was seething with rumor.

* * * * *

The remarkable passivity of the Italian public during these anxious
moments was due in good part, no doubt, to its thorough confidence in
the men who were directing the state, specifically in the Prime Minister
Salandra and his Minister of Foreign Affairs Baron Sonnino, who were the
Government. They were honest,--that everybody admitted,--and they were
experienced. In less troubled times the nation might prefer the popular
politician Giolitti, who had a large majority of the deputies in the
Parliament in his party, and who had presented Italy a couple of years
earlier with its newest plaything, Libya,--and concealed the bills. But
Giolitti had prudently retired to his little Piedmont home in Cavour. All
the winter he had kept out of Rome, leaving the Salandra Government to
work out a solution of the knotty tangle in which he had helped to involve
his country. Nobody knew precisely what Giolitti's views were, but it was
generally accepted that he preserved the tradition of the Crispi
statesmanship, which had made the abortion of the Triple Alliance. If he
could not openly champion an active fulfillment of the alliance, at least
he was avowedly _neutralista_, the best that Berlin and Vienna had come to
hope from their southern ally. He was the great unknown factor politically,
with his majority in the Chamber, his personal prestige. A clever American,
long resident in Rome in sufficient intimacy with the political powers to
make his words significant, told me,--"The country does not know what it
wants. But Giolitti will tell them. When he comes we shall know whether
there will be war!" That was May 9--a Sunday. Giolitti arrived in Rome
the same week--and we knew, but not as the political prophet thought....

Meanwhile, there were mutterings of the thunder to come out of this