4

It will therefore be a matter of holding our own against the enemy whom we do not see and mastering him until the turn or chance of the accursed race is past.  How long will that be?  We cannot tell; but, in the swift-moving history of to-day, it seems probable that the waiting and the struggle will be much shorter than they would have been in former times.  Is it possible that fatality—­by which I mean what perhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of the planet—­shall not regain the upper hand?  At the stage which man has reached, I hope and believe so.  He had never conquered it before; but also he had not yet risen to the height which he has now attained.  There is no reason why that which has never happened should not take place one day; and everything seems to tell us that man is approaching the day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at last learn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate in this world.

* * * * *

IN ITALY

XII

IN ITALY

1

A few days before Italy formed her great resolve, the following lines appeared in one of the leading Pangermanic organs of the peoples beyond the Rhine, the Kreuzzeitung: 

“We have already observed that it will not do to be too optimistic as to Italy’s decision; in point of fact, the situation is very serious.  If none but moderate considerations had ruled Italy’s intentions, there is little doubt as to which path she would choose; but we know the height which the wave of Germanophobia has attained in that country, a significant mark of the popular sentiment being the declaration of the Italian Socialists upon the reasons of their inability to oppose the war.  An equal source of danger is the fact that the government feels that it no longer controls the current of public opinion.”

The whole drama of Italian intervention is summed up in these lines, which explain it better than would the longest and most learned commentaries.

The Italian government, restrained by a politic wisdom and prudence, excessive, perhaps, but very excusable, did not wish for war.  To the utmost limits of patience, until its dignity and its sense of security could bear no more, it did all that could be done to spare its people the greatest calamity that can befall a land.  It held out until it was literally submerged and carried away by the flood of Germanophobia of which the passage which I have quoted speaks.  I witnessed the rising of this flood.  When I arrived in Milan, at the end of November, 1914, to speak a few sentences at a charity-fete organized for the benefit of the Belgian refugees, the hatred of Germany was already storing itself up in men’s hearts, but had not as yet come to the surface.