I am not attempting to write history. I am guessing like another,
seeking causes in a complex state of mind. We shall have to go back.
Secret diplomacy may be the inveterate habit of Europe, especially of
Italy. The new arrangement with the Allies has never been published,
probably never will be. One suspects that it was made, essentially, before
Italy had broken with Austria, before, perhaps, she had denounced her old
alliance on the 5th of May at Vienna. And yet, although inveterately
habituated to the mediaevalism of secret international arrangements, Italy
is enough filled with the spirit of modern democracy to break any treaty
that does not fulfill the will of the people. The Triple Alliance was
really doomed at its conception, because it was a trade made by a few
politicians and diplomats in secret and never known in its terms to the
people who were bound by it. Any strain would break such a bond. The
strain was always latent, but it became acute of late years, especially
when Austria thwarted Italy's move on Turkey--as Salandra revealed later
under the sting of Bethmann-Hollweg's taunts. It was badly strained,
virtually broken, when Austria without warning to Italy stabbed at Serbia.
Austria made a grave blunder there, in not observing the first term of the
Triple Alliance, by which she was bound to take her allies into
consultation. The insolence of the Austrian attitude was betrayed in the
disregard of this obligation: Italy evidently was too unimportant a factor
to be precise with. Italy might, then and there, the 1st of August, 1914,
very well have denounced the Alliance, and perhaps would have done so had
she been prepared for the consequences, had the Salandra Government been
then at the helm.

There is another coil to the affair, not generally recognized in America.
Austria in striking at Serbia was potentially aiming at a closer
envelopment of Italy along the Adriatic, provision for which had been made