Great and Bismarck proclaimed that
necessity knows no law, and consented to his country trampling under
foot and burying at the bottom of the ocean all the documents and all
the customs of civilization and international law. [Cheers.] But that
would be too easy an argument. Let us examine, on the contrary,
positively and calmly, if our former allies are entitled to say that
they were betrayed and surprised by us.

Our aspirations had long been known, as was also our judgment on the
act of criminal madness by which they shook the world and robbed the
alliance itself of its closest raison d'etre. The Green Book prepared
by Baron Sonnino, with whom it is the pride of my life to stand united
in entire harmony in this solemn hour after thirty years of
friendship--[prolonged cheers and shouts of "Long live Sonnino!"]--shows
the long, difficult, and useless negotiations that took place between
December and May. But it is not true, as has been asserted without a
shadow of foundation, that the Ministry reconstituted last November
made a change in the direction of our international policy. The
Italian Government, whose policy has never changed, severely
condemned, at the very moment when it learned of it, the aggression of
Austria against Serbia, and foresaw the consequences of that
aggression, consequences which had not been foreseen by those who had
premeditated the stroke with such lack of conscience.

[Illustration: BARON SYDNEY SONNINO

Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs

(_Photo from Paul Thompson_)]

_As proof of this statement, Signor Salandra read the following
telegram sent by the Marquis di San Giuliano to the Duke of Avarna
(Italian Minister in Vienna) on July 25 last:_

"Salandra, von Flotow, and myself have had a long conversation.
Salandra and I emphatically pointed out to von Flotow that Austria had
no right, according to the spirit of the treaty of the Triple
Alliance, to make a demarche like that made in Belgrade without coming
to an agreement beforehand with her allies."

In effect, [continued Signor Salandra,] Austria, in consequence of the
terms in which her note was couched, and in consequence of the things
demanded, which, while of little effect against the Pan-Serbian
danger, were profoundly offensive to Serbia, and indirectly so to
Russia, had clearly shown that she wished to provoke war. Hence we
declared to von Flotow that, in consequence of this procedure on the
part of Austria and in consequ