The reasonable uncommercial man would like to reject all this last sort of talk as “suspicion mania.”  So far as the Banca Commerciale Italiana goes, I at least find that easy enough; I quote that instance simply because it is a case where suspicion has been dispelled, but in regard to a score of other business veins it is not so easy to dispel suspicion.  This war has been a shock to reasonable men the whole world over.  They have been forced to realise that after all a great number of Germans have been engaged in a crack-brained conspiracy against the non-German world; that in a great number of cases when one does business with a German the business does not end with the individual German.  We hated to believe that a business could be tainted by German partners or German associations.  If now we err on the side of over-suspicion, it is the German’s little weakness for patriotic disingenuousness that is most to blame....

But anyhow I do not think there is much good in a kind of witch-smelling among Italian enterprises to find the hidden German.  Certain things are necessary for Italian prosperity and Italy must get them.  The Italians want intelligent and helpful capital.  They want a helpful France.  They want bituminous coal for metallurgical purposes.  They want cheap shipping.  The French too want metallurgical coal.  It is more important for civilisation, for the general goodwill of the Allies and for Great Britain that these needs should be supplied than that individual British money-owners or ship-owners should remain sluggishly rich by insisting upon high security or high freights.  The control of British coal-mining and shipping is in the national interests—­for international interests—­rather than for the creation of that particularly passive, obstructive, and wasteful type of wealth, the wealth of the mere profiteer, is as urgent a necessity for the commercial welfare of France and Italy and the endurance of the Great Alliance as it is for the well-being of the common man in Britain.

3

I left my military guide at Verona on Saturday afternoon and reached Milan in time to dine outside Salvini’s in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, with an Italian fellow story-writer.  The place was as full as ever; we had to wait for a table.  It is notable that there were still great numbers of young men not in uniform in Milan and Turin and Vicenza and Verona; there was no effect anywhere of a depletion of men.  The whole crowded place was smouldering with excitement.  The diners looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be expressing sentiments.  Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of flitting white sheets among the little tables.

“To-night,” said my companion, “I think we shall declare war upon Germany.  The decision is being made.”

I asked intelligently why this had not been done before.  I forget the precise explanation he gave.  A young soldier in uniform, who had been dining at an adjacent table and whom I had not recognised before as a writer I had met some years previously in London, suddenly joined in our conversation, with a slightly different explanation.  I had been carrying on a conversation in slightly ungainly French, but now I relapsed into English.