All modern states are more or less tainted with the same delusion—ourselves most, perhaps, after Germany. "We have all sinned," as an eminent Frenchman said, "your people and mine, as well as England and Germany." It is time to revise some of the fundamental assumptions of political philosophers and statesmen. Let us admit that peoples may be strong and happy and contented without seeking to control increasingly those sources of wealth still left undeveloped on the earth's surface, without cutting one another's throats in an effort for national expansion. The psychology of states cannot be fundamentally different from that of the individuals in them. And the happiness of the individual has never been found to consist wholly, even largely, in his economic prosperity.
Because the Latin soul divines this axiomatic belief, because the Latin world admits a larger, finer interpretation of life than economic success, all civilization waits upon the great decision of this war.
* * * * *
Suddenly in the calm of these drifting, hesitant days, when nobody knew what the nation desired, there came a bolt of lightning. I have said that the German people lack imagination by which to understand the world outside themselves. They do not coördinate their activities. Otherwise, why commit the barbarism of sinking the Lusitania, just at the moment when they were straining to keep Italy from breaking completely the frayed bonds of the Triple Alliance? Probably it never entered any German head in the "high commandment" that the prosecution of his undersea warfare might have a very real connection with the Italian situation. He could not credit any nation with such "soft sentimentality," as he calls it. Yet I am not alone in ascribing a large significance to the sinking of the Lusitania in Italy's decision to make war. Every observer of these events whom I have talked with or whose report I have read gives the same testimony, that Italy first woke to her own mind at the shock of the Lusitania murders….
The news came to me in my peaceful room above the Barberini Gardens. The fountain was softly dripping below, the spring air was full of the song of birds as another perfect day opened. The warm sunshine reached lovingly up the yellowed walls of the old palace opposite. All the little, old, familiar things of a long past, which pull so strongly here in Rome at the human heart, were moving in the new day. The life of men, so troubled, so sad, seemed beautiful this May morning, with the suave beauty of ideals that for centuries have coursed through the blood of Italy…. Luigi, the black-haired, black-eyed lad who brought the morning coffee and newspapers, was telling me of the horrid crime. With his outstretched fist clenched and shaking with rage he said the words, then, dropping the paper with its heavy headlines, cursed it as if it too symbolically represented the hideous thing that Germany had become. "Now," he cried, "there'll be war! We shall fight them, the swine!" A few days afterward Luigi departed to fight the "swine" on some Alpine pass.
Luigi's reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania was typical of all Rome, all Italy. The same burst of execration and horror was in every mouth. "Fuori i Barbari" was the title of a little anti-German sheet that was appearing in Rome: it got a new significance as it hung in the kiosks or was scanned by scowling men. It became the muttered cry of the street. I am not simple enough to believe that the sinking of the Lusitania of itself "drove Italy into the war." Nations no more than individuals, alas, are idealistic enough to sacrifice themselves simply for their moral resentments. But this fresh example of cynical indifference to the opinion of civilization, just at the critical point of decision for the Italian people, had much to do with the rousing of that war fury without which no government can push a nation into war. First there must be the spirit of hate, a personal emotion in the hearts of many. It must be remembered also that Italy had felt with the entire civilized world the outrage of Belgium. It has even been rumored that one of the hard passages between Italy and her German allies was the condition that Germany wished to attach to any Austrian concessions, by which Italy at the peace conference should uphold Germany's "claims" to Belgium. No one knows the truth about this, but if true it is in itself an adequate explanation of the failure of the negotiations. And now the Lusitania came with a fresh shock as an iterated example of German state policy. It proclaimed glaringly to the eyes of all men what the Teutonic thing is, what it means to the world. The Latin has been cruel and bloody in his deeds, like all men, but he has never made a cult of inhumanity, never justified it as a principle of statecraft. Italians, prone to hate as to love, prone especially to hate the Teuton, those aliens who have lusted after their richness and beauty all these centuries, felt the Lusitania murders to the depths of their souls. It was like a red writing on the wall, serving notice that in due season Germany and Austria would tear Italy limb from limb because of her "treachery" in not abetting them in their attack upon the peace of the world.
Prince von Bülow and Baron Macchio might as well have discontinued their daily visits to the Consulta after the 7th of May. Whatever they might have hoped to accomplish with their diplomacy to keep Italy neutral had been irretrievably ruined by the diplomacy of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. The smallest match, the scratch of a boot-heel on stone, can set off a powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match. If the King and his ministers were waiting for the country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they had their desire. From the hour when the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came over the wires, Italy began to mutter and shout. The months of hesitation were ended. There were elements enough of hate, and Germany had given them all focus. "Fuori i Barbari!" I bought a sheet from the old woman who went hurrying up the street shouting hoarsely,—"Fuori i Barbari!" … "Fuori i Barbari!" … "Barbari!"….
II
The Politician Speaks
Giovanni Giolitti came to Rome, a few days after the Lusitania affair. Ostensibly he had come to town from his home in little Cavour, where he had been in retirement all the winter, to visit a sick wife at Frascati. Montecitorio, home of politicians, began to hum. Rome quivering with the emotions of its great decision muttered. What did Giolitti's presence at this eleventh hour signify? Remember what the shrewd American observer had said the week before,—"Giolitti will tell the Italians what they want."