IV


_The Piazza Speaks_

"The voice of the piazza prevailed," the German Chancellor sneered
in his denunciation of Italy at the conclusion. It can easily be
imagined, the picture he made to himself, in his ugly northern office
on Friedrichstrasse, of the influence that upset all German pressure
and sent Italy into the war on the side of the Allies; that defeated
the industry of the skilled ambassador, the will of the wily politician.
The Chancellor saw one of those large public squares in which Latin
countries abound, open centers in their close-built cities, where so
much of the common life of the people goes on, now as it has for hundreds
of years. For the piazza, descending in direct tradition from the ancient
Forum, is the public hall of citizens, where they trade, gossip, quarrel,
plot, love, and hate, from the crone sunning herself in a sheltered nook
over her bag of chestnuts to the grandee whose palace windows open above
the noisy commonalty. The Chancellor saw this common meeting-ground, this
glorified street, filled with a ragged mob of "the baser quality," as on
the operatic stage, emptily vocal or evilly skulking for mischief, like
the _mafia_, the _apache_. He saw this loose gathering of irresponsibles
suddenly stirred to evanescent passion against the real benefactors of
their country by the secret agents of the Allies, "corrupted by English
gold," in the mechanical melodrama of the German imagination, marching
to and fro, attacking the shops and homes of worthy Germans, howling and
stoning, by mere noise drowning the sober protests of reflecting citizens,
intimidating a weak king, connived at by a bought government, pushing a
whole nation into the bloody sacrifice of war out of mere recklessness of