To those who read the collection of laws issued by the Bolshevik government many institutions appear not only reasonable, but also full of interest and justice.  Also many laws of the absolute governments of past regimes appear intelligent and noble.  But the law has not in itself any power of creation; it regulates relations, does not create them.  It can even take away wealth from some and give it to others, but cannot create the wealth.  When the individual interest begins to lack, work, which is sorrow and pain, lags and does not produce.  To begin with, it weakens in the short days when energy is avoided, and then it stops through incapacity for energy.  The old fundamental truth is that in all the Aryan tongues the words which indicate work have the same root as the words which denote pain.  Among the great mass of man work is only done by necessity or under the stimulus of individual interest which excites the production of wealth.  They work for wealth; and therefore in the Aryan tongues wealth means dominion and power.

Two years ago I wanted, in spite of the opinion of others, to consent to the Italian Socialists visiting Russia.  I was convinced that nothing would have served better to break in Italy the sympathy for Russia, or rather the illusions of the revolutionaries, as the spectacle of famine and disorder would.  Never did the Press of my country, or the greater part of it, criticize with more violence a proposal which I considered to be both wise and prudent.  I am glad to state that I was right, and that, maybe through the uncertainties and the lessons of those who had spread the illusions, the Italian Socialists returned from Russia were bound to recognize that the communist experiment was the complete ruin of the Russian people.  No conservative propaganda could have been more efficacious than the vision of the truth.

I am convinced that the hostile attitude, and almost persecution, on the part of the Entente rather helped the Bolshevik government, whose claims to discredit were already so numerous that it was not necessary to nullify it by an unjust and evident persecution.

The Bolshevik government could not be recognized:  it gave no guarantees of loyalty, and too often its representatives had violated the rights of hospitality and intrigued through fanatics and excited people to extend the revolution.  Revolution and government are two terms which cannot co-exist.  But not to recognize the government of the Soviet does not mean that the conditions of such recognition must include that the War debt shall be guaranteed, and, worse still, the pre-War debt, or that the gold resources and the metals of Russia shall be given as a guarantee of that debt.  This morality, exclusively financial and plutocratic, cannot be the base of international relations in a period in which humanity, after the sorrows of the War, has the annoyance of a peace which no one foresaw and of which very few in the early days understood the dangers.