Although Italy has a particular interest in reopening relations with Russia, the Italian Government has understood that the best and shortest way is not to recognize the government of Moscow.  But Italy will never subordinate her recognition to plutocratic considerations.  Whatever government there may be in Italy, it will never associate itself with actions directed to compelling Russia, in order to be recognized, to guarantee the payment of obligations assumed previous to the War and the revolution.  Civilization has already suppressed corporal punishment for insolvent debtors, and slavery, from which individuals are released, should not be imposed on nations by democracies which say they are civilized.

The fall of the communistic organization in Russia is inevitable.  Very probably from the immense revolutionary catastrophe which has hit Russia there will spring up the diffusion of a regime of small landed proprietors.  Whatever is contrary to human nature is not lasting, and communism can only accumulate misery, and on its ruins will arise new forms of life which we cannot yet define.  But Bolshevik Russia can count still on two elements which we do not habitually take into account:  the apathy and indolence of the people on the one hand, and the strength of the military organization on the other.  No other people would have resigned itself to the intense misery and to the infinite sufferings which tens of millions of Russians endure without complaint.  But still in the midst of so much misery no other people would have known how to maintain a powerful and disciplined army such as is the army of revolutionary Russia.

The Russian people have never had any sympathy for the military undertakings which the Entente has aided.  During some of the meetings of Premiers at Paris and London I had occasion, in the sittings of the conferences, to speak with the representatives of the new States, especially those from the Caucasus.  They were all agreed in considering that the action of the men of the old regime, and especially Denikin, was directed at the suppression of the independent States and to the return of the old forms, and they attributed to this the aversion of the Russian people to them.

Certainly it is difficult to speak of Russia where there exists no longer a free Press and the people have hardly any other preoccupation than that of not dying of hunger.  Although it is a disastrous organization, the organization of the Soviet remains still the only one, which it is not possible to substitute immediately with another.  Although the Russian people can re-enter slowly into international life and take up again its thread, a long time is necessary, but also it is necessary to change tactics.