No Escape from Fate

Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini, by Luigi Villari. 396 pp. New York: The Devin-Adair Company. $6.00

The First World War was followed by the debunking literature and history of the twenties and thirties, which exposed the lies and misrepresentations of wartime propaganda. The lesser degree of freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression, which mark our “Liberal” age, has precluded the publication of any comparable number of books and articles giving the other side with respect to the origins, causes and conduct of the last war. Hence the importance of this scholarly and vastly informed book by a veteran Italian diplomat and jurist, whose enviable literary style in our language was no doubt learned from his English mother, Linda White. Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini not only constitutes an important contribution to the small number of “revisionist” studies which penetrate the “historical blackout” imposed by statesmen, publicists and generals interested in preserving their undeserved reputations for sagacity and righteousness. It is also the first exposition of the Italian position presented with authority and honesty, as distinct from the self-justifying memoirs of the leading participants in the tragedy of errors which led to World War Two and its aftermath.

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Freda Utley

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Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini, by Luigi Villari. 396 pp. New York: The Devin-Adair Company. $6.00

The First World War was followed by the debunking literature and history of the twenties and thirties, which exposed the lies and misrepresentations of wartime propaganda. The lesser degree of freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression, which mark our “Liberal” age, has precluded the publication of any comparable number of books and articles giving the other side with respect to the origins, causes and conduct of the last war. Hence the importance of this scholarly and vastly informed book by a veteran Italian diplomat and jurist, whose enviable literary style in our language was no doubt learned from his English mother, Linda White. Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini not only constitutes an important contribution to the small number of “revisionist” studies which penetrate the “historical blackout” imposed by statesmen, publicists and generals interested in preserving their undeserved reputations for sagacity and righteousness. It is also the first exposition of the Italian position presented with authority and honesty, as distinct from the self-justifying memoirs of the leading participants in the tragedy of errors which led to World War Two and its aftermath.