Journal of Modern Italian Studies

ISSN: 1354-571X (Print) 1469-9583 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmis20

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian

Freemasonry and the Great War

Fulvio Conti

To cite this article: Fulvio Conti (2015) From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian
Freemasonry and the Great War, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 20:5, 640-662, DOI:
10.1080/1354571X.2015.1096518

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2015.1096518

Published online: 21 Jan 2016.

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 Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 2015
Vol. 20, No. 5, 640–662, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1354571X.2015.1096518

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian

Freemasonry and the Great War

Fulvio Conti
Università di Firenze
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Abstract
During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World
War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong
presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State
(parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand
Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than
500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian
public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war
as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the move-
ment’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the
objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war.
Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in
other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to
promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of
independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian
Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired
them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and
mobilization they used.
Keywords:
Italy, Freemasonry, First World War, nationalism, pacifism, universalism, League
of Nations

In a memoir published in 1948 Francesco Saverio Nitti devoted a large

chapter to Freemasonry, specifically underlining the fact that he himself had
never been a member despite persistent invitations from ‘numerous friends
that were journalists, politicians, or university professors.’1 Recalling the part
he played in the events of 1914-15, he wrote:

Freemasonry intervened decisively, and almost openly, in favour of the

war, and it can be said that it was the Masons, with their violent ways,
who triggered the events […] The supreme and responsible Masonic

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Obediences decided, even before the war began, to spread war propa-
ganda, and the lodges and superior chambers accepted this order, not
always enthusiastically, yet always with discipline […] The ‘radiant days
of May’, as they were known, ruined the country’s liberal institutions
and destroyed the Parliament’s prestige, yet were a triumph for the
Masons, who saw in the war their own war.2

The Prime Minister, Antonio Salandra, believed that the credit the
Freemasons received ‘‘for having given the decisive push to trigger Italian
intervention’’ was ‘‘excessive.’’ He did also admit, however, that one could
not ‘‘ignore the constant work’’ that the organisation had carried out since the
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outbreak of the war, which by November 1914 had developed into a Comitato
centrale dei partiti interventisti (Central Committee of Interventionist Parties).3
The part the Freemasons played as catalysts of the interventionist movement is
acknowledged by a wide range of witnesses, including a young jurist who was
not suspected of ties with the Masons, and who, after having briefly joined the
Nationalist party at the beginning of the conflict, decided to support the neu-
tralist cause. His name was Arturo Carlo Jemolo, and in his own memoirs he
wrote that: ‘The campaign for Italian intervention in the war in ’14-’15
crowned the Freemasons’ attempt to realign themselves with a newly anticleri-
cal France and could have been seen as its greatest triumph; there was no
obstructionist newspaper that was not in favour of intervention from day
one.’’4 In reality, Jemolo added, after having ‘‘believed that they led the inter-
ventionist movement,’ Freemasons ‘saw the war destroy, almost in one blow,
its secular construction and anticlericalism, giving birth instead to a new reli-
gious state; Masonry would then be banished, its offices would be confiscated.
It was a truly devilish joke.’5
Jemolo was right. The years of the interventionist campaign and of the
war represent the last phase in Italian history where Freemasonry still man-
aged to exercise a decisive influence in the public sphere and to influence
parliament and government. This influence was bitterly recalled by one of
the greater exponents of Masonry, Gino Bandini, who since 1913 had been
director of the newspaper L’Idea democratica (The Democratic Idea) by the
Grande Oriente d’Italia (GOI – Grand Orient of Italy). The newspaper had
been created to oppose the clerical and nationalist press, and acted as the
GOI’s semi-official mouthpiece.6 During an event hosted by the Roman
lodges in Palazzo Giustiniani, in May 24, 1924 to commemorate the
anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war, Baldini stated ‘it is sadly necessary
to recognise that, however it came about, the power of influence and con-
trol which we exerted on everyday national life, which we so vigorously
possessed during the period of neutrality and of war, just as has happened
countless times in Italy’s history, slipped from our fingers after the end of
the war. The life of our country was no longer permeated – as it was

641
 Fulvio Conti

before – by our thoughts and feelings; it has taken different routes and now
follows a different path.’7
In fact in 1914-1915, Freemasonry was still powerful throughout Italy
and was present in the various organs of the State (parliament, the public
administration and the armed forces). It formed a pressure group which,
through numerous peripheral associations built over the years was able to
orchestrate coordinated actions all over the country with positive results.
Despite the schism in 1908 of some lodges of the Scottish Rite, which, after
two years, gave life to a new order, the Grand Lodge of Italy of Piazza del
Gesù (the name came from the lodge’s headquarters in Rome), the Grand
Orient of Italy of Palazzo Giustiniani saw the number of members and simi-
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lar societies grow. In 1914 they counted about 20,000 members, subdivided
into 486 lodges, 430 of which were in Italy, while 56 were established
abroad. The Piazza del Gesù faction alone counted 5,000 members and an
undetermined number of lodges.8
The presence of Freemasons in the country’s political life was deeply
rooted. Their influence was strong at the local level, despite the fact that the
‘popular blocks’ they had led (alliances of Left wing parties that had gov-
erned many major Italian cities) were slowly beginning to die out. It was
also strong at the national level despite the Catholic mobilization in the
1913 elections9 and the policies adopted by the Socialist Congress in Ancona
in 1914 which proclaimed that membership of their party was inherently
incompatible with the support of Freemasonry.10 Nitti’s own observations
are again relevant:

In the House of Representatives, all of the parties, from the most lib-
eral to the most conservative, and above all the radical left parties, fre-
quently contained over a hundred Masons. These acted without a real
agenda, but they would gather together on certain occasions […].
Thus, there were never direct Freemasonic actions in Italian politics,
but it was rife with indirect ones. Freemasons, despite having but a
few thousand active agents within Italy, generally occupied prominent
positions, so that, in a context in which large organized parties didn’t
exist, in crucial moments of political struggle, they could act all at
once and with unity of intent in order to influence the outcome of
such a struggle with their political weight and discipline. Which
occurred not infrequently.11

Nitti’s estimate of Masonic numbers within parliament was not far from the
truth. According to a confidential memo sent to Prime Minister Salandra in
1914, there were approximately ninety deputies who were Freemasons, a lit-
tle less than a fifth of the members of the House of Representatives. When
this list is checked against the sources now available, it proves to be largely
reliable.12

642
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

At the end of the Giolittian era, when Europe and the world were about
to plunge into disastrous conflict, Freemasonry was an important presence in
Italian public life. In fact, it was between 1914 and 1920, from the interven-
tionist mobilization to the war’s epilogue in the expedition to Fiume,
Freemasonry was closer to the centre of the decision-making process of the
nation than ever before. This is worth repeating, since even in the best
recent historical writing the role of Freemasonry in the Great War has been
largely neglected both in Italy and in Europe as a whole.13 We need, there-
fore, to identify the more significant outcomes of the Freemasons’ actions
during these years, the principles by which they were inspired, and the forms
of communication and mobilization they employed to understand whether
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the rhetorical topoi on which they drew represented a break or rather a

continuity with earlier Masonic traditions.
It is important first to analyse the motives that led to the collapse of the
cosmopolitan and pacifist goals of Italian Freemasonry in 1914 and the
simultaneous crisis of the system of international relations that they had so
laboriously built together with the largest European Obediences (with the
obvious exception, as is known, of the English one, which has always been
contrary to any overt involvement with politics). Hence, during the war the
Freemasons attempted to harness bellicose nationalist sentiments with the
aspiration to promote a pacified post-war world order based on a universal-
ism born from the coexistence of free and democratic nations. This vision
took practical shape in early 1917 in the attempts to work with other Euro-
pean Freemasons to develop and sustain a new project, the League of
Nations. Once the fighting had come to an end, this League would aim to
guarantee peace amongst people and the enforcement of the rights of each
country without resorting to war.
Since its origins at the early eighteenth century, Freemasonry had princi-
pally identified with the concept of peace and universal brotherhood. This
idea not only fuelled the Enlightenment myth of the ‘Universal Republic of
Freemasons,’ but also aimed at creating a world where humanity could live in
peace and harmony.14 In the second half of the nineteenth century, this cos-
mopolitan and humanitarian vocation sought to create a pacifist movement
that would to banish war completely from international relations. As the
French lawyer and politician Charles Lemonnier wrote, it was no longer
enough to declare oneself a pacifist, it was time to become a peacemaker.15
Italian Freemasons contributed significantly to this movement, which was
largely based on the 1867 Geneva Peace Congress. Through frequent inter-
national meetings and the creation of institutes and associations in numerous
European and overseas countries between the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth century the organization grew considerably.16
Many Freemasons gave their support, as did a number of Freemasonic
Obediences, and most prominently amongst these the Grand Orient of Italy
which supported it openly and officially.17

643
 Fulvio Conti

In 1902, the central aim of the Bureau international des relations maçonniques
(International Bureau of Masonic Relations) that was founded in Geneva was
to achieve international peace. The Bureau decreed that every year on 18
May all of the adhering Masonic Orders should celebrate the ideals of peace
and justice amongst nations by solemnly commemorating the anniversary of
the opening of the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. It is therefore not sur-
prising that there were a number of influential exponents of European
Freemasonry amongst the first Nobel Peace Prize recipients, although their
Masonic allegiance is curiously often not mentioned in official biographies.18
These included the Swiss Élie Ducommun, who was awarded the prize in
1902; the Austro-German Alfred Hermann Fried, who received it in 1911;
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the Belgian Henri La Fontaine and the Frenchman Léon Bourgeois, who
were respectively assigned the Nobel Prize in 1913 and 1920. The Italian
Nobel Peace Prize recipient of 1907, Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, despite his
Radical Party ties, was however, unlike his colleagues, not a Freemason.19
While these humanitarian and peace-oriented principles gained strength
in the nineteenth century, the Masonic Orders were also affected by the
process of nationalization, and one of the goals of the nationalists was to re-
organize the Freemasonic Obediences on a national basis. 20 The Obediences
were bound to each other through ties of friendship and beyond that by
international circuits of accreditation and legitimization, the most important
of which were those that were tied to the United Grand Lodge of England
and to the North American Grand Lodges. The Grand Orient of France and
of Belgium, on the other hand, were independent after having openly pro-
fessed atheism in the 1870s21 despite the fact that the Anderson’s Constitu-
tion in 1723 set down that all the Masonic Orders should embrace the
notion of a transcendental entity that they identified as ‘the great architect of
the universe’.22
The Freemasonries of Latin and Mediterranean Europe were most politi-
cized in a democratic sense and broadly shared the patriotic aspirations of
their respective communities. This, together with a strong sense of legiti-
macy, causes them to align with the various governmental and State posi-
tions. A vocal figure on the interventionist Left described this transition
well. Maria Rygier, a libertarian socialist of Polish origin and Freemasonic
affiliations stated:

To say that Italian Freemasonry is patriotic is to remain far removed

from the truth. Italian Freemasonry – and here we refer both to the
Freemasons of the Grand Orient and to those of the Grand Lodge – is
not only driven to the concept of the Nation by feelings of loyalty,
which is a simple and common duty of the Freemasonic Order all over
the world. In Italy, the order had piously entertained a mysticism of
patriotism, which it powerfully helped to create, through conspiracies,
barricades and the wars of the Risorgimento.23

644
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

In the long term, however, it proved impossible to reconcile the notion of

universal brotherhood with the ever-growing expansionist and aggressive
impulse of nationalism. During the Franco-Prussian War, for example, the
French lodges broke off relations with their German counterparts. It was not
until the beginning of the twentieth century that thanks to a series of
encounters on a European scale and the mediatory role of the Bureau des rela-
tions maçonniques a climate for the tentative resumption of communication
was created. But this was soon put to the test by the Agadir Crisis of
1911.24 For Italian Freemasons, the public support given in 1911-1912 to
the invasion of Libya revealed the fragilility of the foundations on which
pacifism rested.25 The outbreak of the First World War ultimately destroyed
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the pacifist dream of European Freemasonry, which like the Socialist Parties
of the Second International decided to unconditionally support their local
government’s cause, thus supporting the politics of intervention.26
The emptiness of the Freemasons’ ‘conditional pacifism’ in light of their
readiness to take up arms in the name of the sacred interest of the homeland
was clearly grasped by Arturo Carlo Jemolo:

If I think back to 1912-1913, I see that I too was full of hate against
the Freemasons: a hate that was not mainly determined by the wrong-
doings I saw, nor by the ascension of those ‘palloni vuoti’ – undeserving
men – that I had under my nose, but by their ‘Freemasonic mentality’,
their diffused positivism, their sectarian anticlericalism – which was fre-
quently stupidly sectarian – and their gross falsifications of history and
of reality; and even that pacifism of which I felt the substantially false
nature, the instrumentum regni, as it had appeared in the months that
preceded the military intervention, during which the peacekeepers had
begun to chant ‘war, war.’27

Indeed, after a short moment of caution when the GOI, as the Grand
Master Ettore Ferrari wrote in a newsletter on 31 July 1914, made an effort
to ensure ‘that the actions of all of the Grand Orients could be carried out
concordant with and conformant to the universally accepted principle of
Freemasonry in order to save human civilization from the impending doom,
or at least attempt to control its consequences’ in early September, the deci-
sion in favour of intervening on the side of the Entente had been made. In
fact, as Gino Bandini recounted in the speech of 1924 cited above, since
August a secret recruitment amongst ‘brothers’ had been launched to create
a ‘volunteer corps that would be available to the government for the national
war.’ Bandini added that, in case of neutralist opposition and actions that
might have ‘paralyzed and opposed the fatal Italian intervention,’ volunteers
would have permitted ‘the desperate act of unleashing heroic troops, sent to
certain death, onto the other side of the eastern border: and so, through the
sacrifice of a few hundred lives, renewing the heroic deeds of Sapri, they

645
 Fulvio Conti

would create an event that would make the country jump into action [...] so
that the government would be forced to intervene and the blood of hun-
dreds of volunteers, the Freemasons who had offered their lives to this holo-
caust, would suffocate the cowardice of those that wanted to stop Italy from
fulfilling its duty.’28 From that moment onwards, both Palazzo Giustiniani
and Piazza del Gesù mobilized all of their resources to carry out intense pro-
paganda in favour of the war and against the central Empires, in order to
create a strong and cohesive ‘internal front’ that could support the country
in its military effort.
How did the Italian Freemasons justify their choice to intervene in the war
and how did they attempt to demonstrate that it was coherent with their ideals
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of peace and of universal brotherhood which they had cultivated for decades?
Largely in line with democratic interventionism, they argued that war was
necessary for a series of reasons: the completion of national unification, the
defence of the violated rights of democratic countries such as Belgium, and
the duty to put a stop to German expansionism and protect the Latin and
western civilizations. In a speech made in Turin on 28 October 1914 in front
of the city’s lodges that had all gathered in a secret plenary meeting, the Dep-
uty Grand Master of GOI, Gustavo Canti, illustrated these reasons incisively.
He asked: ‘What is the substance of the European conflict? The answer is sim-
ple: the monstrous barbarities and invasions of the German peoples against the
secular civilization of western populations; the barbaric brutality of a Germany
that, in order to quench its unspent thirst for domination, no longer recog-
nizes the most sacred treaties, no longer respects the most solemn vows, vio-
lates each most holy thing’. Italy, he continued, must ‘stand by the Entente
and fight [...] against the abhorrent Austria, its century-old enemy’. Victory
wouldallow Italy to finally ‘complete its national programme, that is: to rectify
its national borders, free those provinces that still suffer under foreign power,
and to seize the rightful and undisputed domination of the Adriatic Sea’.29
The expansionist ambitions that were harboured with regard to the
Adriatic coast and the plan to recreate the splendour of the Venetian Repub-
lic by annexing Istria and Dalmatia were immediately integrated into GOI’s
rhetoric. The influential and venerated ex-Grand Master, Ernesto Nathan,
and other exponents of this cause, were aware of the need to explain the
reasons behind the choices that were being made, both to those inside and
outside the institution.30 They attempted to illustrate how traditional efforts
in the quest for peace could be reconciled with the desire for intervention.
An article that appeared on 6 August 1914 on the ‘Idea democratica’ stated
that:

Whilst we prepare our souls to future events [...] there bursts from our
heart the irrepressible cry for revolt and abhorrence for the war. If we
too will have to face it, we will face it with all of our energy, all of our
willpower, all of our blood. But [...] we do not regret our dream of

646
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

peace and civilization that we have long dreamt of [...] we defend our
right to feel all of the horror of such a tragedy, and to curse with all our
strength the vile abomination that is war. And the more we feel the
hatred the closer it gets to us, as it crushes our spirits, as it resuscitates
four worst instincts from the very bottom of our conscience, awakening
the primitive man who smells blood and searches for weapons to use
against his own. [...] We are still too weak, bending our heads in the face
of a tragedy that is greater than us, and we prepare ourselves to be sub-
jected to it as men. But it is not because of this that we will not commit
the apostasy of repudiating our ideal of human brotherhood, which is
our most pure belief – and one that we shall return to after this purifying
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bloodbath. 31

That same day Enrico Corradini published an article in the ‘Idea nazionale’
which offered Gino Bandini, retrospectively, the opportunity to underline
‘the once again revealed antithesis amongst the admirers of the moral beauty
of war, as we cursed the war even while we recognized and proclaimed its
absolute, implacable necessity’.32 These ideas were also largely shared by the
peripheral organizations of the Grand Orient and were echoed in public and
private ceremonies organised by lodges in cities all over Italy. A Freemason
from Catania, in a speech on 10 March 1915 to mark the anniversary of
Mazzini’s death (an important date for the Masonic liturgical calendar,
because it was dedicated to the fallen ‘brothers’ of the order), proclaimed
that:

Our aim is that this war should not sow the seeds of future wars, that
it will re-establish the natural boundaries of nations, to lay claim to
defending the public rights that were violated, and to call populations
to peaceful battles of work and progress. We are for the principle of
nationality, but we are not nationalists, because we don’t want war for
the sake of war, because we don’t want Italian imperialism, because
we deny that war is – as General Bernhardi wants us to believe – the
main factor fuelling culture and power; we deny that the ultimate goal
of the State is to gain power, we deny that the State is superior to
morality and humanity, that brute force is the norm, and that weak
nations do not have the same right to live in the same way as more
vigorous nations.33

Similar sentiments can be found in a speech given by a Freemason in

Taranto in July 1915:

Freemasonry, the eternal international amongst people, was always the

vessel of all civil progress that aimed to create a human brotherhood
and consolidate the homeland’s integrity, because the nation is the

647
 Fulvio Conti

cornerstone of humanity. And when it had to take up arms, it did so

to for freedom against tyranny, for justice against abuse, for the protec-
tion of the right of the peoples trampled by the brute force of the
autocrat. [...] We support war because it is not aimed at conquest, it is
not about hegemonic ambition, nor is it a hunger for imperialism, sus-
tained by the brutal strength of the cannon: it is based on the sacred
right to lay claim to our lands, the solemn affirmation of the great prin-
ciple of nationality crushed until now by the power of two deadly
empires, but which now powerfully rises again and whose triumph will
bring redemption.34
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We want war because we hate war: thus Pietro Nenni significantly titled his
article published in September 1914. Nenni was the leader of the Republi-
can Party, which although not affiliated with the Freemasons was among the
most active in promoting military intervention.35 The Obedience of Palazzo
Giustiniani found itself aligned, at least during the period of the interven-
tionist campaign, with this political position. Even before Wilson’s phrase,
coined in 1917, that this was ‘the war to end all wars’ became popular after
the United States joined the war effort, Freemasonry was promoting its own
peace plans. The ‘eschatology of peace’ concept, coined and promoted by
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, reflected the widespread
belief amongst those fighting in the war that the conflict would finally defeat
evil and sanction the genesis of a new world, based on the harmonious
coexistence of nation and free people.36
The idea of war as an apocalypse, as a catastrophe, had not found its
way into the Masonic literature and vocabulary of the time, despite the
wartime climate. Still anchored in the secular and positivistic tradition of
the nineteenth century, the leaders and members of the GOI remained
faithful to the narrative of a nationalism still closely linked to Risorgimento
ideals, imbued with references to the Mazzinian school of thought. Their
ambition was to present themselves as an elite that, although not opposed
to passionate and emotional outbursts, knew that it had to remain within
a rational framework, realistically analysing the stakes and subordinating
itself to the vital interests of the nation and its institutions. It was a
responsible organization, one that was shown from the beginning of the
war to be an enterprise that supported the Home Front by creating civil
assistance committees and by constant efforts to keep the nation unified.
The directives published by Grand Master Ettore Ferrari, and later reiter-
ated by his successor Ernesto Nathan, favoured cohesion. This softened
tensions between the various political factions, defending, as always, the
work of the military leaders, and when Italian Catholics decisively turned
to support the patriotic cause, the Freemasons toned down their tradition-
ally controversial anticlericalism. Nevertheless, this did not stop them from
attacking the cease-fire proposal advanced by Benedict XV and they

648
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

remained opposed to the Vatican’s involvement in the peace conference,

which, if allowed, would have served to sanction the legitimacy of its
temporal claims.37

In Ferrari’s newsletter, circulated on 25 May 1916, he states that:

In this memorable anniversary we evoke […] those sacred enthusiasms

that enflamed, with beautiful civil harmony, every Italian heart: let that
perfect fusion of heart and determination continue to fill us, so that in
these supreme moments, we will be able to protect ourselves, and our
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invincible strength will help us achieve our destinies. Even during such
fickle times, which require the arduous task of pushing our military
forces forward, we persist and trust in the proven magnanimous virtues
of the army, in foresight, in expertise, and in the genius of our
leaders.38

Palazzo Giustiniani separated itself from this line of thought in order to

underline its attachment to the institutions and its policy of moderation,
which lay in stark opposition to the revolutionary interventionists. In 1924,
Gino Bandini recalled his own experiences of the time:

Those of us who had been in favour of intervention, when even the

likes of Mussolini and most of the Socialists who converted to Fascism
were still championing a neutral stand, could not consent to the many
ideas – at times even confused and paradoxical – that the revolutionary
interventionists proposed. Their strangely defined irredentism, which
was conceived ‘in the interest of a social revolution,’ was very different
from our own brand of irredentism which, imbued with a typically
Italian national feeling and idea, was aimed at reclaiming our lost terri-
tories, including Dalmatia, a generally ignored territory.

Bandini continued:

We took shelter from that diseased excitability, which in every most

disparate event reveals the opportunity for disorder and chaos. This
phenomenon can be seen today in the ‘Red Week’’; tomorrow it will
appear in the irredentist movement, as it will in the fight against
Bolshevism, where it will search for the opportunity for revolution as
an outlet for its own mental instability, from its own violent instincts
and its desire to excel.39

649
 Fulvio Conti

In their public statements, in their speeches and in official Masonic documents,

the myth that war could serve to regenerate the nation or that it was an oppor-
tunity to purify and redeem the nation after a long period of peace never took
root. Favoured by the representation of the conflict as a Manichean one, a
juxtaposition of good versus evil, Freemasons promoted the conflict as a ‘holy
war’ and identified the enemy as the epitome of barbarity and inhumanity,
profoundly evil and even demonic. A manifesto published by the Piedmontese
lodges in January 1916 on the occasion of Salandra’s visit to Turin reaffirmed
that ‘the faith that we have in this war of ours – a holy war, not only because
of the national ambition to redeem all of our brothers, but a holy war mainly
because it is the affirmation of human solidarity against subjugation, long
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meditated and prepared by an unbridled imperialism.’40 Another manifesto

published in 1917 by the Deputy Grand Master of GOI, Gustavo Canti, to
mark the anniversary of 20 September 1870 (when the Papal States were
defeated and Rome was united to the Kingdom of Italy) stated: ‘The dreadful
conflict which our generation, caught in a religious bewilderment, has had to
witness, is the clash of two morally incompatible worlds, the crusades of a
new religion that cannot stop until abuse and violence has been toppled
forever’.41
In 1916, after having called to mind the ‘sacred enthusiasms’ that the pre-
vious year had pushed the country to intervene, Ferrari, described the savage
ferocity of German and Austrian soldiers: ‘The enemy, either to frighten us
or because of their evil instinct or their hate, attacked cities and lands and
ships, all defenceless, destroying or defacing distinguished national monu-
ments, and treacherously killing old and unarmed citizens as well as women
and children’.42 From the second year of the war onwards, the criticisms
began to target especially the internal enemies, those who denounced the
horrors of the conflict and demanded an end to the atrocities. Known as
‘disfattisti’ or defeatists, the numbers of these last-minute peacemakers and
their condemnations and tirades reached a high point after the Battle of
Caporetto. Ferrari had already condemned their ‘Propaganda smidollatrice’,
spineless propaganda, in the November 1916 bulletin. In a similar newsletter
in April 1917 he again encouraged all Masons to fight against this ‘evil
activity, which sows distrust, disintegration and depression.’43 The agenda,
approved in May 1917 by the congress of the Symbolic Rite, the
organization that traditionally encompassed the most democratically advanced
members of Italian Masonry, warned of ‘the grave danger that loomed over
the Patria because of the web of internal espionage and incitement against
the National Defence and against the principles of freedom and of justice.’
The president of the Rite, the radical parliamentarian Alberto La Pegna, was
invited ‘to carry out, with energy and urgency, the duty to demand
government action from the State – proportionate to the danger represented
– against internal enemies.’44

650
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Nathan adopted an even harsher position. In the speech given after his
re-election as Grand Master in November 1917, he explicitly demanded
that his brothers fight this ever more subtle and insidious internal enemy,
urging:

War against pacifists, war using all means: pacific means of persuasion,
and the strength of persuasion of less pacific means. No conferences in
great public halls, which can be left to the great orators of propaganda,
but intense, immediate, constant propaganda in small meetings in
cities, villages, hamlets, in the countryside, in families, in order to
show through actions, through reason, how pacifism hides within it a
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betrayal to its own country, against each of us, against the country’s
most vital material and moral interests – it is a hidden viper whose
head we must crush without mercy.45

In that same speech Nathan also called to mind the concepts which had
inspired his first term as Grand Master and to which he had referred repeat-
edly in the past: patriotism was the glue of Masonic identity and, in a pecu-
liar context like the Italian one, where the process of nation-building still
needed to affirm itself in the midst of the double menace of socialism and
clericalism, it was necessary that the Masonic institution align itself with the
State and its organs. ‘We are not a political association,’ he stated, ‘we are a
patriotic association, forced to shape our actions in order to comply with the
needs of the Patria; presently it must subordinate itself to the government,
the sole representative of the Nation.’
Without legitimating the idea of war as a radically transformative move-
ment, as an instrument of purification and of national regeneration, and
without portraying it as a tombstone of the myth of nineteenth-century pro-
gress and modernity, the idea that this war represented a deep fracture
between two epochs was still able to make its way into Italian masonic
thought. Even within the Freemasonic Order, the notion that the world
would be a different place after the end of the war gradually developed.
Masons, too, had to be ready to confront these new challenges. Above all,
they realized that many of the moral and spiritual references of the past were
disappearing and that humanity was looking to latch onto traditional reli-
gious beliefs, which in reality might be the first to stumble and fall. A mani-
festo published by the Grand Orient on 20 September 1915 states:

The world is on fire. Through the flames that engulf it, an unclear
glimpse of the new shapes it will take can be caught; the vast rhythms
of its life can already be identified. We already know that in order to
harmonize all of these shapes, in order to contain that rhythm, none of
the religions that until yesterday divided mankind can suffice. […] We
cannot predict the future; we do not know who its gods, its

651
 Fulvio Conti

philosophers, its law-givers will be. It is probable that the current

ideals that, until yesterday, competed for global attention will similarly
be lost tomorrow. It is probable that the divine principle will take on
a new form. It is probable that Rousseau and Fichte will help each
other out. It is probable that an extensive harmony will overwhelm
and confuse all of the elements that, until yesterday seemed to clash.
Everything is probable: only one thing is not possible: that history will
repeat itself and that humanity will move backwards. The year 1000
has chimed only once in the quadrant of the centuries.46

A few months later, in an article in the ‘Rivista massonica’ (Masonic Review),

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dedicated to Benedict XV’s speech to the Sacred College on 6 December

1915, the same notions were re-examined along similar lines:

The war has produced an unexpected and profound turmoil in the

field of human, social and moral values: hence the anxiety of seeing
which of these old values will still have relevance tomorrow, and
which will have been stowed away with other relics. Humanity is just
above one of the highest points – perhaps one of the highest – of its
history. A sudden gust has carried it up there and – in this sudden
ascent – it failed to understand the things that were dramatically parad-
ing past it. Like Doctor Faustus, it found itself amongst stills and
palimpsests. Mephistopheles’ cape suddenly raised it to unknown
heights. And there it is now, at the summit. The fleeting visions expe-
rienced in the flight to the top still tremble in its eyes. The new blood
of youth which fills its veins is dazzling. It stands on the summit, its
balance unsteady. Little by little it tries to look around in an attempt
to get its bearings. But the task is not easy. […] A series of facts and
ideas which yesterday appeared as straightforward as train tracks, sud-
denly appears convoluted and confused. An intricate knot of uncharted
roads open up on the opposite slope. Conventions upon which, until
yesterday, the soul rested, suddenly reveal themselves unable to contain
it. Theories that seemed full of vital significance appear empty and
trite. A new life stirs us, the laws of which are still unknown. A new
sky looms above us, populated with unknown constellations.47

The awareness that major changes were taking place and that it was neces-
sary to be equipped in order to face the post-war era was evident even in
decentralized branches of the Grand Orient. The Sicilian Liborio Granone, a
venerable master of the Ecnomo di Licata Lodge and author of various
Masonic publications wrote in 1916:

It is necessary that we prepare ourselves for great changes in all fields

of life. […] The changes will not only affect the political geography of

652
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Europe, but will also affect the public life of each country and the
intellectual consciousness and personal ethics of each person, individu-
ally and collectively. The war, with its innumerable and efficient
lessons, forced everyone to review their personal convictions, to
re-examine the place they had chosen for themselves within society, to
find new ways of explaining their own political, intellectual, and moral
activities. The Masonic institution cannot, and should not, back out of
this sort of transformation, and should, from this moment onwards,
prepare for the near future. Peace is not far off, and, immediately after
its desired and beneficial conclusion, supreme civil battles will begin.
The major dispute will be between those who, on the one hand, will
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want to use the destruction inflicted by the war to revive the past in
every possible way and those who, on the other hand, want to draw
new, audacious conclusions from the consequences of the conflagration
so as to follow the luminous path of general progress.48

In this context of profound apprehension, scarred by the failure of ancient

ideals and morality, Masons began to understand the need to re-establish the
universal and humanitarian values that had been central to their activities
before the war. Some, including Liborio Granone, observed that it was
exactly ‘the horrors of the disastrous European war’ that had highlighted the
‘need for a more intimate understanding amongst the various initiatory orga-
nizations of the world.’ It was about ‘building an actual Universal Supreme
Council, composed of representatives from the various powers and with the
function of coming to mutual agreements.’ It was to be a type of ‘Green
International,’ according to the Sicilian Freemason, whose aim was ‘creating
peace and brotherhood of the peoples through the triumph of the principle
of nationality.’49 It was an International that, he believed, had come out of
the European conflict stronger than ever, despite the wounds inflicted in
1914 with the rift in relations between the Freemasons of the various coun-
tries that had been involved in the war. Whereas the ‘Red International’ of
the Socialists had been inexorably condemned to extinction,50 Masonry had
won because one of the fundamental elements of its ideological paradigm
co-existed with the principle of nationality, which, with the entry into the
war of the United States and President Wilson’s own position on the matter,
became increasingly important. Ultimately, it became the lynchpin around
which the entire peace project and reconstruction of international balance
was built.
The idea of reintroducing Freemasonry as a player on the international
stage with the launch of a peace initiative that was directly linked to the
Freemasonic Orders began in January 1917, when the Grand Orient and
Great Lodge of France summoned a meeting with all the Masonic organiza-
tions of the Allied governments. Delegates from Belgium, Portugal, and Ser-
bia were present, as well as GOI’s spokesperson, Grand Master Ettore Ferrari

653
 Fulvio Conti

and two other members of the executive committee, Carlo Berlenda and
Alberto Beneduce.51 It was an open-ended debate in preparation for a far
more important congress, open to Freemasons from the neutral countries as
well, that was held in Paris in June 1917. This congress had the ‘task of find-
ing a way in which to establish the League of Nations, so as to avoid the
repetition of a similar catastrophe that would cast the civilized world into
mourning.’52 During both the first and the second congress there were no
representatives from the United Grand Lodge of England which remained
faithful to the principle of no interference in political matters and preferred
to dedicate 1917 to celebrating its bicentenary.
The June congress, where even the Spanish, Swiss, American, Argen-
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tinean and Brazilian delegations were present, together with those who had
inaugurated the first congress a few months before, had unexpected out-
comes for the Grand Orient of Italy. When the future territorial distribution
of Europe was discussed, the negotiations produced a deep fracture between
the Italian delegation (this time made up of Ettore Ferrari, Ernesto Nathan,
Carlo Berlenda, and Giuseppe Meoni) and the Serbian one, which was
openly supported by the French. In his report on the establishment of the
League of Nations, André Lebey, a high-ranking figure of the Grand Orient
of France, asserted that future peace would rest on four pillars: the restora-
tion of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the re-establishment of an independent
Poland, the independence of Bohemia, and lastly, the most critical point,
‘the emancipation or unification of all of the nationalities that are currently
oppressed by the political and administrative organization of the Habsburg
Empire with the creation of States that the above mentioned nationalities
will decide through a plebiscite.’ Only in a footnote did it explain that ‘as
Alsace-Lorraine belongs to France, Trentino and Trieste should be rightfully
returned to Italy.’53
Nathan requested that Lebey’s report not be voted upon and that the
congress, as had been outlined by the agenda, should occupy itself only with
the plan for the creation of the League of Nations, without digressing on
political matters focused on the future organization of the various nations.
His request was granted. It was evident that the difficulties for the Italian
delegation lay in the arduous attempt to reconcile the Mazzinian and
Wilsonian principles of self-determination of the peoples, which was
unequivocally approved by plebiscites, and Italian expansionist ambitions
towards the eastern coast of the Adriatic. This meant claiming Dalmatia for
historical, cultural and political reasons and hence rejecting the democratic
right given to the power of the majority. After intense discussions between
the Serbian delegates, who insisted on adding the clause that approved the
right to plebiscites, and the Italians, who wanted to exclude it entirely, the
congress finally agreed on a document that merely advocated the right of
peoples ‘to rebuild the oppressed or destroyed nationalities, while taking into
account all of the elements that make up the national consciousness.’54

654
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

It was a compromise that allowed the possibility of both calling for a

plebiscite without explicitly invoking it, and at the same time allowing for
other methods to determine future annexations. This made it possible for
the Italian delegation to stay at the congress and to endorse and sign the final
document. It was also true that the congress approved a draft constitution
for the League of Nations, prepared by Lebey, in which the third article
stated that: ‘the foundation of the existence of Nations is the sovereignty
manifested by the free will expressed by the people.’ The principle of the
plebiscite was thus not circumvented, rather it was fully legitimated – and
how could it not be? – since it embodied the principle of national
self-determination and was the only criterion with which to determine the
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right of a Nation’s existence.

At the start of July, the French press published the first reports of the
congress, which caused a great stir in Italy where a number of Catholic
newspapers rebuked the Freemasons for a lack of patriotism and sabotaging
Italy’s national interests. Harsh criticisms were expressed against the delega-
tion that had been to Paris. Even within the Grand Orient, the members of
the delegation were held guilty of not having defended Italian claims fer-
vently enough. The organizers of the congress, on the other hand, took their
time to clarify the issue and to come to their brothers’ support. In the mean-
time, the relationship between the Obediences of Rome and Paris became
tense and unfriendly. The most immediate consequence was the resignation
of the Grand Master Ferrari on 14 July, who took upon himself ‘the entire
blame for what happened in Paris.’55
The Council of the GOI met the following day and expressed an implicit
vote of no confidence with regard to the Grand Master and the entire dele-
gation sent to the congress, declaring that they had not ratified the decisions
that had been approved because ‘summoned to exclusively decide on the
establishment of the future League of Nations, it had gone beyond the limits
previously assigned to its activities.’ 56
A period of turmoil and difficulty followed for the Grand Orient, which
was only resolved on 25 November 1917 when Ernesto Nathan was voted
Grand Master. This decision was made necessary by the climate of chaos and
bewilderment into which Italy was plunged after the defeat at Caporetto.
Moreover, the death of Achille Ballori, Sovereign Grand Commander of the
Scottish Rite, who was assassinated by a madman on 31 October 1917, fur-
ther complicated the situation, because he had originally been chosen by a
large majority of the Lodges as Ferrari’s successor.57 However, if it was a
matter of finding someone who could offer complete assurance in defending
national interests, both within and without the Masonic institution, no one
was more qualified than Nathan. He had long abandoned the romantic
Mazzinian patriotism of his youth and had embraced a visceral nationalism
that was deeply contemptuous of the rights of peoples like the Slavs, whom
he considered to be socially and culturally inferior.

655
 Fulvio Conti

These views were clearly revealed in an article published shortly before

he was appointed head of the GOI, in which he rejected the principle of
nationality. He wondered, could the ‘vote of a majority residing in a specific
piece of land which they desired to turn into a nation’, as the Serbian dele-
gate at the Masonic Congress of Paris had unsuccessfully attempted to
explain, ‘[be reduced to] the plebiscite, the brutal law of numerical majority?
Wasn’t it a more complex issue when faced with the national duty to pro-
mote civilization and the progress of the peoples?’ He used Dalmatia as an
example:

On the opposite shore of the Adriatic, along the coast, there lies a ser-
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ies of hamlets and villages of evolved civilization, which was created,

inherited and maintained by the Republic of Venice in times past
when it ruled over those coastlines. Behind these populations – con-
scious of their individual and collective duties, Italian in their soul, in
their emotions, in their intelligence – lie mountains inhabited by Slavs,
to this day wrapped in veils of traditional ignorance, guided by the
most barbaric and ferocious instincts. They are in the majority. If the
panacea of the plebiscite were to be applied, Italian civilization would
be submerged in the waters of that partial, if not complete, barbarism!
Can the determining criterion of nationality thus be based only on the
number of people present, rather than on their quality? […] There is no
recognized and living nation that has demonstrated the inane simplicity
of a plebiscite.

Nathan concluded that ‘The indispensable element for the successful estab-
lishment, existence, and vitality of a nation, in order for it to contribute to
human civilization, is the Trinity of three principles indissolubly linked as
one: the will of the people, the homogeneous fusion of this will under the
guidance of a more advanced figure, a territorial situation that allows for the
defence of one’s own unity and the moral, intellectual, economic and social
developments of its people.’58
It was difficult to reconcile such views with the idea of the League of
Nations, even though the plan had brought together some of the main Euro-
pean and American Masonic Orders. But the radical ideals espoused by
Nathan and others created tension and rifts even amongst the members of the
GOI, where the more democratically inclined Freemasons showed a growing
intolerance towards the dominant group, which was falling closely into line
with the governmental agenda, in particular with that of the Minister of For-
eign Affairs Sidney Sonnino, and more extremist, political groups, starting
with the nationalists. The rifts were already evident in April 1918 when a
number of Masons from Palazzo Giustiniani, including the distinguished
geographer Arcangelo Ghisleri, supported the Congress of the so-called
oppressed nations under the Habsburg rule, which was held in Rome. The

656
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Congress approved a document, the Pact of Rome, which, as much as it was

about the specific territorial controversies with Italy, substantially favoured
the claims made by the Yugoslav people, establishing that these issues would
be resolved ‘on the basis of the principle of nationality and the right of the
peoples.’ However, a joint declaration was signed which underlined that ‘the
unity and independence of the Yugoslav nation [was] of vital interest to Italy,
just as the completion of Italian national unity was of vital interest to the
Yugoslav nation.’59
The disagreements intensified enormously between the end of 1918 and
the beginning of 1919. When the war was won, peace negotiations began
and all of the issues that had remained unresolved during the war (the Lea-
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gue of Nations, the definition of Italy’s new national boundaries) had to

be dealt with in great detail.60 The internal debate was violently shaken by
Leonida Bissolati’s resignation as minister on 28 December 1918, which
was followed by his famous speech at La Scala on 11 January. Nathan
unsparingly condemned Bissolati’s decision; however, Giuseppe Meoni,
Grand Orator of the GOI, defended the social-reformist’s choice. The
minutes of the GOI’s meeting on 16 January 1919 recorded that ‘Brother
Meoni believes that Masonry must above all fight against the imperialist
ambitions of whichever nation or population it appears in, so as to quash
any cause for new wars. […] He wants the principles and the moral char-
acter of Masonry to be held in high regard, to give support to the need
for the League of Nations, the war against war and general disarmament.
It is essential, he stated, to build humanity on better foundations and
customs: if this transformation does not occur, then we will have a
revolution.’61

Nathan’s reply was just as clear-cut:

Brother Meoni is an idealist, a positivist: in Paris, where the peace

provisions have to be decided upon, each nation put forward their
own demands. Their delegates are not idealistic, they are attempting to
obtain the greatest possible profits. Would it have been advisable, in
the condition of things, or would it still be advisable, to weaken our
negotiators through premature renouncements? No; therefore we can-
not approve of Bissolati’s behaviour. We can approve of the League of
Nations: but among which nations? What are the Poles, the Czechs,
the Yugoslavs? At any rate we have already identified in them the ele-
ments of nationhood, and this is the theoretical part. For the practical
part, as we have already said, none of the rightful national claims
should be renounced.62

657
 Fulvio Conti

A few days after this statement, five Milanese Lodges, led by Doctor Luigi
Resnati, voted an order of business hostile to Nathan and in mid-February
decided to leave the Grand Orient of Italy and establish an ‘Independent
group of Scottish Rite.’ On 29 April 1919 they addressed a circular letter to
their brothers in which they set out a political programme sustained by
democratic and reformist ideas. This evidently clashed with the programme
of Palazzo Giustiniani. In the document they pointed out the need for a
profound ‘renewal within international relationships, in order to consolidate
and perfect the League of Nations, making it like a true society of free and
equal peoples, and not of governments, yet with democratic institutions and
the creation of an international army to defend all, the abolition of national
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armies, and the ban of weapon-building factories.’ They believed in ‘the

complete transformation of the internal organisation of the State, so as to
consolidate unity with the various regional political and administrative cen-
tres of power’ and ‘absolute separation of Church and State.’ In conclusion,
they requested the ‘gradual elimination of all of the profits that derived from
the war,’ and reform of the electoral law ‘on the premise of universal suf-
frage, the poll list, and proportional representation.’63. A new parliament
elected with these conditions would have been like a constituent assembly.
The schism brought about by those who supported Bissolati involved 250
brothers at most, little more than 1 per cent of the active members of the
GOI, and did not find approval outside Milan or Lombardy. However, this
movement represented an unequivocal indication of the wounds that the
war had inflicted on Italian Freemasonry, destroying the unanimity that had
existed between 1914 and 1915 when everyone seemed to agree with the
choice to intervene in the war on the side of the Allies. The three-and-a-
half years of warfare had brought the different approaches to intervention
closer together, just as it had created a chasm between those supporting the
war efforts and those who had remained true to the pacifist choice. The rea-
soning that the Masons used to justify Italian claims on Istria and Dalmatia
were by then very similar to those espoused by the nationalists.
The Universalist utopia and the ambition of building a peaceful world
had resurfaced in Masonic discourse, both in Italy and abroad, between 1916
and 1917, drawing on the long-standing project for an institution of interna-
tional arbitration and its realization in the form of the League of Nations.
The contribution made by the Orders and individual Masons to turn this
idea into reality – just think of Léon Bourgeois – was without a doubt very
noteworthy : even in places where, like in Italy, the majority of the brother-
hood was drawn more towards the amor di patria and ambitions of annexa-
tion than towards the pacifist mission. However, as the end of the war drew
closer, a deep rift divided the Freemasons of Palazzo Giustiniani over the
issues of nationalism and internationalism. On one side stood the more
democratic group, definitely a minority but one that, after having been infat-
uated with the patriotic rhetoric of war, had rediscovered the most authentic

658
 Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

forms of Mazzinian and Garibaldian thought. On the other side stood the
majority, imbued with an inflated nationalism and focused on fighting the
internal enemy. These concerns would place them even if only temporarily
on the same path as the rising Fascist movement.
Thus, in the years after the war, even within Freemasonry, divergent
interpretations of the principle of nationality gave birth to a polarizing pro-
cess that would give rise to a move to the right of the political axis. Above
all, there was a failure to bring together those forces that would have tradi-
tionally occupied the democratic left, from progressive liberals to radical
republicans and some sections of the Socialists. The change in the position
of the Socialists in regards to radical attitudes, the birth of a Catholic party,
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the powerful attraction of the Fascist and nationalist parties in the eyes of the
middle and the petit-bourgeois classes which had always been the main sup-
porters of the Masons, and, more generally, the advent of a mass society,
represented by the expansion of suffrage and the introduction of a system of
proportional representation: all of these elements contributed to the
marginalization of an institution that was intrinsically elitist and that in the
aftermath of the war lost its capacity to influence the public sphere, a power
that had defined the Freemasonic institution since the birth of unified Italy.

Notes
1 F.S. Nitti, Rivelazioni. Dramatis personae, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane,
1948, now in Idem, Scritti politici, vol. VI, edited by G. Carocci, Bari, Laterza,
1963, p. 427.
2 Ibid., pp. 446-447 .
3 A. Salandra, La neutralità italiana (1914). Ricordi e pensieri, Milan, Mondadori,
1928, p. 220.
4 A.C. Jemolo, Anni di prova, Firenze, Passigli, 1991 (published for the first time
Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 1969), pp. 117-118.
5 Ibid., p. 125.
6 Cf. A.M. Isastia, La massoneria al contrattacco: “L’Idea Democratica” di Gino Bandini
(1913–1919), in “Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica”, 1997, n. 1,
pp. 259–287.
7 G. Bandini, La Massoneria per la guerra nazionale (1914-1915). Discorso detto a
Palazzo Giustiniani il XXIV Maggio 1924, Modena, Tip. G. Ferraguti & C.,
p. 127.
8 Cf. A.A. Mola, Storia della massoneria italiana dalle origini ai nostri giorni, Milan,
Bompiani, 1992 and F. Conti, Storia della massoneria italiana. Dal Risorgimento al
fascismo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003.
9 See M.S. Piretti, Una vittoria di Pirro: la strategia politica di Gentiloni e il fallimento
dell’intransigentismo cattolico, in “Ricerche di storia politica”, IX (1994), pp. 5-40.
10 See M. Novarino, Compagni e liberi muratori. Socialismo e massoneria dalla nascita del
PSI alla Grande guerra (1892-1914), Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2015.
11 F.S. Nitti, Rivelazioni, op. cit., p. 444.

659
 Fulvio Conti

12 See B. Vigezzi, L’Italia di fronte alla prima guerra mondiale, I, L’Italia neutrale,
Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1966, p. 824; also A.A. Mola (1992) p. 414 and F.
Conti (2003) pp. 237 e 417-418.
13 A. Gibelli, La Grande Guerra degli italiani, Milan, Sansoni, 1998; M. Isnenghi – G.
Rochat, La Grande Guerra, 1914-1918, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 2000; A.
Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria. Guerra, modernità, violenza politica (1914-1918),
Rome, Donzelli, 2003; E. Gentile, L’apocalisse della modernità. La Grande Guerra per
l’uomo nuovo, Milan, Mondadori, 2014. See also S. Audoin-Rouzeau e J.-J. Becker
(eds.), La prima guerra mondiale, italian edition edited by A. Gibelli, Turin, Einaudi,
2007 and M. Mondini, La guerra italiana. Partire, raccontare, tornare, 1914-18,
Bologna, Il Mulino, 2014, pp. 50-51.
14 P.-Y. Beaurepaire, La République universelle des francs-maçons. De Newton à Metter-
nich, Rennes, Éditions Ouest-France, 1999, p. 97.
15 Cf. Ch. Lemonnier, L’évolution pacifique, “Les États-Unis d’Europe”, March 5,
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1887.
16 Cf. S.E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism. Waging War on War in Europe, 1815-1914,
New York-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991 and V. Grossi, Le pacifisme
européen, 1889-1914, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1994.
17 Cf. F. Conti, De Gene`ve à la Piave. La franc-maçonnerie italienne et le pacifisme
démocratique, 1867-1915, in M. Petricioli, A. Anteghini, D. Cherubini (eds.), Les
Etats-Unis d’Europe. Un projet pacifiste, Bern, Peter Lang, 2004, pp. 213-240. J.
Gotovitch, Franc-maçonnerie, guerre et paix, in Les internationales et le proble`me de la
guerre au XXe siècle, Actes du colloque de Rome (22-24 novembre 1984),
Rome, École française de Rome, 1987, pp. 75-105; N. Lubelski-Bernard,
Freemasonry and Peace in Europe, 1867-1914, in C. Chatfield, P. Van de Dungen
(éds.), Peace Mouvements and Political Cultures, Knoxville, The University of Ten-
nessee Press, 1988, pp. 81-94; J. Berger, Between universal values and national ties:
Western European Freemasonries face the challenge of “Europe”, 1850-1930, in “Jour-
nal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism”, I (2010), pp. 205-226;
Idem, European Freemasonries, 1850-1935: Networks and Transnational movements,
in European History Online (EGO), (Institute of European History (IEG),
Mainz 2010-12-03. URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/bergerj-2010-en URN: urn:
nbn:de:0159-20100921522).
18 Cf. I. Abrams, The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. An Illustrated Biographical History,
Boston, K.K. Hall & Co., 1988 and G. Procacci, Premi Nobel per la pace e guerre
mondiali, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1989.
19 For more recent studies on Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, see B. Pisa, Ernesto Teodoro
Moneta: storia di “un pacifista con le armi in mano”, in B. Pisa (ed.), Percorsi di pace e
di guerra fra Ottocento e Novecento: movimenti, culture e appartenenze, in “Giornale di
storia contemporanea”, XII (2009), n. 2, pp. 3-20 and F. Canale Cama, La pace
dei liberi e dei forti. La rete di pace di Ernesto Teodoro Moneta, Bologna, Bononia,
University Press, 2012. My own entry in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome,
Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2011, vol. 75. On radicalism and freemasonry
see G. Orsina, Senza Chiesa né classe. Il Partito radicale nell’età giolittiana, Rome,
Carocci, 1998 and F. Conti, Massoneria e radicalismo in Europa dall’età dei Lumi alla
Grande Guerra, in M. Ridolfi (ed.), La democrazia radicale nell’Ottocento europeo.
Forme della politica, modelli culturali, riforme sociali, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2005,
pp. 33-56.
20 L.P. Martin, Dall’universalismo alla nazione. Il processo di nazionalizzazione nella
massoneria europea dell’Ottocento, in F. Conti and M. Novarino (eds.), Massoneria e
unità d’Italia. La Libera Muratoria e la costruzione della nazione, Bologna, Il Mulino,

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2011, pp. 47-71. J. Tyssens, Freemasonry and Nationalism, in H. Bogdan and

J.A.M. Snoek (eds.), Handbook of Freemasonry, Leiden, Brill, 2014, pp. 461-472.
21 See. J. Bartier, Belgique, in D. Ligou (ed.), Dictionnaire universel de la franc-maçon-
nerie, Paris, Editions de Navarre - Editions du Prisme, 1974, pp. 130-137 and in
Idem, Laı¨cite´ et franc-maçonnerie, Bruxelles, Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles,
1981, pp. 301-313; on France see A. Combes, Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie au
XIXe sie`cle, op. cit., II, pp. 140 ff. and G. Gayot, La franc-maçonnerie française. Tex-
tes et pratiques (XVIIIe-XIXe sie`cles), Paris, Gallimard, 1991, pp. 226 ss.
22 Cf. Ch. Porset, Grand Architect de l’Univers, in E. Saunier (ed.), Encyclope´die de la
Franc- Maçonnerie, Paris, Librairie Générale Française, 2000, pp. 345-347.
23 M. Rygier, La Franc-maçonnerie italienne devant la guerre et devant le fascisme, Paris,
Librairie V. Gloton, 1930, p. 21. On Maria Rygier, see B. Montesi, Un’“anar-
chica monarchica”. Vita di Maria Rygier (1885-1953), Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche
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Italiane, 2013.
24 See F. Conti, La franc-maçonnerie et le mouvement pour la paix en Italie et en Europe
(1889-1917), paper delivered at the International conference on Les défenseurs de
la paix, 1889-1917. Approches actuelles, nouveaux regards, Paris, January 15-17,
2014.
25 Cf. F. Cordova, Agli ordini del serpente verde. La massoneria nella crisi del sistema
giolittiano, Rome, Bulzoni, 1990.
26 On the Belgian case see A. Maes, Charles Magnette, Belgian Grand Master in
1914: Cosmopolitan or Nationalistic Icon?, in “Journal for Research into
Freemasonry and Fraternalism”, I (2010), n. 1, pp. 94-119.
27 A.C. Jemolo, Anni di prova, op. cit., pp. 114-115.
28 G. Bandini, La Massoneria per la guerra nazionale, op. cit., pp. 15-16.
29 The handwritten transcript of Canti’s speech is in the Archivio storico del
Grande Oriente d’Italia, Roma (Asgoi), Fondo Gasco.
30 Cf. B. Pisa, Ernesto Nathan e la “politica nazionale”, in “Rassegna storica del
Risorgimento”, 1997, n. 1, pp. 17-66.
31 G. Bandini, La Massoneria per la guerra nazionale, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
32 Ibid., p. 47.
33 Giuseppe Mazzini, “Rivista massonica”, April 30, 1915.
34 Conferenza tenuta dal Fratello Eduardo De Vincentiis ad iniziativa della Rispettabile
Loggia Prometeo ai fratelli residenti nella Valle del Tara, Oriente di Taranto, il 5 luglio
1915, “Rivista massonica”, September 30, 1915.
35 “Il Lucifero” on September 6, 1914 cited in A. Ventrone, La seduzione totalitaria,
op. cit., p. 34. On Nenni see M. Severini, Nenni il sovversivo. L’esperienza a Jesi e
nelle Marche (1912-1915), Venice, Marsilio, 2007.
36 Cf. S. Audoin-Rouzeau - A. Becker, La violenza, la crociata, il lutto. La Grande
Guerra e la storia del Novecento, Turin, Einaudi, 2002, p. 145. See also A. Becker,
Messianismi, retaggio della violenza, totalitarismi, in S. Audoin-Rouzeau e J.-J.
Becker (eds.), La prima guerra mondiale, op. cit., pp. 565-576.
37 See N. Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées. Les tentatives de paix de Benoıˆt
XV pendant la Grande Guerre, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 2004; G. Paolini,
Offensive di pace. La Santa Sede e la prima guerra mondiale, Florence, Polistampa –
Fondazione Spadolini Nuova Antologia, 2008; G.B. Furiozzi, Massoneria e Vati-
cano. Ernesto Nathan, il papa e il Congresso della pace, in Idem, Massoneria e politica,
Perugia, Morlacchi, 2012, pp. 115-123.
38 L’anniversario. XXIV Maggio MCMXV, “Rivista massonica”, May 31, 1916.
39 G. Bandini, La Massoneria per la guerra nazionale, op. cit., pp. 107-109.
40 Le Logge della Valle del Po e la visita del Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri a Torino,
“Rivista massonica”, January 31, 1916.

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41 XX Settembre, “Rivista massonica”, October 31, 1917.

42 L’anniversario. XXIV Maggio MCMXV, op. cit.
43 La parola del Gran Maestro, “Rivista massonica”, November 30, 1916; La parola
del Gran Maestro, “Rivista massonica”, April 30 – May 31, 1917.
44 Il Convegno del Rito Simbolico Italiano. Roma 13 Maggio 1917. Comunicato della
Gran Loggia, “Rivista massonica”, April 30 – May 31, 1917.
45 Discorso del Pot. Fratello Gran Maestro, “Rivista massonica”, December 31, 1917.
46 XX Settembre, “Rivista massonica”, September 30, 1915.
47 La cambiale in bianco, “Rivista massonica”, December 31, 1915.
48 On post-war Freemasonry see “Rivista massonica”, September 30, 1916 and the
keynote speech of Achille Ballori, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish
Rite, at the National Congress of the Scottish Rite (Rome 1917). Cf. Congresso
Nazionale del Rito Scozzese Antico ed Accettato per la Giurisdizione Italiana, “Rivista
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massonica”, April 30 – May 31, 1917

49 L. Granone, Per l’unità della Massoneria, “Rivista massonica”, March 31, 1916.
50 L. Granone, Le due Internazionali, “Rivista massonica”, August 31, 1917.
51 On Beneduce as a financier, politician and figurehead of Italian economics dur-
ing Fascism see S. Potito, Il primo Beneduce (1912-1922), Napoli, Edizioni Scien-
tifiche Italiane, 2004 and M. Franzinelli, M. Magnani, Beneduce. Il finanziere di
Mussolini, Milano, Mondadori, 2009.
52 Conférence des Maçonneries des Nations Alliées, 14-15 Janvier 1917, Paris 1917.
53 Grand Orient de France – Grande Loge de France, Congre`s des Maçonneries des
Nations Allées et Neutres les 28, 29 et 30 Juin 1917, Paris, Imprimerie Nouvelle,
1917, pp. 28-29.
54 Ibid., p. 46. - Translation of the newsletter issued by Deputy Grand Master
Gustavo Canti on July 25, 1917 informing the Italian Masonic community of
what had really happened at the Congress in Paris. See Informazioni, “Rivista
massonica”, August 31, 1917.
55 Informazioni, “Rivista massonica”, August 31, 1917.
56 Ibidem.
57 Cf. Achille Ballori, “Rivista massonica”, November 15, 1917.
58 La teoria dei plebisciti secondo il pensiero di Ernesto Nathan, “Rivista massonica”,
November 15, 1917.
59 S. Fedele, Tra impegno per la pace e lotta antifascista: l’azione internazionale della
Massoneria italiana tra le due guerre, in A. Baglio, S. Fedele, V. Schirripa (eds.), Per
la pace in Europa: istanze internazionaliste e impegno antifascista, Messina, Università
degli Studi di Messina, 2007, p. 85.
60 See. I. Garzia, L’Italia e le origini della Società delle Nazioni, Roma, Bonacci, 1995;
E. Costa Bona, L’Italia e la Società delle Nazioni, Padova, Cedam, 2004; Ead., La
“Società delle Nazioni”: pace? democrazia?, in G. Angelini (ed.), Nazione, democrazia
e pace. Tra Ottocento e Novecento, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2012, pp. 163-184.
61 Asgoi, Verbali della Giunta esecutiva, January 16, 1919.
62 Ibidem.
63 The document is reproduced in G. Padulo, Contributo alla storia della massoneria
da Giolitti a Mussolini, in “Annali dell’Istituto italiano per gli studi storici”, VIII,
1983-1984, p. 265.

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