Public opinion in Italy varies from province to province. While all the south is frankly eager for war as soon as possible, in the northern provinces, the richest and most industrial of Italy, the population is just now recovering from the financial losses inflicted by the last war, and would prefer Italy to keep neutral as far as possible.
This does not mean that the war would be unpopular there. Rich provinces are a little like wealthy people; they would rather keep quiet and continue in their profitable business, but when the danger is near and fighting is unavoidable they give up without regret their everyday habits and bravely do their duty.
The different tendencies of the north and south meet in Rome. Though there are no more convinced adherents of the Triple Alliance left in Italy, and though you cannot find a single Italian who will say that his country ought to have fought side by side with Austria and Germany, the neutralist party is still very strong, and the idea of making cause commune with France still keeps some of the intransigent Catholics from joining the War Party. The Socialists have assumed a sort of wait-and-see attitude which will easily be changed at the right moment to frank support of the war; and the new Nationalist Party, though only a few years old, is making gigantic progress.
The most important part of the Italian Press has never ceased, since the beginning of the war, to try and make the nation feel the disadvantages of an uncertain position.
Without England or France having supported them, or even treated particularly well their correspondents (many Italian journalists, Barzini included, were arrested and sent back to Paris when found too near the front), the Italian Press, with few and not important exceptions, has opposed the idea of neutral policy. One of the most important of Italian journals printed as a sub-title to its heading in big type the sentence of Machiavelli: "Neutrality is never suitable to a nation, for a State who keeps neutral loses her friends, does not gain advantages and, when the war is over, ingenerates such diffidence about her future conduct that no other nation cares to conclude an alliance with her."
Germany and Austria, recognising the trend of public opinion in Italy, did not economise money or trouble in an endeavour to change its course if possible. Two or three newspapers were bought by a sort of secret trust which depends upon "Palazzo Venezia," the Austrian Embassy in Rome; some others were largely subventioned; news made in Germany was sent out, not only to all newspapers, but to private houses. A friend of mine kept a full collection of such pamphlets right from the beginning of the war. The circulars are issued every two or three weeks, and generally begin with a formal denial of everything that has been stated by the French, English, and Russian official bulletins. Accusations of pillage, robbery, murder, and cruelties of every possible kind are made against the Allies, and are proved by bogus letters from German officers and soldiers. This system, though it certainly does not succeed amongst the more educated classes, scores a little more amongst the lower-class folk, who are highly flattered to see amongst their weekly correspondence a large letter bearing for crest the Austrian or German eagle.
Another system largely employed by Germany in their attempted work of modifying Italy's public opinion is the free supply of photographs and sketches to illustrated newspapers. Above all, however, they have concentrated their endeavours upon the kinema.
The picture-house has ceased to be the means of spending an hour far from business and worry, in a restfully darkened room, watching a moderately amusing and, possibly, highly moral film, which does not suffer if one misses part of it. Now it has become an instrument used by Governments for educating the people.
Germany produces a large number of war films, both for home display and for abroad. There are descriptive, allegoric, sentimental, even comic films inspired by the war: the soldiers of the Kaiser do the most wonderful things. They are strong, generous, good-humoured. Most of these scenes are arranged, and only slices of real life in the case of military revues and parades are introduced.
The German authorities seem to be specially anxious to prove one thing: that the German soldiers are behaving like gentlemen, and that the stories about their deeds in Belgium and France are calumnies.