rioting--a piazza filled with the rabble minority who have nothing to lose
because they neither fight nor pay.

* * * * *

Such a picture, reflected in Bethmann-Hollweg's splenetic phrase,
is a complete delusion of the German mind. I was in Rome and saw the
real piazza at work. I was on the streets all hours of day and night,
and what I saw was nothing like the trite imaginings of the German
Chancellor. As I have said in a previous chapter, the "demonstrations"
did not begin in any perceptible form until the bungling hand of Prince
von Buelow betrayed his intrigue with Giolitti and the politician's
intention of defeating the Salandra Government in its preparations for
war became evident. At no time did the rioting in the streets equal the
violence of what a third-class strike in an American mill town can
produce. Such as it was the Government showed the determination and
ability to keep it strictly within bounds. Rome was filled with troops.
Alleyways and courtyards oozed troops at the first shouts from the
piazza: the danger points of the Corso, especially the Piazza Colonna
on which the Chigi Palace, the residence of the Austrian Ambassador,
fronts, were kept almost constantly empty by cordons of troops. All
told, the destruction done by the mobs could not have amounted to
several hundred dollars--a few signs and shop windows smashed, a few
pavements torn up in the Via Viminale. It is true that after war was
declared upon Austria there was some pillage of Austrian and German
shops in Milan, which has been greatly exaggerated by the German and
pro-German press; it was nothing worse than what happened in Berlin
to English residents in August, 1914. And the Italian Government
immediately took severe measures with the officials who had permitted
the disorders--removing the prefect and the military commander of