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The first popular "demonstration" which I saw in Rome was a harmless enough affair, and for that matter none of them were really serious. The Government always had the situation firmly in hand, with many regiments of infantry, also cavalry, to reinforce the police, the secret service, and the carabinieri, who alone might very well have handled all the disorder that occurred. Never, I suspect, was there any more demonstrating than the Government thought wise. The first occasion was a little crowd of boys and youths,—not precisely riff-raff, rather like our own college boys,—and they did less mischief than a few hundred freshmen or sophomores would have done. They marched down the street from the Piazza Tritone, shouting and carrying a couple of banners inscribed with "Abasso Giolitti." They stoned a few signs, notably the one over the empty office of the Austrian-Lloyd company, then, being turned from the Corso and the Austrian Embassy by the police, they rushed back up the hill to the Salandra residence, to hang about and yell themselves hoarse in the hope of evoking something from the former Premier. The two poles of the following "demonstrations" were the Salandra and the Giolitti residences with occasional futile dashes into the Corso….
For the better part of a week these street excitements kept up, not merely in Rome, but all over Italy: for that one week, while the King sent for various public men and offered them the task of forming a new ministry, which in every case was respectfully declined—as was expected.
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Why did the King not send for Giovanni Giolitti, the one statesman who under ordinary circumstances might have expected a summons? Neither Giolitti nor any of his intimates was invited to form a cabinet and reëstablish constitutional government. Nothing would appear to be more natural than that the leader of the Opposition, controlling a majority of the Deputies, who avowedly represented a policy opposed to that of the ministers who had resigned, should be asked himself to take charge. But Giolitti was never asked, and daily the shouting in the streets grew louder, more menacing, and the mood of the public more tense. Nothing was plainer than that if Giolitti had a majority of the Deputies, the people were not for him and his policies. The House of Savoy, as the King so well put it, rules by expressing the will of the people. Each day it was more evident what that will was. Giolitti, the master politician, was being outplayed by mere honest men. They had used him—as Germany had used him—to try out the temper of the nation. With him they drew the neutralista and pro-German fire beforehand, prudently, not to be defeated by hostile party criticism in the Chamber. And when they got through with the politician, they threw him out: literally they intimated through the Minister of Public Safety that they would not be responsible any longer for his personal safety. There was nothing for him but to go—before Parliament had assembled!
As Italy seethed and boiled, threatening to break into revolutionary violence, while the King received one respectable nonentity after another, who each time after a very brief consideration declined the proffered responsibility, Giolitti must have thought that the life of the politician is not an easy one. He was stoned when he appeared on the streets in his motor. He had to sneak out of the city at dawn that last day. Where was all the neutralista sentiment so evident the first months of the war? And where was the German influence supposed to be so strong in the upper commercial classes? Germans as well as Austrians were scurrying out of Italy as fast as they could. Their insinuating multiplicity was proved by the numbers of shuttered shops. More hotels along the Pincian, whose "Swiss" managers found it prudent to retire over the Alps, were closed. Angry crowds swarmed about the Austrian and German consulates, also the embassies when they could get through the cordons of troops on the Piazza Colonna. Noisy Rome these days might very well give rise to pessimistic reflections on the folly of popular government to politicians like Giolitti and the Prince von Bülow, whose obviously prudent policies were thus being upset by the "voice of the piazza" led by a very literary poet! No doubt at this moment they would point to Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the King of Greece as enlightened monarchs who know how to secure their own safety by ignoring the will of their peoples. But the end for Ferdinand and Constantine is not yet.
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The trouble with the politician as with the trained diplomat is that he never goes beneath the surface. He takes appearances for realities. He has often lost that instinct of race which should enable him to understand his own humanity. To a Giolitti, adept in the trading game of political management, it must seem insane for Italy to plunge into the war against powerful allies, who at just this time were triumphing in West and East alike—all the more when the sentimental and trading instincts of the populace might be partly satisfied with the concessions so grudgingly wrung from Austria. It was not only rash: it was bad politics!
But what Giolitti and men of his stripe the world over cannot understand is that the people are never as crafty and wise and mean as their politicians. The people are still capable of honest emotions, of heroic desires, of immense sacrifices. They love and hate and loathe with simple hearts. The politician like the popular novelist makes the fatal mistake of underrating his audience. And his audience will leave him in the lurch at the crisis, as Italy left Giolitti. Italy was never enthusiastic, as its enemies have charged, for a war of mere aggression, for realizing the "aspirations" because Austria was in a tight place, even for redeeming a million and a half more or less of expatriated Italians in Austrian territory. Politicians and statesmen talked of these matters, perforce; the people repeated them. For they were tangible "causes." But what Italians hated was Austrian and German leadership—were the "barbari" themselves, their ancient foe; and when told that they had better continue to make their bed with the "barbari," they revolted.
There are many men in every nation,—some of the politician type, some of the aristocratic type, some of the business type,—who by interest and temperament are timid and fundamentally cynical. They are pacifists for profit. About them gather the uncourageous "intellectuals," who believe in the potency of all established and dominating power whatever it may be. But these "leading citizens" fortunately are a minority in any democracy. They do most of the negotiating, much of the talking, but when the crisis comes,—and the issue is out in the open for every one to see,—they have to reckon with the instinctive majority, whose emotional nature has not been dwarfed. That majority is not necessarily the "rabble," the irresponsible and ignorant mob of the piazza as the German Chancellor sees them: it is the great human army of "little people," normal, simple, for the most part honest, whose selfish stake in the community is not large enough to stifle their deepest instincts. In them, I believe, lies the real idealism of any nation, also its plain virtues and its abiding strength.