_Italy Decides_

Whatever one may think of the piazza voice, whether the disposition is
to sneer with the German or to trust with the democrat in its spontaneous
expression, it is a matter of history now that Italy's decision had been
made before the question came to a vote in the Chamber of Deputies, a
fortnight or more before the reluctant ambassadors of the ex-Alliance
backed into their waiting trains and departed homeward across the Alps.
It is a significant fact of personal psychology that the crisis of a
decision takes place before action results to calm the disturbed mind. So
it was with Italy. Her decision had really been taken when the Lusitania
sank, when the politician, in face of this fresh outrage, advised the
safer course of neutrality, which would amount to a connivance with her
former associates in their predatory programme. _Traditore!_ meant but
one thing--a betrayal of the nation's soul. In the light of more recent
events, since Italy entered the war, there are probably many Italians who
secretly wish that the safer counsel had prevailed, that, like Greece and
Rumania, Italy had "preserved a benevolent neutrality" in the great war,
even possibly that she had concluded to make her bed in the Teutonic camp.
If the world is to be Teutonized, they would argue, why put one's head in
the wolf's jaw! There are prudent people of that stripe in every nation,
but since the end of May they have kept silence in Italy. And it should be
forever remembered to her honor that Italy made her decision in face of
Teutonic successes. If the military situation did not look so black for
the Allies at the end of May as it does this December, it looked black
enough with the crumbling Russian resistance before Mackensen's phalanx.
Neuve Chapelle had been a costly and empty victory. There had been no
successful drive in Champagne and Artois to encourage those who bet only
on winning cards. There were heavy clouds in the east, merely a sad
silence along the western wall. It was long past Easter, when England