to an abandonment of an undertaking in which Italian blood had been shed.  “The flag cannot retreat,” he said, and in fact public opinion was at that moment so strongly in favor of the maintenance of the colony that no ministry could have carried a proposal to abandon it.  It has been the habit of the Italians since the disaster to throw the blame for it on Crispi, but I, who was always opposed to the undertaking, can testify that at the outbreak of war, and especially after the brilliant if slight victories won by the Italian troops in Africa, Crispi would have been defeated in the Chamber if he had proposed withdrawing.  In the Chamber there was only the extreme Left which opposed the war policy, and the order of the day which was accepted by the government as the war programme was presented by the Marquis di Rudiní, then head of the opposition, and carried by an enormous majority.  As I was present at the sitting of the Chamber at which the vote was taken I do not speak uncertainly.

Baratieri had been recalled to Rome on the suspicion that he was intending to extend the conquest unduly, and I met him at a breakfast arranged by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to enable me to discuss the subject with the general.  He then made the most unqualified declarations that he was opposed to all extension of operations, and that he did not ask for a man or a lira more than had been accorded to him by Crispi.  Baratieri was a Garibaldian general, a daring and brilliant commander of a brigade at most, without a proper military education, but with some experience.  He was a political general, however, a partisan of Zanardelli, who had been the most insistent rival of Crispi at the formation of a ministry in 1893, and he had been Zanardelli’s candidate for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, his nomination having been protested against by Austria on the well understood ground that he was an Irredentist, that is, in favor of taking the Tyrol from Austria.  In the battle of Coatit, which inaugurated the hostilities, he had shown brilliant qualities as a partisan commander and had become very popular, so that to remove him, as Crispi had intended when he was recalled to Rome, was very difficult, the more as he protested his strict adherence to the defensive policy imposed on him by the ministry; but on his return it soon became evident that he cherished more ambitious plans than he had owned up to when in Rome, and Crispi soon saw that his recall was necessary.  But Baratieri had now the support, not only of the common public favor, but of the entire court circle, which saw in him a convenient weapon against Crispi, and of the military party, and, through these, of the King, who refused to assent to the recall of the general when Crispi finally demanded it.