It has been accepted
as the platform, or even the gospel of the Christian Democrats. Who are
they? They are a body of the younger generation of Italians, among them
being a considerable number of religious, who yearn to put into practice
the concrete exhortations of the Evangelists. They are really carried
forward by that ethical wave which has swept over Western Europe and
America during the past generation, and has resulted in "slumming,"
in practical social service, in all kinds of efforts to improve the
material and moral condition of the poor, quite irrespective of
sectarian or even Christian initiative. This great movement began,
indeed, outside of the churches, among men and women who felt grievously
the misery of their fellow-creatures and their own obligation to do what
they could to relieve it. From them, it has reached the churches, and,
last of all, the Catholic Church in Italy. No doubt the spread of
Socialism, with its superficial resemblance to some of the features of
primitive Christianity, has somewhat modified the character of this
ethical movement; so far, in fact, that the Italian Christian Democrats
have been confounded, by persons with only a blurred sense of outlines,
with the Socialists themselves.
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