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internal troubles. He provided a pretext for enlarging the armyand borrowing more money. Then came the disastrous climax ofwar upon Menelek at Adowa, where 4,600 officers and men werewiped out. The tragic collapse of this tawdry spectacle in imperialismbrought the Italians, who did not really like it from the start,to their senses. People poured into the streets crying, "Down withCrispi!" "Away with Africa!" Parliament repudiated him. He diedat the age of eighty still hated and ostracized by his people. Crispihad gotten the Italians whipped and himself cast out, and for themoment they turned away from the colonial dream. But he hadplanted in the minds and hearts of the Italians the first seeds ofcolonialism, buried for the moment under what Borgese called "adeep furrow of frustration." For fifteen years their minds remainedpoisoned by the humiliation at Adowa, and the Italian imperialisthad now in his possession that potent emotion called revanche.Adowa became a symbol of Italy's lost honor.VTI · The Incredible SynthesisWE COME NOW to a fact of central importance. What I have beentrying to say thus far is that out of the condition of Italian societysprang certain streams of opinion and of desire that governmentsacted on and that people accepted or at least surrendered to withlittle resistance, even though they may not have approved or evenunderstood them. Bewildered statesmen turned to government debtas a device for creating purchasing power. No one approved it inprinciple. But there was no effective resistance because people demandedthe fruits it brought. Another was the ever-growing relianceon social-welfare measures to mitigate the privations of theindigent, the unemployed, the sick, the aged. The instruments ofdebt and spending became standard equipment of politicians. Andthis need for spending opened the door to an easy surrender to theelements most interested in militarism and its handmaiden, imperialism.*7