy, which has wallowed in the stream of Latin culture.So in Italy it is ascribed to some peculiar weakness in the Latin soul,the love of glory, the nostalgic yearning for the ancient renown ofthe Romans, their addiction to dramatics. Others see in it the darkfruit of the arms industry or of dynastic ambitions or old racialfeuds. Mr. G. A. Borgese, an eminent Italian scholar and a bittercritic of fascism, which he justly calls the Black Age, sees the senseof inferiority of his countrymen at the bottom of their sins—imperialismas well as fascism. In a brilliantly written volume in whichhe has communicated to his recently acquired English something ofthe florid energy of his native tongue, he traces the long genesis ofItaly's spiritual degeneracy to those poets and scholars from Danteto d'Annunzio who have unwittingly fed her sense of frustration.She had lived through the centuries under the shadow of the longextinguishedglories of the past so that even in her moments ofresurgence she could lift her sights no higher than "Renaissance" or"Risorgimento"—the resurrection of some former eminence. Thelong subjection to Austria had been a "delirium of inferiority" andhad finally become "an inferiority—an actual one." 1But we need not look for special explanations of Italy's hesitantsteps in imperialism. In the eighties there was no people in Europeless concerned about international adventure than the Italians. Theyhad achieved their independence about a score of years before. Mostof the men in public life were the old veterans of Risorgbnento,including Depretis and Crispi. The Italian mind was still under thedominion of those passionate appeals for natural rights on whichthe followers of Mazzini and Garibaldi had been nourished. Italy,which had seen most of her people under the heel of the worst of thecontinental aggressors—Austria—had fed her spirit too long on thearguments against despotism not to have still a deeply rooted hatred*From Goliath: The March of fascism. Copyright, 1937, by G. A. Borgese. By permissionof the Viking Press, Inc., New York.22