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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.