This is what may properly be called "tall talk." After this climax of virulence, a tendency developed in the press tending to mitigate the effect of such rancor. An attempt was made to show that the variance of opinions was more formal than substantial, and that it was for Parliament to decide. Even the Idea Nazionale expressed this opinion, though for years it conducted a campaign to undermine the authority and prestige of parliamentary institutions in Italy.

The Tempo, however, did not back down, but asked: "Is it true or not that during the meeting of the oppressed Czecho-Slavs in Rome no territorial agreement could be arrived at because the Czecho-Slav representatives did not want to accept the Adriatic limitations involved by the Treaty of London?" It also sarcastically remarked that the Treaty of London is now being called the "Pact of London," that somebody has already started to call it a "memorandum," and that it is to be expected that soon it will be called a "laundry list." And it continued: "Is it true or not that our requests, contained in that document, are an indispensable minimum to insure our safety in the Adriatic such as will justify the enormous sacrifices we have made in this war? Are we not right, then, to distrust this policy favorable to the Czecho-Slavs which tends to postpone the solution of geographic points without first recognizing the Italian claims as being fundamental? Let the Czecho-Slavs first recognize our right to safety and let them dispel our legitimate diffidence. All this discussion seems to have been the pleasant outcome of those who entertain the jolly notion that we are waging a poetic war instead of trying to solve in our favor vital military and political problems, and that we should be perfectly unconcerned about knowing whether on the other shore of the Adriatic there will be either Germans or Slavs, Republicans, Catholics, Orthodox, Conservatives, Democrats, musicians, or poets."

Gradually the thunder-clouds began to disperse and a conciliatory element was introduced into the discussion. "Rastignac," who drives an authoritative quill, and who is one of the leading and much-listened-to journalists and lawyers of Italy, wrote in the Tribuna, the newspaper identified with Giolitti:

The Corriere della Sera stuck to its guns. It was neither blinded by the rhetorical dust which the pro-Sonnino organs kicked up, nor was it asphyxiated by their noxious gases, and Sonnino had to line himself with England, France, the United States, and Japan in according the Czecho-Slovaks nationality and rights of allies.

Italy's trials, ill fortune, and good fortune since then are much better understood if they are contemplated in light of that discussion and of her momentous election of the autumn of 1919.

CHAPTER XIII
WORLD CONVALESCENCE

We had become so habituated to war and its machinery, its incidents and horrors, its demands and entailments, that when we were thrust suddenly into a new world with whose conduct and ordering we were unfamiliar we had the sensation of one who comes from long tenancy of a dark room into the glare of sunlight, the feeling of unreality of one who emerges from a delirium. The abdication of emperors, their flight and their fate distracted us for a moment; the abyss into which the Central Empires of Europe had been hurled arose before our eyes; the needs of the unfortunates in the devastated districts and of those struggling to get back to their native land made appeal to us; thoughts of future work and play occurred to us, but none of them engrossed us. Though saturated with the joy of deliverance no one gave himself over to revelling in it. Groping in darkness as we have been for so long, we blinked and gasped, trying to accustom ourselves to the divine light of the new day that had dawned, and to discern and define beauties which the new world would present. We were like a person who had suddenly been liberated from a danger that not only threatened his life but made existence insupportable. Utterance could not give such thoughts relief. Only appreciative silence could express his gratitude.

In the lull or convalescence that came after the world's injury and long illness, peace terms were formulated, indemnities exacted, the map of Europe remade, and compacts formulated and signed to prevent another holocaust. Thus the greatest venture the world ever embarked upon will end. Then will come the great task—reconstruction of the world's institutions.

The question that has fatigued the human mind since time immemorial, "What shall man do that he may live again?" is for the hour replaced by another more likely to be answered, "What kind of a world will the one just wrought be in which to live, and when will it be habitable?" The old world has been delivered of a promising offspring. Its travail was terrible and sanious. The accoucheur had to call to her aid the counsel and service of many nations, but the new-born world gives promise of great tidings. Grief for the old world that yielded its existence in the agony of deliverance is engulfed by the joy that has come in contemplation of the beauty, purity, and immaculateness of the new world, in which liberty shall be as free as the air in which it is suspended.

What will this new world that is arisen from the destruction of empires and from the ashes of tyrannical institutions be like? In what way will it be better and more satisfying than the one that existed previous to the war? What are the benefits that will flow from the sacrifices that have been made? What are the rewards that will follow the labor and effort expended to win the war? What are the mercies that will be vouchsafed us for our deeds of commission and of omission? How shall things be ordered that man, mere man, without other possession than intelligence, without other aspiration than to be permitted to display his dominant instincts,—love and constructiveness,—without other ambition than to enjoy life and make others enjoy it, may be worthy of his mission and deserving of its reward? These are the questions that are occupying the mind of every thinking person in the whole world to-day.

Before any one of them can be answered the fate of the former Central Empires must be settled, because the Allies must know with whom they are dealing and how much they are deserving of confidence and trust, and how much they can be relied upon to carry out the terms of any agreement. We may be absolutely certain that recent advantageous treaties will be abrogated and that territories appropriated in the last half-century will be restored. That which we cannot feel reasonable assurance of is what form of government the former Central Empires will have, or whether that which they bring forth will not be, in reality, a resurrected Trojan horse, the Teuton's contribution to political camouflage.

The spokesmen of these newly formed governments say they will be democracies. But who are the spokesmen? Are they not of them who until yesterday were fighting for the preservation of the country and government which had been selected by God and by themselves to thrust "Kultur" upon the world, and which had been wantonly attacked by its neighbors on the north, the south, the east, and the west? Did they admit until that fateful yesterday that their government was not perfect, or at least possessed of only such trifling imperfections that they, the Socialists of one kind or another, could readily remove them? Nothing has transpired in Germany since the abdication of the Kaiser, so far as we have been informed, that permits us to say with anything like assurance what form of government Germany hopes to have. All that we really know is that the government has fallen into the hands of the German Socialists, the deeply dyed-in-the-wool Socialists and the Socialistic Democrats. So far as one can predicate judgment on the reported sayings of the spokesmen of either of these two parties, the purpose of the present government is to save as much as it can of the previous régime and to continue it, minus the Kaiser and the war lords.

In none of the addresses or communications of any of these spokesmen is there any real admission of defeat, any intimation of humility, any indication of having been lessoned, nor, indeed, of anything that can be interpreted as recognition of the fact that Germany has been the victim of Grossenwahn, megalomania, which prompted and compelled her to a line of conduct which conditioned her destruction. On the contrary, everything that has been said has a note of determination to rehabilitate herself in order that she may take the leading position, morally, intellectually, commercially, in the world. At the very moment when admission that she had lost the war was forced from her, and while she was prostrate on the field of battle and in a state of collapse in every acre of her territory, instead of silence and of resignation, instead of an indication of that humility which tauts the heart-strings of the conqueror, there was clamor of exultation setting forth the virtues of the people and their ineradicable potentialities. Having been denied victory on the field of battle, if that Gott who was their Feste Burg does not desert them, they will now win a greater victory—they will show the world that they can conquer themselves and convert defeat into victory. They are without shame and without modesty. They ask for succor from the nation which less than eighteen months ago was a negligible quantity and which four years ago was made up of drivelling idiots and men mad with lust for wealth. "You will not let countless thousands of women and children die of starvation." No, we shall not let them starve, but we shall have adequate care that never again will it be within your power to thrust the mailed fist of one extremity upon the honest, God-fearing people of the world while with the other you snatch the food from the mouths of those unable, because of age or infirmity, to provide for themselves.

One does not fail to detect the ring of exultation with which they say that they will win the greatest of all victories—that of showing that, though defeated in arms, they can be masters of themselves. They have no recognition whatsoever that the destruction of mediæval imperialism and the unfurling of the flag of liberty have been due to valor and sacrifice of the peoples of the whole world, who have accomplished it without other motive than to make the world a fit place in which an honest man can live. In short, they are endeavoring to make it seem that their defeat in the material control of the world by the German sword is to be an opportunity for a great German triumph.

At this distance it is impossible to distinguish between the arrogance of the German Kaiser and his supporters and the arrogance of the German Socialists. They have every appearance of being born of the same monstrous mother made big of Satan. That which the latter are now stating they can do is the same as the Kaiser and his cohorts of authority, founded in divine rights, thought they could do and set out to do a quarter of a century ago. The Germans are as intoxicated with their own vanity, their own self-sufficiency, their own divine mission and potentialities to-day as they have been at any time in the twentieth century.

No one denies that Germany defeated may make any attempt at government which she chooses. At the same time no one can abrogate the right of the conquerors to see to it that the form of government which she institutes and which she attempts to carry into operation shall not be one that militates against the success of the ideals for which the Allies have striven, not for themselves alone but for the whole world. It needs no prophetic vision to discern in the expressions of dictatorial arrogance of those who have taken the government in hand in Germany the same assumption of superiority which led to their defeat, the greatest the world has ever seen. In brief, as we see it to-day, the effort in Germany at the present time is to substitute one kind of class interests for another which was admitted by the world's best judges to be not only pernicious but destructive of liberty. If the former was of such a nature, why does not the latter partake of it? If there were any indications of sincere desire to establish an honest form of democratic government in Germany, there is no doubt that its originators and the whole German people would soon realize that they were dealing with a magnanimous conqueror, but in view of the fact that the wild beast has now in its agonal days the same snarl, the same venom, and the same sharp teeth that it had when it was lusty and well-nourished, it is necessary that the conquerors should harden their hearts and judiciously guard the springs and cisterns of their generosity.

Promises of Germans should no longer be adequate. We should demand deeds, and not only that but that they should be backed by the sentiment and determination of the whole people and not of those who in maintaining that they speak for them speak only for themselves and their malignant ambitions. Teutonic tradition and authority must be replaced by Jeffersonian, Mazzinian, Wilsonian liberty and justice.

It would be well for the whole world to realize that we are on the threshold of the most fundamental transformation that the human mind can conceive. We have been so long accustomed to the institutions and conventions that constitute authority and privilege that it is almost impossible for any one to realize that they are about to cease to exist. Not only has the death-knell of such class privileges been rung, but likewise that of institutions which have stultified intellectual growth and moral supremacy, and amongst them none has more importance than organized religion, that is, religion which claims to be authoritative in so much as its directors or trustees—call them what you may—formulate a dogma to the teaching of which all others must conform in order that they may have life everlasting. People's religion must be left to the free choice of the people.

Few of us realize that the curtain rung down on the 11th of November, 1918, was the closing of the second act in that great drama of which the first act was the French Revolution and of which the third and closing act will be devoted to social and political reconstruction. The majority have some ill-defined notion or thought that we shall go back to the kind of world that existed previous to August, 1914. There isn't the smallest chance of it. I doubt whether even those who have had a vision of the impending transformation realize, however, how great or far-reaching the change will be. The time has come when the people are going to rule the world. They are going to administer its affairs in such a way that every man and woman capable of taking thought will have opportunity to be heard and will be privileged to live without authority, whose purpose it is to make the masses conform to a line of conduct that will make for the advantage of the few, favored by birth or fortune which may have been their birthright or their acquisition. For years the word socialism and that for which it stands have been redolent of bad odor. This war has purged it of its disagreeable connotation, and to-day that which is meant by socialism is equivalent to the rights of man. In the minds of many socialism and anarchy are synonymous, but in reality the socialism which the war just finished has nurtured to a lusty youth is much freer from anarchy and from the potentialities of destruction than the reign of autocracy, of capital and of bosses, which it supplanted.

I realize that it is difficult to defend this position in view of what is happening in Russia. To-day the bugaboo to the world's children is Bolshevism; that is what will "get us if we don't look out." When a riot breaks out anywhere nowadays it is Bolshevism. It has become a shibboleth, a name to conjure with, this social and political experiment in organized and carefully planned violence that has been carried out by the Jews in Russia since the conclusion of the peace of Brest-Litovsk. The word has suddenly come into wide-spread use and it is being given the connotation of socialism. In truth it is the socialism of the young Russia. Its theory is a perverted Marxism and its practice is an envenomed Hindenburgism. The etymology of the word Bolshevism as a name for a pseudopolitical party finds its origin in the programme of the party itself, that is, in the ultraradical tendencies of "Maximilist extremists" professed by the party leaders, Lenine, Trotzky, and Sinowjew. The leader Lenine said of the Bolsheviks in a moment of frankness: "For every genuine Bolshevik of my party there are sixty idiots and thirty-nine rascals," and no one can doubt his fitness to judge. We should not forget that the Russian public that looks on Lenine as its idol is honeycombed with deserters, ruffians, and at least three hundred thousand common criminals who were liberated from the prisons and from exile in Siberia by the revolution.

The Bolsheviks are neither a party nor are they the expression of democratic and revolutionary Russia, as a great many persist in believing. They are a mob drunk with ultraradical doctrines, who from exceptional circumstances have become able to seize the power, dominating with methods ferociously reactionary a hundred and twenty million individuals. And the world is witnessing in astonishment the spectacle offered by these bandits who, illegally holding the state power, arbitrarily decide the fortunes of a whole people after having allured them with fallacious promises, betraying them before the enemy.

The absolute unpreparedness of the Russian people—eighty per cent is illiterate—to pass into a régime of democracy and social autonomy has facilitated the successes of the Bolsheviks, whose "ideas" or conceptions, as expressed in the programmes of Lenine, Trotzky, et al., consist in carrying "persuasion" to the majority of the ignorant masses. Such "ideas" are first of all that the "proletariat has not and must not have a country." "The issue of the World War is of interest to the proletariat only from the point of view of the possibility for them to take advantage of the general situation, doing everything in order to turn the war of the states into a war of classes."

The bastard Bolshevism of present-day Russia professes, furthermore, the conception formerly considered as purely anarchic that "the property of others does not exist"; theft and violence are the normal means of exchange; liberty of speech is non-existent; neither press liberty nor a free literary production exists, because the Bolsheviks are exercising a censorship more tyrannical than the ill-famed imperial censorship. Their methods of coercion are to bring about financial exhaustion by means of fines and indemnities; physical exhaustion by means of enforced labor and confiscation of food supplies, and moral exhaustion by removing the foundations upon which individual life is integrated, removing all dominant objects, such as desire for scientific or artistic creation, religious principle, or strong and lasting affections. It is not only the dictatorship of proletariat which the Bolsheviks are trying to establish but a dictatorship of tyranny, and they use every conceivable means, showing themselves especially rabid against the well-to-do classes, against the intellectuals, against capitalism and militarism.

The application of all this "programme" carries with it, as a first consequence, the complete dissolution of every state form, in the political sense as well as in the economic sense. The disorganization is complete; hunger, by which the masses see themselves threatened, increases the spread of every form of criminality and violence. The destruction of every sentiment of individual responsibility and the abolition of religious faith contribute to take away from the class of those who are better fitted to resist morally every obstacle and restraint in the choice of their actions. It is the "universal destruction," it is the madness of the après nous le déluge!

The position of the Jews, radically changed after the revolution of the spring of 1917, which gave them equal rights with the rest of the population of Russian origin and religion, has had its triumph in the recent manifestations of Bolshevism. In fact, besides Trotzky, whose real name is Braunstein, there is a high percentage of Jews among the mob leaders and dictators of the "soviet" (councils) by which every city is administered, forming in this way an infinite number of "small social republics" in every part of the vast Russian territory.

The words of one of the most profound connoisseurs of the Russian soul, Dostoievsky, words which, alas, are prophetic not only of the concrete facts, but also of the general dangers which threaten his country, portray the condition that has come to pass.

God saved him, but this mercy was not extended to us. We shall have to be witness of Russia groaning under the system of bloodless terror, but it will not be for long. In theory the Bolsheviks desire the same thing as the Socialists; in practice they want it plus revenge, that which has been the motivating characteristic of the Jew since time immemorial. Their power is founded in resources which I suspect are largely in America, and their agents have been granted citizenship and protection in practically every country of the world. So soon as the motives of their supporters then shall be widely known, and so soon as their monstrous practices shall be revealed to the whole world, this malignant exuberance that has developed upon the healthy growth of Liberalism and Socialism will be removed by a giant cautery wielded in a hand more powerful than that of Hercules.

A decree recently issued by the Bolsheviks of Vladimir, published in that official Soviet organ Izvestija, and now beginning to be widely published by European papers, will be relished by many in the U. S. A., where unquestionably the Bolsheviks have largely been financed.

The "decree" states further that it has been based on the excellent "example" of similar decrees already issued at Luga, Kolpin, and elsewhere.

A similar "Project of Provisional Rights in Connection with the Socialization of Women in the City of Hvolinsk and Vicinity" was published in the Local Gazette of the Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

I am not sure that this lurid conduct of the Bolsheviks will do the cause of social reconstruction harm. I recall the conduct of the promoters of woman-suffrage in England in the few years preceding 1914. Their campaign seemed to be founded in insanity, and yet something of the kind was necessary to concentrate the world's attention on their rights, and the Bolsheviks have got the world's attention and thought to-day—and will have them to-morrow.

Socialism is adverse to imperialism and capitalism. Imperialism has been conquered, but capitalism has not yet been throttled. One will be able more safely to prophesy how much it has been weakened, potentially and actually, after labor has had its next chance at the bat in Great Britain. This war was not undertaken to overcome capitalism. It was undertaken to overcome imperialism and the tyranny of foreign domination, but its success has been dependent upon the people, who will now assert their rights, and the most fundamental of their rights is that they shall not be oppressed by money. It is not sufficient that the principles of nationality defined by Mazzini shall be upheld—that is, that the peoples of one nationality shall not be dominated by the peoples of another. It is necessary, if such peoples are going to live in freedom, that they must not be dominated or enslaved by any mastodonic power which is protected from attack, such as capital. Had it not been for the determination of the people to have the right to live in freedom, the miracle that transpired in the closing months of 1918 in Europe would not have been wrought. The factors that sustained the peoples of the conquering nations in these long, dark months of tragedy and of carnage, the thing that made them go on stubbornly and steadfastly with the war when the odds seemed to be all against them, may be summarized in one sentence: "Their determination to have their inalienable right, the right to live in freedom." One may perhaps say that in different countries of the world they have had such right, but the person who says this would have great difficulty in naming the country. Any one who contended that in republics such as ours capital has not been privileged and arbitrary, that it has not been the dominant factor in making and adopting the laws to which the people are beholden, would be laughed at by any sane man.

And now that the people who have lived and died, toiled and wrought, suffered and supplicated through fifty-two months of agony have won, there will arise from those who have survived a dominant chorus which will insist upon the fulfilment of the promises that were made them to incite them to victory. Their hopes and desires and aspirations must be satisfied. I am one of those who believe that they will make their demands orderly and insistently, and not by means of revolution or serious disturbance of order. They will work out their salvation by mutual co-operation, not only amongst themselves but with those who are the leaders of the world's thought, many of whom have been heretofore of the privileged classes, but they will insist upon certain fundamental things which I have previously enumerated, and the foremost of which is the dispersion of great wealth, particularly hereditary wealth. The revolutionary Socialist sees an easy solution of the matter in the giving of the wealth to the masses and of recognizing no other source of wealth except labor, but that is not the kind of Socialist who will have to do with the reordering of the world that is now being born. It is the Socialist who is to-day frequently called the individualist, who believes that the dissipation of individual property and initiative will spell a greater ruin for the masses than for the individual and who believes in harmonizing the principles of individual liberty with those of solidarity, who will be the Socialist of the New Era.

The future state will be arbitrary only in so far as it is the expression of the collected, united force of its citizens. They will really make its laws, not have them made for them by capital or privileged interests; they will enforce them impartially, and it is devoutly to be hoped the external force of such peoples will be conventionized in such a way with other peoples that armies and navies will practically cease to exist. The basis of such hope is in the League of Nations, for then we shall have a world-state which shall make international law or convention subject to law and enforcement. Once the fear of invasion of a country is overcome and once the principles of nationality can be established and put into operation, there will be no reason for the existence of armies and navies.

The beneficences subsumed under the name liberty that must flow from the sacrifices that we have made for the welfare of the people must assure their health, contribute to their happiness, and promote their efficiency. Disease must be prevented, not by personal effort as on the part of physicians who do it for gain or fame, but by the state, which shall devote adequate sums for research, investigation, propaganda, and enforcement of the principles of sanitation. It shall likewise devote adequate sums for the education of all the people and thrust such education upon them in order that they may make use, not only for themselves but for the state, of the talents with which they have been endowed, so that liberty and personal initiative may be made running mates, and no closely knit organization as the church shall be permitted to stand in the way of such education. It shall permit them to worship God as they, educated, see fit and proper, and it shall not attempt, or tolerate the attempt of others, to thrust a religion founded in authority upon them, non-conformation to which is followed by punishment, often in condign form, such as social ostracism, refusal of the ministration of paid priests, refusal of burial in consecrated grounds, or threat of punishment. It shall not enforce upon them a conduct at variance with the laws of nature in sex relations; therefore, it shall solve the marriage and population questions, or at least make an attempt to do so. It shall give the same freedom to woman as it does to man and not have one written or unwritten law for the former and another for the latter. It shall replace our present economic system by a better one; in other words, money must be given a new valuation.

When everything has been said, the state is the thing. What constitutes a state or a nation? We know what has constituted it in the past, but when we read history we realize that it has never been stable, always has been in transformation. Some have been more stable than others—England more than Italy, France more than Austria, the United States more than France. When a nation does not change it is dead like Spain, strangled by the parasite, arbitrary authority, the church.

A new order of state-formation is about to be instituted—that of nationalism. Comparatively few people appreciate what is meant by nationalism. Until the wide-spread discussion of the aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks in America, I doubt whether any one, except students of history and statesmen, gave any attention to it whatsoever. And yet, despite this, no one has elaborated the fundamental facts of nationality as clearly as has President Wilson. Nearly a third of all the peoples of Europe have been obliged to submit to governments to which they were antipathic by birth, sympathy, or tradition. In other words, Italians living beyond a certain arbitrary geographic line have been obliged to subscribe to the laws of Austria; French living beyond a certain geographic line have been obliged to subscribe to the laws of Germany; Slavs to those of Hungary. Patriotism, that indefinable quality made up of primitive instincts, intellectual convictions, and religious feeling, which is supposed to be the greatest of all the virtues, has been an artifice for a third of all the peoples of the European continent. If they were really patriotic, their hearts and minds were with their mother countries, and therefore their conduct toward the ruler to which they bowed the knee must have been that of the hypocrite. One of the things on which all the Allied nations are agreed is that in the remaking of the map of Europe every man shall be free to elect his nationality and that no one shall be coerced to be a citizen of another nation. He may elect to be a citizen of another nation, but that is his concern.

It is more than probable that there will be very great difficulty in rearranging the map of Europe satisfactorily in order that this principle of nationality may be fulfilled, and nowhere will it be so difficult as in Italy. The agreement of Italy with the Allies previous to her entering the war, and which is known as the Pact of London, gave her, in event of victory, large sections of the Dalmatian coast of which she has great need in order to facilitate the development of her commerce and to provide her with certain essentials which her territory does not furnish. This Dalmatian coast and the territory contiguous to it to the east—Istria, Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina—are not populated by Italians to any considerable extent. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the people are Slavs, and it is this country which many people believe and hope will eventually become Jugoslavia. There is no doubt whatsoever that Italy will get all her unredeemed territory, but whether or not she will get much more than that on the continent of Europe is doubtful in the minds of many, including her well-wishers.

The question of nationality is not going to be an easy one for Austria-Hungary to settle. In reality, German-Austria constitutes an important hinge upon which all the problems that are connected with the reconstruction of Central Europe swing. Aside from the Czecho-Slovak nation, which is Bohemia and the territories that were lopped off from it previous to the time when it was absorbed by Austria-Germany, the smaller nations that have come to the surface and have been differentiated in this waterspout that has disturbed the waters of the Austro-Hungarian Empire will have to wait a long time for their rights and differentiation, but the status of German Austria will have to be settled very promptly. It has been said repeatedly in the newspapers that these people have expressed a desire to unite themselves with a German confederation, probably Bavaria. A great many people see in this accession to Germany of ten or twelve millions of people a potential menace in so far as this added number might make for a disturbance of the equilibrium of power. But one cannot say whether or not this fear is groundless until we see what form of government Prussia and Bavaria and the other states of Germany are eventually going to have. If the principles of nationality are not going to be invalidated by any future settlements, the Germans of Austria would have only two choices—to constitute an independent government of their own or to link themselves with one of the Prussian states. As a matter of fact, it is most unlikely that the Allies will attempt to give them any advice in this matter, which means they will not attempt to direct or coerce them.

France may not have an easy time with Alsace-Lorraine. In the two generations that have elapsed since Germany took them, it is not at all unlikely that many of their people have become a part of the national consciousness of that country. The just way would be to let the adults of Alsace-Lorraine decide at the end of another forty-eight years, during which time it is united to France, by universal vote of its adults, men and women, whether they want to have French or German nationality. I should think France would be taking no risks in such a plebiscite.

England will have Ireland to deal with after the war even more than before the war. There is only one way that she can do it successfully and that is on the principles of nationality. The Irish are no more like the English than the Czechs are like the Austrians; in fact, they are less so. They are different emotionally, intellectually, morally, and physically, and England will not much longer be allowed to coerce them. Her one privilege in Ireland is to force universal education upon her people. If this had been done before, England would have long ere this brought about that instinctive liking and common purpose which is the basis of all sound union, whether it be between individuals or between components of a nation.

Italy's chief difficulty is going to be with the Jugoslavs, as the southern Slavs are called, and already these difficulties have begun. The southern Slavs have not, so far as I can learn, formulated a definite programme, and they were never recognized as belligerent allies by the Entente. Italy had a hesitating recognition of southern Slav aspirations forced from her, but there is no trust or confidence reposed in the Slavs by the Italians. The Croatians, the Bosnians, the Montenegrins, the Albanians do not know what they want, save change, and that they have wanted since time immemorial. They have no specific programme and there is no definite interlacement of their desires with Serbia. So far as their plans can be gleaned, realization of them, even in the most fundamental one of establishing a plebiscitary area, would find itself in violent conflict with Italy's pre-bellum agreement with the Allies known as the Treaty of London.

All things come to him who waits. If while waiting things do not come to us that make life forever after unlivable, we shall be fortunate, and forever grateful.

CHAPTER XIV
BANQUETS AND PERSONALITIES

I marvel how men in public life stand banquets, especially Italians, who take to them like babes to mothers' milk. I fancy they often long for a succulent chop and a baked potato, with a tray for mahogany and a book for company! But the banchetto gives them an alluring arena for oratory, and my deliberate conviction is that the Italian has more pleasure in speaking than in any other voluntary act. Not only does he like to talk, but he likes to be talked to. The Italian language lends itself to sonorous oratory, and one can become more impassioned while delivering himself of simple thought and plain sentiment in it than in any other tongue. Rome has always been the city of pilgrims. Formerly they came in pursuit of the salvation of their souls; now they come to help make the world safe for liberty. Missions, delegations, committees, distinguished personages with their trains come nearly every day from all parts of the world, and to each is given a banquet, to some many banquets.

A diverting one was a luncheon given to a delegation of the Japanese Red Cross headed by Prince Tokugawa. There were many distinguished personages present, including the Premier Orlando, the minister of war, the minister of the navy, Duke Torlonia, the directors-general of public health and of military health, and other exalted or celebrated personages "too numerous to mention." It was a pleasant party. The Japs interested me very much. They looked less Oriental, if that means anything, than their fellows with whom I have come in contact. I fancy this is due partly to the fact that they were in uniform not unlike that of American officers, and also they seemed bigger, that is—of greater stature—and more deliberate and suave than many that I had previously met. I talked to the Prince and found him intelligent and communicative, without sign or display of royal prerogative. Professor Seigami Sawamura, who sat on my left at lunch, is a lawyer who seemed to have about the same point of view on ordinary topics that a well-educated, cultured man of his profession in America might have. The man on my right was——, who spoke English perfectly, and whom I discovered, after a small attempt to draw him out on the political situation, to be an adherent of Sonnino, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of his entourage. He seemed to be as devoid of capacity for constructive thought as any educated Italian of thirty-five or forty in political life that I have ever met, or perhaps it was that he had a wonderful facility for concealing it. His small talk, however, was quite perfect, and I can imagine that he might have radiated considerable luminosity in a properly selected salon.

The speeches of the visitors and of the Japanese Ambassador to Italy were most diverting. I have never been so entertained and instructed by oratory of which I didn't understand a word. After the speeches were delivered they were put into excellent Italian by a young attaché of the Italian embassy who must have spent many years away from his native sunny Italy in order to get the mastery of the Oriental language that he displayed. Banquet speeches are, as a rule, a series of platitudes in ornate dress, interspersed with sentiment and expressions of appreciation and praise phrased diplomatically. These speeches had those qualities—all save that of the Japanese Ambassador. His remarks had been carefully prepared and were read. Undoubtedly they had been submitted to the Mikado or his advisers before they were put before us, for they stated the position of his government relative to the war, narrated their reason for participation in its activities, and made statement of their determination to have the efforts of the Allies crowned with success.

The Italian premier, Orlando, replied. He is a real orator. Even below the stature of the average Italian of the South, the large, shapely, and well-poised head, surmounted with thick, closely cropped gray hair brushed pompadour, the sparkling eyes, ruddy face, and genial expression give you at once the feeling that you are in the presence of a man of power, of resourcefulness, and of facility. No one could mistake that he is a man of the people. There is no trace of arrogance or of self-exaltation, and when he speaks you feel that his words are fountained from sincerity. His remarks gave evidence of research and careful preparation. After having pointed out the pleasant relations that had always existed between Italy and Japan and the present intimate solidarity, he cited some historic instances which bind the nations in amity. It was a forebear of the Prince Tokugawa, the Shogun Yasu Tokugawa, who in 1613 permitted a Western ship to land in Japan, and who facilitated the advent of the first Japanese ambassador to Rome. The visitors were apparently very much pleased with his remarks, as he intended they should be. There was nothing said that seemed to indicate that there was any general adhesion to the belief that if the Allies won the war England would become the vassal of America, or of the yellow people of the extreme Orient, such as the Frankfurter Zeitung has recently said would probably be the case.

All of the visitors with whom I spoke were loud, and seemingly sincere, in praise of the treatment they had had at the hands of the Americans during their visit there, and I gathered that there exists at the present time between America and Japan a more generalized sentiment of trustfulness than existed before the war. At least, it may be said that the Jap loses no opportunity to say "nice things" of our country.

A benefit that flows from such a gathering is the opportunity it gives to see, in their hour of semi-relaxation and at short range, some of those who are helping to make history in this country and whose names one sees every day in the newspapers. The first impression that one gets is that they are substantial, serious, intelligent, earnest, alert in their appearance, manner, and conduct, sincere in their efforts, and unalterable in their determination. I fancy that they compare favorably with a similar group of any nationality. Though perhaps you are disappointed in finding that none of them bears any particular outward manifestations of genius, if there be such thing, yet you have no misgivings that they are individuals capable of constructive thought and mature deliberation, self-reliant, and confident.

The next day I went to a midday banquet tendered by Melville E. Stone, the general manager of the Associated Press, by the newspaper men of Rome. It was a very different gathering. Newspaper men have a make-up, a physiognomy, a general appearance, more or less founded in what may be called personal neglect, that is, an insensitiveness to personal æsthetics, which is quite characteristic. One can't pick a newspaper man from a crowd with the same readiness and accuracy that he picks a monk or an actor, but the majority of journalists become hall-marked after they have plied their vocation for any considerable length of time. I was impressed with the appearance of intelligence and seriousness of the men of the Italian press. Few of them bore the somatic signs of intimacy with Mr. Barleycorn. The company had a fair sprinkling of ministers, including Nitti and Gallenga, deputies, and ex-ministers, but as far as I could see there were no dukes or princes. The latter are ornamental and not infrequently pleasing to look upon, but a gathering of newspaper men is redolent of democracy, which is antipathic to princely presence. We lunched at the restaurant in the Borghese Gardens. It was a much simpler affair than the banquet tendered the Japs at the Grand Hotel, but it was an ample, edible lunch, and you had the feeling that we had foregathered to honor one who was deserving.

When one attempts to describe Mr. Stone he is tempted at once to say he is a typical American. But what is a typical American? There are so many types. William Jennings Bryan is a typical American. So is Henry Cabot Lodge. Benjamin Franklin was a typical American, yet he fraternized with dukes and flirted with duchesses, the sheer embodiment of suaviter in modo and fortiter in re. While successfully putting America on the map and advancing the humanities generally, he immortalized himself and affectioned the French people. Abraham Lincoln, we like to think, was a typical American, but were one to encounter him incog. in ceremonial circles, political or social, in Europe to-day, ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred would deny him. Uncle Sam is supposed to depict the somatic make-up of the typical Yankee, and at the same time to convey the idea that he is a man to be reckoned with emotionally and intellectually at all times, in his moments of relaxation and in his hours of activity. Nevertheless the average person has something fairly specific in mind when he says, "He is a typical American." He means a man who displays and who often can't conceal a determination to put through that which he has planned; who is self-confident, opinionated, a stranger to ceremony and oftentimes unfamiliar with ordinary social amenities; who is fully appreciative of the accomplishments and potentialities of his country and its institutions, and who doesn't hesitate to contrast them with those of other countries, often to their disparagement; who speaks only one language, American, and that not always either grammatically or elegantly; who is often a stranger to culture and the last person in the world to find it out; whose dress is that of a farmer or a fashion-plate, and who has bizarre tastes for food and drink—cocktails and ice-water bulk large in his necessities, and he despises Continental breakfasts; who is attracted by the treasures of art and moved by the beauties of nature, but the immediate result of the emotion is to enhance the value of something similar in his own country, yet when he treads his native heath he is often a disparager of it, its possessions, and its institutions.

Melville E. Stone is not that sort of typical American. His record is not unlike that of thousands of his countrymen. He is temperamentally and emotionally an Irishman, and intellectually and physically an American. The son of an itinerant Methodist preacher who forsook the cloth for commerce during the Civil War, and was thus able to provide for the maintenance and education of his children, he gives you the impression of a man who has made his way in the world, and made his own way. Although he is now past the age allotted to man by the Psalmist, he has the appearance and conduct of a man easily ten years younger. I had opportunity of observing him at short range for three or four days, for he was our guest, and as all the other members of our household were away I saw more of him than I otherwise might. He is a man of vast information, which he is not averse to sharing with others, and, unlike many who have such possessions, his information is accurate. This, in a measure, is due to the fact that it is largely personal. As the general manager and general motivator of the greatest news-collecting bureau in the world, he is constantly coming in contact with men who are making history, and his personality is so ingratiating that they allow him a personal contact which in many instances apparently reaches intimacy. Although he is a man who talks freely, my impression is that he is not indiscreet. In addition to this, he has been a studious reader. It was interesting to find that he is a bed reader, for my belief is that the man who reads attentively in bed has an impression of what he reads made upon the memory cells of his brain cortex which sleep then stamps with permanency.

I gather Mr. Stone had very little schooling; that is, he did not go to college. As a boy he went to school in the winter and worked in the summer and during other vacations, and apparently the work that he did most willingly was newspaper work. He became editor of the Chicago Daily News while still a very young man, and continued in that important post for a quarter of a century. He acquired the art of going easily and successfully to men in political life and other avenues of constructive activity while in Chicago, Washington, and the capitals of Europe. The thing that has made him a man of culture, however, is an inherent desire for knowledge, which, he early realized, is the only means that man can successfully employ to add to his stature. He is a true Celt, emotional, sensitive, tenacious of his opinions, reliant in his judgments, a hater of his enemies, and an admirer of his friends. If I were asked to enumerate his most distinctive possession, after a short intimacy with him I should say it was a quality which we speak of as justice. When he brings a question up to the threshold of his consciousness for solution, or a problem for decision, the first thing that he considers is "Is it just?" After that its feasibility and advisability are discussed.

The representative gathering of Italians which greeted him at lunch were prejudiced in his favor. In addition to that, they were saturated with the belief that America was the young Lochinvar who came out of the West to deliver them from threatened bondage. I doubt very much whether any one in America to-day realizes the feeling that Italians had for America, and it is one of great interest. Until the advent of America into the war Italians practically knew nothing of the United States of America, save that it was a place to which large numbers of their poorest and most ignorant inhabitants emigrated, and where they made money which enabled them to return to their native land, or to maintain their families or dependents during their exile. Of the history of America, of the men who made that history and who are making it, of its institutions, its traditions, its accomplishments, its potentialities they knew practically nothing. Undoubtedly there are many who would not accept this statement as true, but I am convinced that it is. Naturally there are men of culture, men of studious habits, men with inclination for historic reading who are exceptions to this blanket accusation. I was very much amused last winter, when dining with an admiral of the navy on duty at Spezia, by the inquiry whether I came from North America or from South America. There are many Italians who claim to be educated who make very little differentiation between the two continents, and I have never yet met an Italian, unless he was a bookish man, who knew anything about our literature. In my own profession I doubt that there are a half-dozen men in America whose fame has reached Italy, and those whose names are familiar are known because of some eponymic association.

I could cite many examples to show not only the indifference which Italians have to the history and literature of our country but also the absence of any desire to know about them. Then, their conceptions or ideas of Americans are quite extraordinary. They got them from tourists whom they saw overrunning their country en prince or en Cook, and made up their minds that they were a type of uncivilized Crœsus or of unæsthetic barbarian. They saw the effete, the effeminate and decadent, or the semi-invalided business man surrounded by a bevy of overdressed females whose chief interest seemed to be their luggage and the sights; and they saw the weary and wearisome gapers constituting the "personally conducted." Then again, the Italian is no great traveller. He likes his country, he is content with it, and, although he rails against his government, he would feel that a large part of the pleasure of life was taken from him if he were not permitted to discuss critically, and often disparagingly, what are commonly called politics. I don't mean to say that the Italian "fancies" himself, but neither the spirit of admiration nor of emulation distinguishes him. He is like the Roman in miniature. The Roman still thinks he is the last cry of God's handiwork in the human line.

When America declared war on Germany, and particularly when she declared war on Austria, Italians quickly got interested in America; and when they learned that America came so generously to Italy's aid, first, in supplying the money for the conduct of the war, and then in supplying the material needs of her people, Italians manifested a tremendous interest in us and in our country, and they began to look upon us as their guide and their savior. I never heard a disparaging word of our country or of him who was directing our ship of state until after the Peace Conference. They looked upon Woodrow Wilson as a man inspired. There were times during the war when they would have been very glad if America had acquiesced more readily and more whole-heartedly in their requests, such as in July, 1918, when they believed that it was imperative to have large numbers of American troops in Italy. But at the same time, when their wishes were not met and their requests not granted, they did not sit in adverse judgment upon him who made the decision. In fact, they believed he could not err.

It is natural that they should have been concerned about the situation that existed in the early summer of 1918. There were two millions of American troops in Europe, with more constantly coming, and there were only a very small number in Italy. The Italians saw themselves pitted more or less alone against a country, Austria-Hungary, which had an army nearly twice as large as theirs and which was more rapacious than a hungry wolf goaded into renewed ferocity by recent defeat. They sincerely believed that if they had received help at that time they could have overcome their hereditary and acquired enemy promptly, and it is likely that they could. That might have been a reason for sending American troops to Italy, but it was not an adequate reason. The one task in hand was to win the war, to win it expeditiously and to win it in such a manner that would put Germany, as she was constituted and as she had been constituted for the past twenty-five years, out of existence; that is, to exterminate the war lords, to destroy them and their influence. The man or men who were permitted to look at the question from all angles were far better able to plan how this should be done than the councillors of one nation who naturally saw the question only from one side, that is, their own point of view.

It is likely also that the Italians constantly reminded themselves that if they had received help from the Allies early in 1916 the war might have been ended. I have heard many an Italian say that they were in a position then to overcome the Austrian army had they received such help and that with the simultaneous activity of the Russians on the eastern front they would have carried the Allied arms into Vienna. But you do not grind your grist more satisfactorily by regretting that the waters that have gone over the mill were not used more efficaciously.

I have wandered far afield from the testimonial lunch to Mr. Stone, but my reflections are apropos of the remarks which the Honorable Nitti, a wizard with figures and a magician with men, made. Many of his countrymen profess to distrust him and to say that Giolitti made him and still controls him. Nothing could be more absurd. Nitti is the type of man who is made by his endowment and by his environment. It would be easier to think of any other public man in Italy as the tool of a dictator, dethroned or enthroned, than it would be of Nitti. The son of poor parents who sacrificed everything for his education, he has been journalist, author, teacher, economist, professor, advocate, and statesman. When he first went in the House he sat on the extreme left, and gradually he moved up toward the centre, although he is always inscribed in the radical party. He is unquestionably of formidable brain and combines a will of iron with an audacity that has the appearance at least of transcending all temerity.

In appearance he is the typical middle-class South Italian, short, rotund, with thick neck and massive face adorned with a smile that rarely comes off. He is a polished orator and his political papers read like literary documents. He is reputed to be a master of political stage-setting. Realizing that the most potent factor in shaping men's judgment is the press, and realizing that the man who has his fingers on the keyboard of the organ that makes the music was the honored guest of the occasion, he embraced the opportunity to put before Mr. Stone and his colleagues his convictions of the needs of Italy and his hopes that they might be gratified. I am sure that he did not say publicly anything that Mr. Stone had not already heard in private audience, for the doors leading to the council chambers of the men of influence in this country swing open welcomingly to Mr. Stone, but to say them in his presence to the representative press of Italy convinced us that his hopes and aspirations in this matter were the expression of the government, and he was willing and wished to communicate them to the public.

The other speakers were entertaining but scarcely instructive. One doesn't expect inspired sentiment or statement at testimonial banquets, but I felt that the speakers missed an opportunity to herald the democratization of the world through education and enlightenment via the press. Many nice things were said about Mr. Stone, but I confess frankly that I was disappointed that no one took it upon himself to interpret his accomplishments or to dwell upon and elaborate his activities and accomplishments symbolically. If they would stop telling us Germany's motives in precipitating the Great War and give us instead a credo for the present and the future, it would be a relief. I am firmly convinced that Germany thrust the war upon the world because she couldn't inhibit her latent and active cruelty which possesses and has possessed her for generations, as lust possesses the satyric man who, when he becomes intoxicated or unbalanced, throws prudence, precedent, precept, and principles to the wind and gives himself and his possessions to the orgy. The Central Powers will have to pay the full penalty for their crimes, even though they deny their guilt, just as the wilful murderer is electrocuted, even though he goes to the chair protesting his innocence.

The guest's speech was felicitous. He dwelt briefly on Italy's justification for entering the war when she did; he justly evaluated her work and he paid a deserving tribute to her resourcefulness in having extricated herself from the horns of the bull after the Caporetto disaster. He brought Columbus, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, our debt to them and their inspiration for us, into his remarks in such a way as to convince his auditors that they constitute for us a revered Italian trinity, and he adequately depicted the tenderness and affection that his countrymen have for Italy.

It takes a big man, using that word in one of its conventional senses, to conduct a successful publicity campaign. In the first place, he has to understand the people with whom he works, and the first successful step in understanding them is to want to understand them. If he has preconceived ideas not founded in reliable information or experience, if he is biassed and hypercritical, if he doesn't know how to elicit testimony and evaluate evidence, if he hasn't habituated himself to look at events, heralded or transpired, from different points of view, if he isn't animated by the spirit of service—that is, to do his work for the good of the cause—he is doomed to failure, or at least he can be only partially successful. Then again, he must be a man who worthily represents his government and his people. He should know his way about. He should be familiar with ordinary social amenities, so that he may go easily amongst his superiors and excite their approbation, and he must have the capacity to bear true witness while constantly keeping the burnished side of his shield before the people he is aiming to succor and orient. There are few ways in which one can be of more service to his country than by making proper propaganda in an allied country. The narrow-minded, biassed, obsessed man has the worst possible equipment for such position.

Propaganda is the priceless privilege of the press.