-5- audience that was not an unruly mass nor popular in its makeup, but rather from elenents from whom support of the monarchy would be most likely to come. To return to the Patriots.......The influence that their opinion will have in Italy will, I think, be far out of proportion to \ their actual numbers. Practically the whole of Italy looks to \ them as the redeeming element in their unhappy' plight. I have not minimized in my own mind and I would not like to do so to you, the problem that they also present. Many of them are an unruly lot, but I think it is no exaggeration to say that they may in future be conpared to the same unruly lot of revolutionaries who fought at Valley Forge --who were neglected by Congress and who, neither by manners nor appearance would have been welcome in any' of the best homes of Boston or Philadelphia. The important thing is that the patriots of Italy, like the men of Valley Forge, constitute a symbol of a new-born country. My work brings me in daily contact with them. With but few exceptions, they are bitterly anti-monarchical. What they think, and what they feel is going to have great weight in the future of Italy. A.S. |