depletion of men. The
whole crowded place was smouldering with excitement. The diners
looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be
expressing sentiments. Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection
of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of
flitting white sheets among the little tables.

"To-night," said my companion, "I think we shall declare war upon
Germany. The decision is being made."

I asked intelligently why this had not been done before. I forget the
precise explanation he gave. A young soldier in uniform, who had been
dining at an adjacent table and whom I had not recognised before as a
writer I had met some years previously in London, suddenly joined in our
conversation, with a slightly different explanation. I had been carrying
on a conversation in slightly ungainly French, but now I relapsed into
English.

But indeed the matter of that declaration of war is as plain as
daylight; the Italian national consciousness has not at first that
direct sense of the German danger that exists in the minds of the three
northern Allies. To the Italian the traditional enemy is Austria, and
this war is not primarily a war for any other end than the emancipation
of Italy. Moreover we have to remember that for years there has been
serious commercial friction between France and Italy, and considerable
mutual elbowing in North Africa. Both Frenchmen and Italians are
resolute to remedy this now, but the restoration of really friendly
and trustful relations is not to be done in a day. It has been an
extraordinary misfortune for Great Britain that instead of boldly taking
over her shipping from its private owners and using it all, regardless
of their profit, in the interests of herself and her allies, her
government has permitted so much of it as military and naval needs have
not requisitioned to continue to ply for gain, which the government
itself has shared by a tax on war profits. The Anglophobe elements in
Italian public life have made the utmost of this folly or laxity in
relation more particularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy.
They have carried on an amazingly effective campaign in which this
British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if
it were the deliberate greed of the British state. This certainly
contributed very much to fortify Italy's disinclination to slam the door
on the German connection.

I did my best to make it c