it. For, as the ministers were obliged to meet Parliament on
May 20--the day fixed for its reopening--they were sure to be
out-voted on a division, whereupon a crisis, not merely ministerial
but national and international, would be precipitated. The
consequences of such a conflict might be disastrous. Rather than wait
for this eventuality the Cabinet tendered its resignation. Thus Buelow
had seemingly triumphed. The Government was turned out by Giolitti,
who had accepted in advance the Austro-German terms of a settlement,
and Italy was seemingly won over to the Teutons.

So far as one could judge, the fate of the nation was now decided. Its
course was marked out for it, and was henceforward unalterable. For,
so far as one could see, by no section of the constitutional machinery
was the strategy of Buelow and Giolitti to be thwarted. In a
parliamentary land the legislatures are paramount, and here both
Chamber and Senate were arrayed against the Cabinet for Giolitti and
Germany.

The ferment consequent upon this turn of affairs was tremendous. All
Europe was astir with excitement. The Press of Berlin and Vienna was
jubilant. Panegyrics of Giolitti and of Buelow filled the columns of
their daily Press.

But a _deus ex machina_ suddenly descended upon the scene in the
unwonted form of an indignant nation. The Italian people, which had at
first been either indifferent or actively in favour of cultivating
neighbourly relations with Germany, had of late been following the
course of the struggle with the liveliest interest. Germany's dealings
with Belgium had impressed them deeply. Her methods of warfare had
estranged their sympathies. Her doctrine of the supremacy of force and
falsehood had given an adverse poise to their ideas and leanings. Deep
into their hearts had sunk the tidings of the destruction of the
_Lusitania_, awakening feelings of loathing and abomination for its
authors, to which free expression was now being given everywhere. The
spirit that actuated this revolting enormity was brand-marked as that
of demoniacal fury loosed from moral control and from the ties that
bind nations and individuals to all humanity.

The effect upon public sentiment and opinion in Italy, where emotions
are tensely strung, and sympathy with suffering is more flexible and
diffusive than it is even among the other Latin races, was
instantaneous. One statesman, who was a partisan of neutrality,
remarked to me that German "Kultur,"