The political movement which dominates Italy has found in Carlo Delcroix a literary genius whose fame may live with that of Mussolini. Delcroix is not simply a fascista: but his books in their terrible eloquence and beauty are the evangel of that new enthusiasm which gave to Italy an impulse from victorious war that contrasts with the disillusionment that has touched France and made much of England pro-German. Through fascismo Italy found in the war an inspiration, and Delcroix is the prophet of the salvation she has won from ardours and endurances. The People’s War and The Sacrifice of the Word are the titles of his two earlier books, and such words as ‘Holy Sacrifice’ would do as a title for any of them. But the others are Dialogues with the Crowd and Seven Uncanonized Saints.

The theme which Delcroix repeats with variations, and with an increase of mastery and power, is the praise of suffering. In the modern age, and most of all among the admirers of Mrs. Eddy, suffering, against which human nature revolts in any case, has been treated either as cowardice or a delusion. But, as many know, it is not a delusion. To lose one’s hand and one’s eye in one sudden ghastly explosion is, when all is said by Christian Scientists and done by medical Scientists, still a calamity. Faith cannot restore the loss. The agony is acute. That was the discovery of Carlo Delcroix, and the war which brought such a disaster to all the fervours and activities of youth cannot simply be accepted or dismissed.