[24] Giornale d’Italia, November 17, 1915.
[25] Cf. Preziosi, La Germania a la Conquista dell’ Italia, p. 66.
[26] Ibid., p. 67.
[27] Signor Preziosi gives the names of those agents as MM. Volpi, Bertolini and Nogara (op. cit., p. 71).
[28] Professor Bondi, ex-Questor of Milan.
[29] Rivelazioni postume alle Memorie di un questore, 1913. Cf. Preziosi, La Germania a la Conquista dell’ Italia, p. 75 ff.
[30] 1915.
CHAPTER V
GERMANY AND RUSSIA
Turning to our other ally, Russia, we find that she underwent a course of treatment similar to that which well-nigh prussianized Italy. In the Tsardom the task was especially easy owing largely to the advantages offered to Teutonic immigrants from the days of yore, to the German-speaking inhabitants of the Baltic provinces, to the proselytizing German schools which flourish in Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, Kieff, Saratoff, Simbirsk, Tiflis, Warsaw and other centres, to German colonies scattered over Russia and to religious sects. During the Manchurian campaign the Commercial Treaty drafted in Berlin, and at first denounced by Count Witte as ruinous to his country, was agreed to and signed.[31] It was Hobson’s choice. After that the empire, which had already been a favourite and fruitful field for Germany’s experiments, became one of the most copious sources of her national prosperity. Commercial push and political espionage were so thoroughly fused that no line of demarcation remained visible.