e sternest prohibitions were ingeniously evaded or
benevolently removed. From the towns which we were due to visit the
hotel-keepers telegraphed to us, begging as a favour permission to
give us lodging; and, when the time came to settle our account, it was
impossible to get them to accept the slightest remuneration; and the
whole staff, from the majestic porter to the humblest boot-boy,
heroically refused to be tipped. If we entered a restaurant and were
recognized, the customers would rise, take counsel together and order
a bottle of some famous wine; then one among them would come forward,
requesting, gracefully and respectfully, that we would do them the
honour of drinking with them to the deliverance of our martyred
motherland. At the memory of what that unhappy country had suffered
for the salvation of the world, a sort of discreet and affecting
fervour was visible in the looks of all; it may be said that nowhere
was the heroic sacrifice of Belgium more nobly and more affectionately
admired and understood; and it will be recognized one day, when time
has done its work, that, although other causes induced Italy to take
upon her shoulders the terrible burden of what was not an inevitable
war, the only causes that really, in the depths of her soul, liberated
her resolve were the admiration, the indignation and the heroic pity
inspired by the spectacle, incessantly renewed, of our unmerited
afflictions. You will not find in history a nobler sacrifice nor one
made for a nobler cause.

* * * * *

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES

XIII

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES

1

At moments above all when history is in the making, in these times
when great and as yet incomplete pages are being traced, pages by the
side of which all that had already been written will pale, it is a
good and salutary thing to turn to the past in search of instruction,
warning and encouragement. In this respect, the unwearying and
implacable war which Athens kept up against Sparta for twenty-seven
years, with the hegemony of Greece for a stake, presents more than one
analogy with that which we ourselves are waging and teaches lessons
that should make us reflect. The counsels which it gives us are all
the more precious, all the more striking or profound inasmuch as the
war is narrated to us by a man who remains, with Tacitus, despite the
striving of the centuries, the progress of life and all the
opportunities of d