vital necessity to the struggling nation.

Already in the year 1912 Germany stood first among Italy's customers,
whether we consider the list of her exports or that of imports. Italy
bought from that empire goods valued at 626,300,000 francs, and sold
it produce worth 328,200,000 francs; whereas Great Britain, who
supplies Italy with the bulk of her coal, exported only 577,100,000
francs worth, while her imports were valued at 264,400,000 francs. For
France the figures were 289,600,000 and 222,600,000 francs
respectively.

The method by which Italian industries were assailed, shaken, and then
purchased and controlled by this redoubtable organization, bore, as we
saw, all the marks of German commercial ethics. Sharp practice which
recognizes as its only limitation the strong arm of the penal law, is
a fair description of the plan of campaign. Against this insidious
process none of the native enterprises had the strength to offer
effective resistance. One by one they were drawn into the vast net
woven by the three German Fates--Joel, Weil and Toeplitz. The various
iron, mechanical and shipbuilding works, which represented the germs
from which native industries were to grow, were sucked into the Teuton
maelstrom. The larger and the smaller steamship navigation companies
likewise fell under the direction of the Banca Commerciale, which
permitted some of them to exist and even to thrive up to a certain
point, beyond which their usefulness to the general plan would have
turned to harm. In this way Italy's entire mercantile marine became
one of the numerous levers in the hands of the interpenetrating
German. And the importance of this lever for political purposes can
neither be gainsaid nor easily overstated.

In every little town and village which sends a quota of emigrants to
the transatlantic liners, agents of the various steamship companies
are always about and active. Being intelligent and enterprising, their
influence on local politics is irresistible, and it was uniformly
employed in those interests which it was the object of the Banca
Commerciale to further. "This institution," writes an Italian expert,
who has studied the subject with unusual care, "being the mistress of
the dominant economic organisms of the nation, makes use of them to
carry out a germanophile policy. It employs them for the purpose of
exercising a directive action in all elections, commercial, provincial
and general. Every servant of a steamsh