The World Decision by Robert Herrick

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* * * * *

It has been said, I do not know with what truth, that Prince von Buelow had
informed the ex-Premier of Austria's ultimate concessions even before they
were presented to Salandra and Sonnino, and consequently that Giolitti was
precisely aware of the situation when he reached Rome. It is easy to
believe almost anything of a diplomacy that dealt with Giolitti in the
private rooms of a hotel after the downfall of the Salandra Government....
At any rate, Giolitti went through the forms correctly: he called on the
Premier Salandra, the Foreign Minister Sonnino, who laid before the
ex-Premier the situation as it had shaped itself. Even the King received
him in private audience. So much was due to the leading politician of
Italy, who controlled, supposedly, a majority of the existing Parliament.
In a sense he held the Salandra Government in his hand, after the opening
of the Chamber, which could not be long delayed.

Then the politician spoke. Rather, to be precise, he wrote a little note
to a faithful intimate, which was meant for the newspapers and got into
them at once. It was a very innocent little note of a few lines in which
he confided to "Caro Carlo" his opinion on the tense national situation:
better stay with the old allies--the Austrian offers seemed sufficiently
satisfactory. This may well have been a sincere, a patriotic judgment, as
sincere and patriotic as Bryan's resignation from the American Cabinet a
few weeks later. But Italians did not think so. Almost universally they
gave it other, sinister interpretations. Giolitti had been "bought," was
nothing more than the knavish mouthpiece of German intrigue. Giolitti
became overnight _traditore_, the arch-conspirator, the enemy of his
country! It must have staggered the politician, this sudden fury which
his innocent advice had roused. And, to condemn him, it is not necessary
to believe him to have been a knave bought by German gold.

It is important to realize what happened overnight. Giolitti had
become the most hated, most denounced man in all Italy, and in so far
as he represented honest _neutralista_ sentiment the cause was dead.
If that was what the Salandra Government wanted to achieve, they had
got their desire. If, as the politicians say, they were "feeling out"
popular sentiment, they need no longer doubt what it was. Columns of
vituperation appeared in the anti-German newspapers, crowds began to
form and shout in the streets. "_Traditore_," hissed with every accent
of hate and scorn, filled the air. Giolitti's life was seriously in
danger--or the Government preferred to think so. The great apartment
house on the Via Cavour in which he lived was cordoned off by double
lines of troops. Cavalry kept guard, all day and half the night, before
the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore, ready to sweep through the crowded
streets in case the mob got out of hand. Other troops poured out of the
barracks over the city, doing _piquet a mato_ on all the main streets
and squares of the city.

Giolitti had, indeed, swayed events,--"told the people what they
wanted,"--but not in the expected manner. He had revealed the nation
to itself, drifting on the verge of war, and they knew now that they
wanted nothing of Giolitti or neutrality or German compromises. They
wanted war with Austria. The remarkable fact is that a nation which had
submitted in passivity to absolute ignorance of the diplomatic exchanges,
waiting dumbly the decision that should determine its fate,--of which it
could be said that a large number, perhaps a majority, were neutral at
heart,--suddenly overnight awoke to a realization of the political
situation and rejected the prudent advice of their popular politician,
denounced him, and inferentially proclaimed themselves for war. At last
they had seen: they saw that the Salandra Government in which they had
confidence had come to the parting of the ways with Austria, and they
saw the hand of Giolitti trying to play the game of their ancient enemy.

Then the Salandra Government did a bold, a dramatic thing: it resigned
in a body, leaving the King free to choose ministers who could obtain
the support of the Giolitti following in Parliament. It was inevitable,
it was simple, it was sincere, and it was masterly politics. The public
was aghast. At the eleventh hour the state was left thus leaderless
because its real desires were to be thwarted by a politician who took
his orders from the German Embassy.

Thereupon the "demonstrations" against Giolitti, against Austria and
Germany, began in earnest.

* * * * *

The first popular "demonstration" which I saw in Rome was a harmless
enough affair, and for that matter none of them were really serious.
The Government always had the situation firmly in hand, with many
regiments of infantry, also cavalry, to reinforce the police, the secret
service, and the _carabinieri_, who alone might very well have handled
all the disorder that occurred. Never, I suspect, was there any more
demonstrating than the Government thought wise. The first occasion was
a little crowd of boys and youths,--not precisely riff-raff, rather like
our own college boys,--and they did less mischief than a few hundred
freshmen or sophomores would have done. They marched down the street from
the Piazza Tritone, shouting and carrying a couple of banners inscribed
with "Abasso Giolitti." They stoned a few signs, notably the one over the
empty office of the Austrian-Lloyd company, then, being turned from the
Corso and the Austrian Embassy by the police, they rushed back up the
hill to the Salandra residence, to hang about and yell themselves hoarse
in the hope of evoking something from the former Premier. The two poles
of the following "demonstrations" were the Salandra and the Giolitti
residences with occasional futile dashes into the Corso....

For the better part of a week these street excitements kept up, not
merely in Rome, but all over Italy: for that one week, while the King
sent for various public men and offered them the task of forming a
new ministry, which in every case was respectfully declined--as was
expected.

* * * * *

Why did the King not send for Giovanni Giolitti, the one statesman
who under ordinary circumstances might have expected a summons?
Neither Giolitti nor any of his intimates was invited to form a cabinet
and reestablish constitutional government. Nothing would appear to be
more natural than that the leader of the Opposition, controlling a
majority of the Deputies, who avowedly represented a policy opposed
to that of the ministers who had resigned, should be asked himself to
take charge. But Giolitti was never asked, and daily the shouting in
the streets grew louder, more menacing, and the mood of the public more
tense. Nothing was plainer than that if Giolitti had a majority of the
Deputies, the people were not for him and his policies. The House of
Savoy, as the King so well put it, rules by expressing the will of the
people. Each day it was more evident what that will was. Giolitti, the
master politician, was being outplayed by mere honest men. They had used
him--as Germany had used him--to try out the temper of the nation. With
him they drew the _neutralista_ and pro-German fire beforehand, prudently,
not to be defeated by hostile party criticism in the Chamber. And when
they got through with the politician, they threw him out: literally they
intimated through the Minister of Public Safety that they would not be
responsible any longer for his personal safety. There was nothing for
him but to go--before Parliament had assembled!

As Italy seethed and boiled, threatening to break into revolutionary
violence, while the King received one respectable nonentity after
another, who each time after a very brief consideration declined the
proffered responsibility, Giolitti must have thought that the life of
the politician is not an easy one. He was stoned when he appeared on
the streets in his motor. He had to sneak out of the city at dawn that
last day. Where was all the _neutralista_ sentiment so evident the first
months of the war? And where was the German influence supposed to be so
strong in the upper commercial classes? Germans as well as Austrians
were scurrying out of Italy as fast as they could. Their insinuating
multiplicity was proved by the numbers of shuttered shops. More hotels
along the Pincian, whose "Swiss" managers found it prudent to retire
over the Alps, were closed. Angry crowds swarmed about the Austrian
and German consulates, also the embassies when they could get through
the cordons of troops on the Piazza Colonna. Noisy Rome these days might
very well give rise to pessimistic reflections on the folly of popular
government to politicians like Giolitti and the Prince von Buelow, whose
obviously prudent policies were thus being upset by the "voice of the
piazza" led by a very literary poet! No doubt at this moment they would
point to Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the King of Greece as enlightened
monarchs who know how to secure their own safety by ignoring the will
of their peoples. But the end for Ferdinand and Constantine is not yet.

* * * * *

The trouble with the politician as with the trained diplomat is that
he never goes beneath the surface. He takes appearances for realities.
He has often lost that instinct of race which should enable him to
understand his own humanity. To a Giolitti, adept in the trading game
of political management, it must seem insane for Italy to plunge into
the war against powerful allies, who at just this time were triumphing
in West and East alike--all the more when the sentimental and trading
instincts of the populace might be partly satisfied with the concessions
so grudgingly wrung from Austria. It was not only rash: it was bad
politics!

But what Giolitti and men of his stripe the world over cannot
understand is that the people are never as crafty and wise and mean as
their politicians. The people are still capable of honest emotions, of
heroic desires, of immense sacrifices. They love and hate and loathe
with simple hearts. The politician like the popular novelist makes the
fatal mistake of underrating his audience. And his audience will leave
him in the lurch at the crisis, as Italy left Giolitti. Italy was never
enthusiastic, as its enemies have charged, for a war of mere aggression,
for realizing the "aspirations" because Austria was in a tight place,
even for redeeming a million and a half more or less of expatriated
Italians in Austrian territory. Politicians and statesmen talked of
these matters, perforce; the people repeated them. For they were tangible
"causes." But what Italians hated was Austrian and German leadership--were
the "_barbari_" themselves, their ancient foe; and when told that they
had better continue to make their bed with the "_barbari_," they revolted.

There are many men in every nation,--some of the politician type, some
of the aristocratic type, some of the business type,--who by interest
and temperament are timid and fundamentally cynical. They are pacifists
for profit. About them gather the uncourageous "intellectuals," who
believe in the potency of all established and dominating power whatever
it may be. But these "leading citizens" fortunately are a minority in
any democracy. They do most of the negotiating, much of the talking, but
when the crisis comes,--and the issue is out in the open for every one
to see,--they have to reckon with the instinctive majority, whose
emotional nature has not been dwarfed. That majority is not necessarily
the "rabble," the irresponsible and ignorant mob of the piazza as the
German Chancellor sees them: it is the great human army of "little
people," normal, simple, for the most part honest, whose selfish stake
in the community is not large enough to stifle their deepest instincts.
In them, I believe, lies the real idealism of any nation, also its plain
virtues and its abiding strength.

The Italian situation was a difficult one, obviously. Public opinion
had been perplexed. There were the classes I have just mentioned, by
interest and temperament either pro-German or honestly neutral. There
was the radical mob that the year before had temporarily turned Italy
into republics. There was the unreliable South. And the hard-ground
peasants who feared, justly, heavier taxes and the further hardships
of war. And there were the millions of honest but undecided Italians
who hated Teutonism and all its deeds, who were intelligent enough to
realize the exposed situation of Italy, who felt the call of blood for
the "unredeemed," and the vaguer but none the less powerful call of
civilization from their northern kin--above all who responded to the
fervid historical idealism of the poet voicing the longing of their
souls to become once more the mighty nation they had been. These were
the people whose change of hearts and minds surprised Giolitti and the
Germans.

What had been going on in those hearts of the plain people all these
months of the great war, Giolitti could not understand. It was another
Italy from the one he had charmed that rose at his prudent advice and
threw the bitter word "_traditore_" in his teeth and howled him out of
Rome. Traitor, yes! traitor to the loftier, bolder, finer longings of
their hearts to take their stand at all cost with their natural allies
in this last titanic struggle with the barbarians. It was this sort of
public that spoke in the piazza and whose voice prevailed.

* * * * *

The diplomat deals too exclusively with conventional persons, with the
sophisticated. The politician deals too exclusively with the successful,
with the commercial and exploiting classes. Giolitti's associations
were of this class. Like any other _bourgeoisie_ of finance and trade,
"big business" in Italy was on the side of the big German battalions,
who at this juncture were winning victories. Italy was peculiarly under
the influence of German and Austrian finance. One of its leading lending
banks--the Banca Commerciale--was a German concern. Most of its newer
developments had been accomplished with German capital, were run by German
engineers, equipped with German machines. Germany has bitterly reproached
her former ally for the "ingratitude" of siding against the people who had
brought her prosperity. Gratitude and ingratitude in business transactions
are meaningless terms. The lender gets his profit as well as the borrower,
usually before the borrower. If Italy has needed German capital, Germany
has needed the Italian markets and Italian industries for her capital. The
Germans surely have used Italy as their commercial colony. Italy bought
her bathtubs, her electric machines, her coal, and her engines from
Germany. For the past generation the German commercial traveler has been
as common in Italy as the German tourist. In fact, was there ever a German
tourist who was not in some sense a commercial agent for the Fatherland?

To the international financier all this is simply intelligible--a matter
of mutually desirable exchange. No debtor nation should feel aggrieved
with a creditor nation: rather it should rejoice that it has attracted
the services of foreign capital. Is the international economist right
in his reasoning? Why does the delusion persist among plain people that
the creditor is not always a benefactor? It is a very old and persistent
delusion, so strong in the Middle Ages that interest was considered
illegal and the despised Jews were the only people who dared finance
the world. Abstractly the economists are undoubtedly right, yet I am
fain to believe that the popular notion has some ground of truth in it
too. Obviously, according to modern notions a country rich in natural
resources, but poor in capital, inherited savings, must borrow money to
"develop" itself. But granting for the moment that material exploitation
of a country is as desirable as our modern notions assume it to be, even
then there are reasons for grave suspicion of foreign lenders. Take abused
Mexico. Its woes are in good part traceable to the pernicious influence
upon its domestic politics of the foreign capital which its riches have
attracted. One might instance the United States as an example of
beneficial exploitation by foreign capital, but with us it must be
remembered the lender has had neither industrial nor political power.
We have always been strong enough to manage our affairs ourselves and
satisfy our creditors with their interest--if need be with their
principal. We have drawn on the European horde as upon an international
bank, but we have absolutely controlled the disposition of the moneys
borrowed. A weak country can hardly do that. Mexico could not. It had
to suffer the foreign exploiter, with his selfish intrigues, in person.
Italy has never been as weak as Mexico: it has maintained its own
government, its own civilization. But the increasing amount of foreign
investment, the increasing number of foreign "interests" in Italy, has
been evident to every Italian. The hotels, the factories, the shops all
testify patently to the presence of the stranger within the gates looking
after his own interests, breeding his money on Italian soil.

But why not? the dispassionate internationalist may ask. Why should not
the Italian hotels be in the hands of Austrians, Germans, and Swiss; the
new electrical developments be installed and run by Germans; the shops
for tourists and Italians be owned by foreigners? There we cross the
unconscious instinct of nationality, which cannot be ignored. Assuming
that there is something precious, to be guarded as a chief treasure in
the instinct of nationality, as I assume, there are grave dangers in too
much friendly commercial "infiltration" from the outside. The indirect
influences of commercial exploitation with foreign capital are the
insidious, the dangerous ones. The dislike of the foreign trader, the
foreign creditor, may voice itself crudely as mere envy, know-nothingism,
but it has a healthy root in national self-preservation. For an Italian
the German article should be undesirable, especially if its possession
means accepting the German and his way of life along with his goods. The
small merchant and the peasant express their resentments of foreign
competition rawly, no doubt. Consciously it is half envy of the more
efficient stranger. Unconsciously they are voicing the deep traditions
of their ancestors, vindicating their race ideals, cherishing what is
most enduring in themselves. They would not see their country given over
to the stranger, whose life is not their life.

One unpleasant aspect of the commercial invasion of Italy by the Teuton
was his liking to live there, and consequently the amount of real estate
which he was collecting on the Latin peninsula--so much that the lovely
environs of Naples were fast becoming a German principality! These
invaders were not traders, nor workers, but capitalists and exploiters.
The process is known now as "infiltration." The German had filtered into
Italy in every possible way, was supplanting its own native life with the
Teutonic thing, as it had in France so largely. Italy could well profit
from that experience of its sister nation. The Germans who filtered into
French life, commercial, industrial, social, were German first and last.
When the crisis came they turned from their adopted land, where they had
lived on terms of cordial hospitality for ten, twenty, thirty years, and
took themselves back to Germany, in many cases to reappear as the invader
at the head of armed troops. The experience of France proved that the
peaceful German resident was a German all the years of his life, not a
loyal, vital factor in his adopted country--too often something of a spy
as well. Therefore Italy might well be disturbed over the presence of so
much Teutonic "infiltration" in her own beloved land. And why should
Germany call her ungrateful when she sought to rid herself of her
unwelcome creditors? German capital had made its five per cent on its
investments, and better: it should not expect to absorb the life of the
nation also.

* * * * *

In every debtor nation there must be an element which profits directly
from the creditor relation. It assumes, naturally, the aspects of
"progress," and consists of the richer trading class and bankers,
sustainers of politicians. Such, I take it, were the followers of
Giolitti, and such was Giolitti himself, a sincere admirer of Teutonic
success and believer in the economic help which Germany could render
to his kind of Italian. Such men as Giolitti are easily impressed by
evidences of German superiority: they identify progress with the rapid
introduction of German plumbing, German hotel-keeping, German electric
devices, German banks. All these, they believe, help a "backward country"
to come forward. They do not understand the finer spiritual risks that
such material benefits may involve. They are not as sensitive as the
humble peasant, as simpler citizens, to the gradual sapping of the
precious national roots, of the internal debasement that may be going
on through the process of "infiltration." They are too prosperous, too
cosmopolitan to feel losses in national individuality. They realize
merely the better hotels, the better railways, the improved plumbing
in their country. Their souls are already half-Teutonized.

In his dignified answer to the German Chancellor's vulgar attack on him
in the Reichstag, Salandra referred to the long history of the Italian
people, who "were civilized and leaders of the world" when the Teuton
hordes were still savage. It was the spirit of that ancient civilization
which did not consist primarily of industrial development that stirred
in the souls of true Italians and made them scorn the advice of the
Teutonized politician. He was "_traditore_" to all that nobler Italians
hold dear--to the Latin tradition.

III

_The Poet Speaks_

The poet prophet has so long abdicated his rights among us moderns
that we are incredulous when told that he has again exercised his
function. That is the reason why the story of a poet's part in leading
the Italian people toward their decision is received by Americans with
such skeptical humor. And Gabriele d' Annunzio in the role! A poet who
is popularly supposed to be decadent, if not degenerate, gossipingly
known for his celebrated affair with a famous actress, whose novels and
plays, when not denounced for their eroticism, are very much caviar to
the "wholesome" man, so full are they of a remote symbolism, so purely
"literary." "Exotic" is the chosen word for the more tolerant American
minds with which to describe the author of "Il Fuoco" and "San Sebastian."

In recent years the Italian poet has abandoned his native land, living
in Paris, writing his last work in French, having apparently exiled
himself for the rest of his life and renounced his former Italianism.
Circumstances were stronger than the poet. The war came, and D'Annunzio
turned back to his native land.

* * * * *

He came to Italy at a critical moment and characteristically he filled
the moment with all the drama of which it was capable. His reappearance
in Italy, as every one knows, was due to the ceremonies in connection
with the unveiling of a monument to the famous Garibaldian band,--the
Thousand,--in the little village of Quarto outside of Genoa, from which
Garibaldi and his Thousand set forth on their march of liberation
fifty-five years ago. The monument had been long in the making. The
opportunity for patriotic instigation was heightened by the crisis of
the great war. The King and his ministers had indicated, previously,
their intention of participating in this national commemoration, but
as the day grew near and the political situation became more acute,
it was announced that the urgency of public affairs would not permit
the Government to leave Rome. It may have been the literal fact that
the situation precipitated by the presence of Giolitti demanded their
constant watchfulness. Or it may well have been that the King and the
Salandra Government had no intention of allowing their hand in this
dangerous game to be forced by any reckless fervor of the poet. They
were not ready, yet, to countenance his inflammation. At any rate,
they left the occasion solely to the poet.

How he improved it may best be gathered from his address. To the
American reader, accustomed to a blunter appeal, the famous _Sagra_
will seem singularly uninflammatory--intensely vague, and literary.
One wonders how it could fire that, vast throng which poured out along
the Genoa road and filled the little Garibaldian town. But one must
remember that nine months of hesitation had prepared Italian minds for
the poet's theme--the future of Italy. He linked the present crisis of
choice with the heroic memories of that first making of a nation, "_Oggi
sta sulla patria un giorno di porpora; e questo e un ritorno per una
nova dipartita, o gente d'Italia!_"--A purple day is dawning for the
Fatherland and this is a return for a new departure, O people of Italy!
The return for the new departure--to make a larger, greater Italy, just
as the Thousand had departed from this spot to gather the fragments of
a nation into one. "All that you are, all that you have, and yourselves,
give it to the flame-bearing Italy!" And in conclusion he invoked in a
new beatitude the strong youth of Italy who must bear their country to
these new triumphs: "O happy those who have more because they can give
more, can burn more.... Happy those youths who are famished for glory,
because they will be appeased.... Happy the pure in heart, happy those
who return with victory, because they will see the new face of Rome,
the recrowned brow of Dante, the triumphal beauty of Italy."

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