the royal speech attributed to the Queen Mother in reply to the Kaiser:
"The House of Savoy rules one at a time." He should have kept away from
the back stairs. He should have known Italy well enough to realize that
the elements of Roman society with which he was affiliated do not
represent either power or public opinion in Italy any more than good
society does in most modern states. Roman aristocracy, like all
aristocracies, whether of blood or of money, is international in its
sympathies, skeptic in its soul. And its influence, in a decisive question
of life and death to the nation, is nil. The Prince von Buelow was wasting
his time with people who could not decide anything. As Salandra said, with
dignified restraint in answer to the vulgar attack upon him made by the
German Chancellor,--"The Prince was a sincere lover of Italy, but he was
ill-advised by persons who no longer had any weight in the nation"--as
his colleague in London seems to have been ill-advised when he assured
his master that Englishmen would not fight under any circumstances! The
trouble with diplomacy would seem to be that its ranks are still recruited
from "the upper classes," whose gifts are social and whose sympathies
reflect the views and the prejudices of a very small element in the
state. Good society in Rome was still out on the Pincian for the afternoon
promenade, was still exchanging calls and dinners these golden spring
days, but its views and sympathies could not count in the enormous complex
of beliefs and emotions that make the mind of a nation in a crisis. Prince
von Buelow's motor was busily running about the narrow streets of old Rome,
the gates of the pretty Villa Malta were hospitably open,--guarded by
_carabinieri_,--but if the German Ambassador had put on an old coat and
strolled through the Trastevere, or had sat at a little marble-topped
table in some obscure cafe, or had traveled second or third class between
Rome and Naples, he might have heard things that would have brought the
negotiations at the Consulta to an abrupter close one way or the other.
For Italy was making up its mind against his master.