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Updated: May 29, 2025
Neither condition is impossible. Irredentism will then lose its political significance, for the position, which belongs to Italy from her geographical situation and her past history, and will promote her true interests if attained, cannot be won in a war with Austria. It is the position of a leading political and commercial Mediterranean Power. That is the natural heritage which she can claim.
Pangermans of the Spree and the Main, who, on the other side of the frontier, receive the fraternal effusions of Russian Pan-Slavism, Italian irredentism, English imperialism, French nationalism! What is it that you want? They want, he replies, part of Austria, Switzerland, Flanders, Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, for all these are "Germanic" countries! They want colonies.
"Why dissimulate it?" writes the foremost of these journals; "this peace is not what we were led to expect. It dislodges the old dangers, but creates new ones. Alsace and Lorraine are, it is true, no longer in German hands, but ... irredentism has only changed its camp. In 1914 Germany put her faith in force because she herself wielded it.
"The Pan-Turkish aspirations cannot come to their full development and realisation until the Muscovite monster is crushed, because the very districts which are the object of Turkish Irredentism Siberia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Afghanistan, etc. are still directly or indirectly under Russian rule."
Now, Russia and Germany, even if they renounce all designs of reconquering the territory which they misruled for such a long span of time, may feel tempted one day to recover their own kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory. And irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for all the three parties who usually suffer from it.
We should need to take into account the long history of the struggle for colonies, the colonial trust of Russia, England and France, the ambitions of France for empire in Africa, the operations of French finance in the Balkans and elsewhere, Austria's aggressive hatred of Serbia, and her effort to prevent the revival of Poland, the conflicts of Germany and Austria with Italy in regard to the Ægean and the Adriatic and their shores, the fierce irredentism of Italy, and the ambitions of Italy that have brought her into conflict with the Teutonic powers and with Turkey, all the conflicting purposes and ambitions of Greece, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Serbia, and the added strain in the Balkans because of the vital interests of all the Great Powers there, and many other conflicts and causes of conflicts.
Such superiority will certainly exist if Italy ceases to be an active member of the Triple Alliance, whether nominally belonging to it, or politically going over to Irredentism. The preparations for the naval war are of secondary importance.
She has had, it is true, her "adventures," more especially in Africa, and her Jingoism, which has taken the natural form of Irredentism or the demand for the recovery of Italian provinces still left in Austrian hands; but she has never threatened the peace of Europe, or sought power at the expense of other nationalities.
The natural instinct to regard one's own nation as the peculiar people of God and to look down on other nations as "lesser breeds without the law" is a phenomenon which must be constantly reckoned with in any comprehensive treatment of nationalism. Every nation has its own variety of it; in England it is Jingoism, in France Chauvinism, in Italy Irredentism, in Russia Pan-Slavism, and so on.
Their aspirations and national institutions still divide them.... Now that the Ottoman Turks have awakened from their sleep of centuries they do not only think of themselves, but hasten to save the other parts of their race who are living in slavery or ignorance.... "Turkish irredentism may be directed towards material or moral reforms according to circumstances.
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