Although a man of first-class financial ability, great honesty and wide culture, Luzzatti had not the strength of character necessary to lead a government: he showed lack of energy in dealing with opposition and tried to avoid all measures likely to make him unpopular. Furthermore, he never realized that with the chamber, as it was then constituted, he only held office at Giolitti's good pleasure. On 30 March 1911, Luzzatti resigned from his office and King
Victor Emmanuel III again gave Giolitti the task to form a new cabinet.
Social policy During the
fourth Giolitti government, Giolitti tried to seal an alliance with the PSI, proposing the male
universal suffrage, implementing left-wing social policies, introducing the
National Insurance Institute, which provided for the nationalization of insurance at the expense of the private sector. Moreover, Giolitti appointed the socialist
Alberto Beneduce as the head of this institute. Law No. 1361 of 1912 and the Royal Decree No. 431 that was approved in 1913 "represented the legal basis of the institutional activity of the Labour Inspectorate, still structured within the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Trade." A law introduced on 6 July 1912 authorized the formation (in the province of Liguria) of an agricultural credit association. During his ministry, Parliament approved a law requiring the payment of a monthly allowance to deputies. At that time, the parliamentarians had no type of salary, and this favoured the wealthy candidates. Also in 1912, Giolitti had Parliament approve an electoral reform bill that expanded the electorate from 3 million to 8.5 million voters – introducing near-universal male suffrage – while commenting that first "teaching everyone to read and write" would have been a more reasonable route. Considered his most daring political move, the reform probably hastened the end of the Giolittian Era because his followers controlled fewer seats after the
1913 Italian general election. The Italian government did little to realize the opportunity and knowledge of Libyan territory and resources remained scarce in the following years. The Italian press began a large-scale lobbying campaign in favour of an
invasion of Libya at the end of March 1911. It was fancifully depicted as rich in minerals, well-watered, and defended by only 4,000 Ottoman troops. The population was described as hostile to the
Ottoman Empire and friendly to the Italians: the future invasion was going to be little more than a "military walk", according to them. The Italian government was hesitant initially, but in the summer the preparations for the invasion were carried out and Prime Minister Giolitti began to probe the other European major powers about their reactions to a possible invasion of Libya. The PSI had strong influence over public opinion; however, it was in opposition and also divided on the issue, acting ineffectively against military intervention. An ultimatum was presented to the Ottoman government led by the
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) party on the night of 26–27 September. Through
Austrian intermediation, the Ottomans replied with the proposal of transferring control of Libya without war, maintaining a formal Ottoman
suzerainty. This suggestion was comparable to the situation in
Egypt, which was under formal Ottoman suzerainty but was actually controlled by the United Kingdom. Giolitti refused, and war was declared on 29 September 1911. He was criticized for having declared war without consulting Parliament, and for not having summoned it until several months later. His conduct of the Government during the campaign was also severely criticized, as he acted as though the war were merely an affair of internal politics and party combinations. On 18 October 1912, Turkey officially surrendered. As a result of this conflict, Italy captured the Ottoman
Tripolitania Vilayet (province), of which the main sub-provinces were
Fezzan,
Cyrenaica, and
Tripoli itself. These territories together formed what became known as
Italian Libya. During the conflict, Italian forces also occupied the
Dodecanese islands in the
Aegean Sea. Italy had agreed to return the Dodecanese to the Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912 (also known as the First Treaty of Lausanne (1912), as it was signed at the
Château d'Ouchy in
Lausanne, Switzerland.) However, the vagueness of the text allowed a provisional Italian administration of the islands, and Turkey eventually renounced all claims on these islands in Article 15 of the
Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Although minor, the war was a precursor of
World War I as it sparked
nationalism in the
Balkan states. Seeing how easily the Italians had defeated the weakened Ottomans, the members of the
Balkan League attacked the Ottoman Empire before the war with Italy had ended. The invasion of Libya was a costly enterprise for Italy. Instead of the 30 million
lire a month judged sufficient at its beginning, it reached a cost of 80 million a month for a much longer period than was originally estimated. The war cost Italy 1.3 billion
lire, nearly a billion more than Giolitti estimated before the war.
Foundation of the Liberals In 1913, Giolitti founded the
Liberal Party, a political party was simply and collectively called Liberals. The Liberal Union was a
political alliance formed when the
Historical Left and the
Historical Right merged in a single centrist and liberal coalition which largely dominated the Italian Parliament. Giolitti had mastered the political concept of
trasformismo, which consisted in making flexible
centrist coalitions of
government which isolated the extremes of the
political left and the
political right.
Gentiloni Pact in 1903 In 1904,
Pope Pius X informally gave permission to Catholics to vote for government candidates in areas where the PSI might win. Since the PSI was the arch-enemy of the Church, the reductionist logic of the Church led it to promote any
anti-socialist measures. Voting for the PSI was grounds for
excommunication from the Church. The Vatican had two major goals at this point: to stem the rise of
socialism and to monitor the grassroots Catholic organizations (for example, cooperatives, peasant leagues, and credit unions). Since the masses tended to be deeply religious but rather uneducated, the Church felt they were in need of conveyance so that they did not support improper ideals like socialism or
anarchism. Meanwhile, Giolitti understood that the time was ripe for cooperation between Catholics and the
liberal system of government. When Pius X lifted the ban on Catholic participation in politics in 1913, and the electorate was expanded by a new
franchise law from 3 million to 8 million, he collaborated with the
Italian Catholic Electoral Union, led by
Ottorino Gentiloni in the
Gentiloni pact. It directed Catholic voters to Giolitti supporters who agreed to favour the Church's position on such key issues as funding private Catholic schools and blocking a law allowing divorce.
1913 election and resignation A general election was held on 26 October 1913, with a second round of voting on 2 November. The 1913 election marked the beginning of the decline of the Liberal establishment. In March 1914, the Radicals of
Ettore Sacchi brought down Giolitti's coalition, who resigned on 21 March. After Gioilitti's resignation, the conservative
Antonio Salandra was brought into the national cabinet as the choice of Giolitti himself, who still commanded the support of most Italian parliamentarians; however, Salandra soon fell out with Giolitti over the question of Italian participation in
World War I. ==World War I==