He is a very picturesque and interesting figure, is Gabriele d’Annunzio—­very much in earnest, wholly sincere, but fanatical, egotistical, intolerant of the rights or opinions of others, a visionary, and perhaps a little mad.  I imagine that he would rather have his name linked with that of that other soldier-poet, who “flamed away at Missolonghi” nearly a century ago, than with any other character in history save Garibaldi.  D’Annunzio, like Byron, was an exile from his native land.  Both had a habit of never paying their bills; both had offended against the social codes of their times; both flamed against what they believed to be injustice and tyranny; both had a passionate love for liberty; both possessed a highly developed sense of the dramatic and delighted in playing romantic roles.  I have heard it said that d’Annunzio’s raid on Fiume would make his name immortal, but I doubt it.  Barely a score of years have passed since the raid on Johannesburg, which was a far more daring and hazardous exploit than d’Annunzio’s Fiume performance, yet to-day how many people remember Doctor Jameson?  It can be said for this middle-aged poet that he has successfully defied the government of Italy, that he flouted the royal duke who was sent to parley with him, that he seduced the Italian army and navy into committing open mutiny—­“a breach of that military discipline,” in the words of the Prime Minister, “which is the foundation of the safety of the state”—­and that he has done more to shake foreign confidence in the stability of the Italian character and the dependability of the Italian soldier than the Austro-Germans did when they brought about the disaster at Caporetto.

I have heard it said that the Nitti government had advance knowledge of the raid on Fiume and that the reason it took no vigorous measures against the filibusters was because it secretly approved of their action.  This I do not believe.  With President Wilson, the Jugoslavs, d’Annunzio, and the Italian army and navy arrayed against him, I am convinced that Mr. Nitti did everything that could be done without precipitating either a war or a revolution.  Much credit is also due to the Jugoslavs for their forbearance and restraint under great provocation.  They must have been sorely tempted to give the Poet the spanking he so richly deserves.

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When the small army of newspaper correspondents who were despatched by the great New York and London dailies to Khartoum to interview Colonel Roosevelt upon his emergence from the jungle started up the White Nile to meet the explorer, they were deterred, both by the shortage of boats and the question of expense, from chartering individual steamers.  But the public at home was not permitted to know of these petty limitations and annoyances.  On the contrary, people all over the United States, at their breakfast-tables, read the despatches from the far-off Sudan dated from “On board the New York Herald’s dahabeah Rameses”