The World Decision | Page 8

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 prejudices of
a very small element in the state. Good society in Rome was still out on
the Pincian for the afternoon promenade, was still exchanging calls and
dinners these golden spring days, but its views and sympathies could
not count in the enormous complex of beliefs and emotions that make
the mind of a nation in a crisis. Prince von Bülow's motor was busily
running about the narrow streets of old Rome, the gates of the pretty
Villa Malta were hospitably open,--guarded by carabinieri,--but if the
German Ambassador had put on an old coat and strolled through the
Trastevere, or had sat at a little marble-topped table in some obscure
café, or had traveled second or third class between Rome and Naples,
he might have heard things that would have brought the negotiations at
the Consulta to an abrupter close one way or the other. For Italy was
making up its mind against his master.
* * * * *
Rome was very still these hesitant days of early May, Rome was very
beautiful--I have never known her so beautiful! The Pincian, in spite of
its afternoon parade, had the sad air of forced retirement of some
well-to-do family. The Piazza di Spagna basked in its wonted flood of
sunshine with a curious Sabbatical calm. A stray forestieri might
occasionally cross its blazing pavements and dive into Piale's or Cook's,
and a few flower girls brought their irises and big white roses to the
steps, more from habit than for profit surely. The Forum was like a
wild, empty garden, and the Palatine, a melancholy waste of fragments

of the past where an old Garibaldian guard slunk after the stranger, out
of lonesomeness, babbling strangely of that other war in which he had
part and mixing his memories with the tags of history he had been
taught to recite anent the Roman monuments. As I wandered there in
the drowse of bees among the spring blossoms and looked out upon the
silent field that once was the heart of Rome, it was hard to realize that
again on this richly human soil of Italy the fate of its people was to be
tested in the agony of a merciless war, that even now the die was being
cast less than a mile away across the roofs. The soil of Rome is the
most deeply laden in the world with human memories, which somehow
exhale a subtle fragrance that even the most casual stranger cannot
escape, that condition the children of the soil. The roots of the modern
Italian run far down into the mould of ancient things: his distant
ancestors have done much of his political thinking for him, have
established in his soul the conditions of his present dilemma.... I
wonder if Prince von Bülow ever spent a meditative hour looking down
on the fragments of the Forum from the ilex of the Palatine, over the
steep ascent of the Capitoline that leads to the Campidolgio, as far as
the grandiose marble pile that fronts the newer city? Probably not.
* * * * *
Germany wanted her place in the sun. She had always wanted it from
the day, two thousand years and more ago, when the first Teuton tribes
came over the Alpine barrier and spread through the sun-kissed fields
of northern Italy. The Italian knows that in his blood. There are two
ways in which to deal with this German lust of another's lands--to kill
the invader or to absorb him. Italy has tried both. It takes a long time to
absorb a race,--hundreds of years,--and precious sacrifices must be
made in the process. No wonder that Italy does not wish to become
Germany's place in the sun! Nor to swallow the modern German.
When the Teuton first crossed the Alpine barrier and poured himself
lustfully out over the fertile plains of northern Italy, it was literally a
place in the sun which he coveted. In the ages since then his lust has
changed its form: now it is economic privilege that he seeks for his
people. In order to maintain that level of industrial superiority, of

material prosperity, to which he has raised himself, he must "expand"
in trade and influence. He must have more markets to exploit and
always more. It is the same lust with a new name. "Thou shalt not
covet" surely was written for nations as well as for individuals. But our
modern economic