jected to the arbitrary control of the central power, and so of the Government bureaucracy and the Minister. 1 Article 3 of the decree of October 1 reads as follows: "The basis and the crown of every grade of elementary instruction must be instruction in the Christian doctrine according to the form which it has received in the Catholic tradition. In judging the aptitude of teachers and other persons for imparting religious instruction, the Regio Provedditore agli Studi will conform to the views of the competent ecclesiastical authority." The following was the opinion of Signor Gentile, the Fascist Minister of Education, before the coming of Fascisin: "The school is, or should be, the place of instruction in a common truth and a common justice for all; by its very nature it should instil fraternity and unity and gentleness .... Denominational instruction, on the contrary, coarsens the spirit, investing it with a new insensitiveness (durezza) . . it destroys the innate faith in the unity of the true and the good, and splits up the human race in the student's view into two parts, the elect and the reprobate. . . . - In place of fraternity, division ; in place of collaboration, intolerance ! . . . "It produces another defect yet graver than intolerance : the instinctive rP,sistance to the free development of scientific thought in the broadest sense. . "And a yet deeper and more radical fault is that it tends to rob the spirit of the sense of its own self-mastery, and so of its own responsibility, not only moral but intellectual. . . . "Thus the denominational school is not a school but the negation of a school.'' (Report to 1907 Congress, in '' Education and the Lay School," Florence, 1922.) XL-THE OCCUPATION OF CORFU. "If Greece does not pay, I shall remain for an indefinite period in possession of Corfu, which for centuries was uninterruptedly Venetian territory.'' (Mussolini, in interview with the London ''Daily Mail," September 4,. 1923.) "Should the League of Nations declare its -competence in the matter, the question will arise for Italy whether to remain in the League of Nations or to leave it. I have already decided for the second course in that eventuality." (Mussolini, official communication, September, 4, 1923.) ''The action taken does not exclude the sanctions which the Conference of Ambassadors may take.'' 54 BibliotecaGino Bianco
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