o savor the experience to the full, you
must take staff and scrip, like the Ritter Tannhaeuser, and go the
pilgrim's way. It is a joy even to pass from the guttural and
explosive place names of Teutonia to the liquid music of the southern
vocables--from Brieg to Domo d'Ossola, from Goeschenen to Bellinzona,
from St. Moritz to Chiavenna, from Botzen and Brixen to Ala and
Verona. It is a still greater joy to exchange the harsh, staring
colors of the north for the soft luminosity of the south, as you
zigzag down from the bare snows to the pines, from the pines to the
chestnuts, from the chestnuts to the trellised vineyards. And just
about where the vineyards begin, you come upon two wayside posts, one
of them inscribed "Schweiz" or "Oesterreich," the other bearing the
magic word "Italia." If your heart does not leap at the sight of it
you may as well about-turn and get you home again; for you have no
sense of history, no love of art, no hunger for divine, inexhaustible
beauty. For all these things are implicit in the one word, "Italy."

Alas! the charm of this excursion has from of old made irresistible
appeal to the northern barbarian. That has been Italy's historic
misfortune. For certain centuries, under the dominance of Rome, she
kept the Goths and Huns and Vandals aloof by what is called in India a
"forward policy"--by throwing the outworks of civilization far beyond
the Alpine barrier. But Rome fell to decay, and, wave upon wave, the
barbarian--generally the Teuton, under one alias or another--surged
over her glorious highlands, her bounteous lowlands, and her marvelous
cities. It is barely half a century since the hated Tedeschi were
expelled from the greater part of their Cisalpine possessions; and
now, in the fullness of time, Italy has resolved to redeem the last of
her ravished provinces and to make her boundaries practically
conterminous with Italian speech and race.

The political and military aspects of the situation have been fully
dealt with elsewhere; but a lifelong lover of Italy may perhaps be
permitted to state his personal view of her action. While the
negotiations lasted, her position was scarcely a dignified one. It
seemed that she was willing, not, indeed, to sell her birthright for a
mess of pottage, but to buy her birthright at the cost of complicity
in monstrous crime. Neither Italy nor Europe would have profited in
the long run by the substitution of "Belgia Irredenta" for "Italia
Irredenta."