- 2 - Second : In its international aspect, and in so far as it especially concerns Italy, there are no longer any grounds for failing to realise that Italy finds herself now in the impossibility of securing by her intervention the aims which she has thereby pursued. Things have gone too far for Italy ever to succeed in disposing of Spain as another element in her political game, by establishing a government of the dictatorial-fascist type which would be fixed in her orbit of international policy. This result could not have been obtained except by ensuring an absolute and complete domination of the country. Now in the present circumstances not even a military victory for the rebels could ensure to Italy that absolute and complete domination of the country which is indispensable to her own plan. Among other reasons, because this military victory could only be obtained through an enormous intensification of Italian intervention itself, which would proportionately increase the serious internal difficulties, which it produces among the Spanish population in the territory, held by the rebels. Supposing a military victory for the rebels, it would, in practice, be transformed into a chronic state of popular discontent and agitation, which would force Italy, for reasons of prestige and even against her own wish, to maintain and constantly intensify her military intervention in Spain. In short, by this road and in the most favourable conditions which can be supposed for Italian policy, Spain would be an item inscribed not in the "active" but in the "passive" account of Italy's international policy. And on this question an immense error with the most serious consequences is committed by anyone who does not succeed in estimating, at their true value, the material possibilities, present and future, of the Republic, and the unshakeable determination of the Spanish people in defence of their political independence. |