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