Holy See. The people, however, was not pro-German; while the 'intellectuals'-the 'Nationalists,' the 'Reformist' Socialists under their patriotic leader, Sig. Leonida Bissolati, and the Republicans, in contradistinction to the pacificist Official' Socialists, laboured indefatigably to convert the country in favour of intervention.

The task was not easy, for the Chamber of Deputies, like its two predecessors, had been created by Sig. Giolitti in his own image, and therefore contained an enormous Giolittian majority. So late as the beginning of May, 1915, not only the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, but also an Anglophil deputy, estimated that a large majority of the Chamber, and still more of the Senate (more than half of whose members owed their laticlave to Sig. Giolitti), were in favour of neutrality. Yet ere the month was over Italy had gone to war. Sig. Giolitti, astutest of Italian politicians since Depretis, by identifying himself with Prince von Bülow, had wounded the Italians in their most sensitive spot-the interference of the foreigner in their internal affairs. Never, since Crispi fell in 1896, had an Italian leader fallen so suddenly. The all-powerful 'dictator,' whose house 300 politicians had visited a few days earlier, fled by night from Rome, attended by his faithful son-in-law alone. Had he been a student of English history, he might have recalled Lord Melbourne's remark, when none of the Bishops whom he had created attended his last reception: Bishops, like other men, are apt to forget their maker.'

6

Italy had denounced the Triple Alliance and thrown in her lot with the Triple Entente, thus ending what the author of La Politica Estera' calls 'a policy against nature.' But she did not immediately declare war against Germany, although almost from the outset she found herself de facto fighting against Bavarian, and even Prussian soldiers. On the contrary, she proceeded by stages, first declaring war against Austria-Hungary, and a little later against Turkey and Bulgaria, then adhering on Nov. 30, 1915, to the Pact of London, and finally declaring war against the principal enemy belligerent in August 1916. Thus, what was long unfortunately described by Italian writers as only la nostra guerra, or Italy's war against Austria, has become in name, as in fact, a part of the common effort. Indeed, our author

goes so far as to assert that Italy's real enemy is not Austria but Germany, because a German hegemony would be the most organic, the most absorbing, covering every field of human activity,' whereas Austria has only been a danger for us Italians since 1870, in so far as she has had Germany behind her.' 'Italy,' he argues, 'should, therefore, desire the defeat of Germany for two reasons: (1) to eliminate once and for all the Austrian peril; (2) to prevent Germany from becoming Austria's heir in the Adriatic zone.' From these two propositions he deduces as corollaries 'the necessity of the fullest possible and most complete accord with Serbia and Serbism, with Greece and Hellenism,' and the definite abandonment of the pro-Bulgar policy which characterised the eve of the second Balkan war in 1913. Above all else, the Italians, he concludes, should, by establishing a small state on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, put a stop to the German dream of a German Adriatic. In other words, he advocates the complete reversal of the policy of San Giuliano.

There are Italian politicians, indeed there are Italian Ministers, who hold similar views. They think that it is the real interest of Italy to be on the best terms with her future neighbours on the east, as well as with her present neighbours on the south-east and on the west. Sooner or later, the Dual Monarchy will break up, and then Serbia and Italy will have an identic frontier on the east. However much the Italian Nationalists' may dislike the Greeks, Hellenism is a factor in the East which all the leading articles in the world cannot destroy. The opposition of both official and non-official Italy to the greatest statesman that modern Greece has so far produced has caused pained surprise in Great Britain, where the name of M. Venizélos has charmed the popular imagination, much as those of Garibaldi and Kossuth fascinated our forefathers. There is an uneasy feeling that the famous Cretan chief is unpopular in Italy, because he is regarded there as the one strong man capable of saving Hellenism from disaster, whereas a weak and divided Greece is the ideal of those Italian politicians who consider the immediate interest of Italy alone, without regard to the more distant future. But there are far-seeing Italian statesmen, such as Sig. Bissolati, who perceive across the mists of racial passion

and temporary interests that beautiful picture of the Roman poet:

'Cognatas urbes olim populosque propinquos

Epiro, Hesperia.'

Italy has now found her natural affinities, which lie with the Western and Liberal Powers rather than with the Central Empires. Her future relations with Great Britain depend, in the judgment of the present writer -except in certain improbable contingencies-largely upon ourselves. Difficult, as it must always be, for two nations so different to understand one another thoroughly, there can be no doubt whatever that Italian politicians know more about Great Britain than their British colleagues about Italy. The ignorance of the average British politician about the modern Italians is colossal. His knowledge of Italian politics may be demonstrated by the remark of a well-known British 'expert' on foreign policy, that the 'Consulta' was the name for the Italian Chamber of Deputies. A British diplomatist, after considerable residence in Rome, once asked what Palazzo Braschi (the seat of the Ministry of the Interior, a term as familiar as our 'Downing Street') was; and one of his colleagues, after a long sojourn there, had never heard of the Banca Romana scandals-an incident as memorable in Italian politics as the Parnell Commission with us, and more recent.

Still more serious errors are those due to complete misjudgment of the Italian mentality, which requires careful study, not merely as presented by the cosmopolitan Roman aristocracy, but by the pure-blooded Italian middle-classes, who, and who alone, govern the country. Italians justly complain that the British do not take the trouble to study them, but are apt to regard them as mere human excrescences on the landscape, custodians of art-collections, caretakers of the European Garden of Eden. Nothing can be farther from the real fact. No people is shrewder, more anxious to be 'modern,' or less sentimental. Indeed, in that respect our Italian friends usually misjudge us, for they do not realise that we are the most sentimental people in Europe, and that the diabolical astuteness of our very simple-minded statesmen is an invention of the enemy. If Great Britain,

then, wishes to retain the Italian alliance, she must try to understand her southern allies, and base the partnership not upon frothy sentiment and historical reminiscences, but upon common interests, especially those of a commercial kind. An Anglo-Italian bank, deferred payments, and Italian-speaking British bagmen would do far more to promote those interests than dithyrambic after-dinner speeches or aristocratic social functions. By all means, let us read Cicero and study Dante, but do not let us imagine that this will in the least help us to understand the compatriots of Sig. Salandra and the men who founded the Terni steelworks.

Above all, let our countrymen abandon that patronising air of conscious superiority which has made the Germans so unpopular in Italy. One of the reasons of our present Prime Minister's popularity in Italy is that he is what the Italians call espansivo; there is nothing of the 'superior' Whig statesman about him, but much of southern human-nature. We should remember that we cannot afford to rest on our own, still less on Palmerston's and Gladstone's, faded laurels. After the war, Germany will intrigue against us and against France night and day in Italy, where she still has friends in certain quarters, even though for the moment they prudently hold their peace and keep back their peace proposals. If we pursue our old traditional policy of laissez faire, we must expect the natural result, and we shall have only ourselves to blame. We possess many advantages which Germany lacks-capital, disinterestedness, freedom from the suspicion of political designs under the specious garb of commercial expansion. Above all, we have no professors, whose ex cathedrá pronouncements, telling the Italians what they should do, and ordering them to do it, were one of the most valuable assets of the Allies during the Neutralist period of 1914-15. In the Balkans we had all the best cards in our hand; we threw them away there; let us not repeat the same mistake in the case of Italy.

WILLIAM MILLER.

Art. 6. THE ORIGINS

OF THE

WAR.

FRANCO-GERMAN

Les origines diplomatiques de la Guerre de 1870-1871. Ten vols. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1910-1914.

THE publication by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the documents relating to the diplomatic origins of the war of 1870-1871 may be regarded as an undertaking almost unique, when we take into account the recent date of the events recorded and the fact that it includes all the despatches on the subject contained in our archives. The diplomatic documents relating to the great events of our previous history have been published only in an incomplete form. I am not in a position to state whether the various publications of the English 'State Papers' are equally exhaustive;* at any rate, nothing of the sort has ever been attempted in Germany.

Let me first explain the origin of the publication in question. The war of 1870-1871, which, until the outbreak of the present war, we spoke of as 'The War,' was, during the thirty-five years which followed it, the subject of innumerable works in France, in Germany, and in other countries. In France the archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs had remained closed to historians by virtue of the established rule that they are partially accessible only when half a century has elapsed, and fully accessible only when a century has elapsed, after the events which they record. It is needless to say how necessary such a rule is, when we consider the disturbing influences which untimely revelations might have on the politics of the day.

Besides the Emperor Napoleon III, two politicians, the Duc de Grammont and Emile Ollivier, were, in French opinion, chiefly responsible for having in July 1870 fallen into the trap which Bismarck had set for them. Bismarck's own subsequent disclosure of the falsification of the Ems telegram showed how widely set the trap had been, but it did not do away with the fact. It is to the everlasting credit of Thiers and of the Republicans of those days-Jules Favre, Gambetta, Jules

* There is nothing resembling this publication in England (Editor).