which expressed itself, as it always must, in diverse ways, through the
press, by the voice of the piazza, in public and private discussion,
flightily, weightily, passionately, timidly.

* * * * *

Will, individual or collective, is a mysterious force. What enters into
that act of decision which results in will is never wholly apparent, from
the least to the gravest matters. And no scheme of government, which
admits the right of the individual citizen, plain and exalted alike,
to be heard and obeyed, has discovered a perfect way of polling this
collective will of the nation. Our electoral representative method and
majority vote is surely rough, though better than the Bulgarian way. That
right to vote, for which our women are so eagerly striving, as thinking
men realize only too well, is an empty privilege. The will of a people is
inaccurately registered, not made, by the vote. The voice of the piazza
when deep enough and strong enough is as good as any other way, perhaps,
of determining the collective will of a nation in a crisis; surely far
better than the secret way of Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Further, the reason
of the piazza on any vital fundamental matter, such as war, which means
life or death, is as sure as your intelligence or mine, possibly surer,
because the piazza, having less to lose or gain, feels and believes and
acts more simply, basically. The Roman piazza, the people of Italy,
reacted to the crime against Belgium, to the atrocities committed on
priests and women and children, to the murders of the Lusitania,--all
deeds of that ancient enemy whose barbarism had now reappeared, after
centuries, under an intellectual and sophisticated mask with a blasphemous
perversion of religious sanction. They reacted also, it might be, to their
own sense of personal danger from an unprotected frontier dividing them
from this unscrupulous enemy, to the wrongs of some thousands of Italians