The World Decision | Page 7

threads in the Consulta negotiations. It was neither for sentiment nor for strategical advantage solely that Italy finally entered the war. Nevertheless, if the German Powers had frankly and freely from the start recognized Italy's position, and surrendered to her immediate possession--as they were ready to do at the last moment--sufficient of those national aspirations to safeguard national security, with hands off in the Adriatic, Italy most probably would have preferred to remain neutral. I cannot believe that Salandra or the King really wanted war. They were sincerely struggling to keep their nation out of the European melting-pot as long as they could. But they were both shrewd and patriotic enough not to content themselves with present security at the price of ultimate danger. And if they had been as weak as the King of Greece, as subservient as the King of Bulgaria, they would have had to reckon with a very different people from the Bulgars and the Greeks--a nation that might quite conceivably have turned Italy into a republic and ranged her beside her Latin sister on the north in the world struggle. The path of peace was in no way the path of prudence for the House of Savoy.
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Lack of imagination is surely one of the prominent characteristics of the modern German, at least in statecraft. Imagination applied to the practical matters of daily living is nothing more than the ability to project one's own personality beneath the skin of another, to look around at the world through that other person's eyes and to realize what values the world holds for him. The Prince von B��low, able diplomat though they call him, could not look upon the world through Italian eyes in spite of his Italian wife, his long residence in Rome, his professed love for Italy. It must have been with his consent if not by his suggestion that Erzburger, the leader of the Catholic party in the Reichstag, was sent to Rome at this critical juncture. The German mind probably said,--"Here is a notable Catholic, political leader of German Catholics, and so he must be especially agreeable to Italians, who, as all the world knows, are Catholics." The reasoning of a stupid child! Outwardly Italy is Catholic, but modern Italy has shown herself very restive at any papal meddling in national affairs. To have an alien--one of the "barbari"--seat himself at the Vatican and try to use the papal power in determining the policy of the nation in a matter of such magnitude, was a fatal blunder of tactless diplomacy. Nor could Herr Erzburger's presence at the Vatican these tense days be kept secret from the curious journalists, who lived on such meager items of news. No more tactful was it for Prince von B��low to meet the Italian politician Giolitti at the Palace Hotel on the Pincian. There is no harm in one gentleman's meeting another in the rooms of a public hotel so respectable as the Palace, but when the two are playing the international chess game and one is regarded as an enemy and the other as a possible traitor, the popular mind is likely to take a heated and prejudiced view of the small incident. Less obvious to the public, but none the less untactful, was the manner in which the German Ambassador tried to use his social connection in Rome, his family relationships in the aristocracy of Italy, to influence the King and his ministers. He might have taken warning from the royal speech attributed to the Queen Mother in reply to the Kaiser: "The House of Savoy rules one at a time." He should have kept away from the back stairs. He should have known Italy well enough to realize that the elements of Roman society with which he was affiliated do not represent either power or public opinion in Italy any more than good society does in most modern states. Roman aristocracy, like all aristocracies, whether of blood or of money, is international in its sympathies, skeptic in its soul. And its influence, in a decisive question of life and death to the nation, is nil. The Prince von B��low was wasting his time with people who could not decide anything. As Salandra said, with dignified restraint in answer to the vulgar attack upon him made by the German Chancellor,--"The Prince was a sincere lover of Italy, but he was ill-advised by persons who no longer had any weight in the nation"--as his colleague in London seems to have been ill-advised when he assured his master that Englishmen would not fight under any circumstances! The trouble with diplomacy would seem to be that its ranks are still recruited from "the upper classes," whose gifts are social and whose sympathies reflect the views and the