through Switzerland than to agitate the question of contraband at this
delicate moment.

The cotton brokers, the grain merchants, and a few others were making
money out of Italy's neutrality, and _neutralista_ sentiment was
naturally strong among these classes and their satellites. No doubt
they did their best to give an impression of nationalism to the creed
of their pockets. But a serious-minded merchant from Milan who dined
opposite me on the way to Rome expressed the prevailing beliefs of his
class as well as any one,--"War, yes, in time.... It must come.... But
first we must be ready--we are not quite ready yet"; and he predicted
almost to a day when Italy, finding herself ready, would enter the great
conflict. He showed no enthusiasm either for or against war: his was a
curiously fatalistic attitude of mind, an acceptance of the inevitable,
which the American finds so hard to understand.

* * * * *

And this was the prevailing note of Rome those early days of May--a
dull, passive acceptance of the dreaded fate which had been threatening
for so many months on the national horizon, ever since Austria plumped
her brutal ultimatum upon little Serbia. There were no vivid debates,
no pronounced current of opinion one way or the other, not much public
interest in the prolonged discussions at the Consulta; just a lethargic
iteration of the belief that sooner or later war must come with its
terrible risks, its dubious victories. Given the Italian temperament
and the nearness of the brink toward which the country was drifting,
one looked for flashes of fire. But Rome, if more normal in its daily
life than Naples in spite of the absence of those tourists who gather
here at this season by the tens of thousands, was equally acquiescent