of the national life. But neither the respect
felt for German ability nor the secret influence of German finance has
hampered Italy in the conduct of the war. Besides breaking off
diplomatic relations with the kaiser, she treated the Germans within
her gates exactly as she treated the citizens and subjects of other
enemy countries. She formed a commercial alliance with France, Great
Britain, and Russia, an alliance the chief aim of which was the
removal of German economic domination in Italy. She, moreover,
requisitioned German merchant ships that had taken shelter in Italian
ports; and finally she broke off commercial relations with Germany,
and took measures to prevent Germany from obtaining through
Switzerland any goods necessary for the welfare of the population or
the prosecution of the war. Germany allowed the serious measures taken
by Italy to pass unchallenged, and so Italy was content to let the
relations between the two countries continue on that basis.

But beneath all these surface movements ran a deeper current of
influence that was partly hidden from all except those who were
active participants in affairs of southeastern Europe. There was, for
example, the rivalry between Italy and Greece, a factor that may yet
be discovered to have had a deciding influence in the war. For it was
the entrance of Italy into the war, with the assumed pledge of
territorial profits in the Balkans and in Asia Minor, that forced
Greece into maintaining her neutrality at a time when the alignment of
forces in the Balkans was still in complete doubt. A well-informed and
well-conducted diplomacy, steering skillfully amid the eddies of
Balkan affairs, might have brought the combined strength of Italy,
Bulgaria, and Greece to the side of the Allies. But Greek jealousy of
Italy was allowed to smolder and even to be fanned into flame by the
awakened pretensions of the Italian press, whose ambitions in the East
became inflated at the prospect of a victorious war, out of which
Italy was mirrored as issuing as an imperial state holding a hegemony
over the lesser lands on her extended border. While hesitation and
doubt held sway in the councils of the Allies, Bulgaria struck, and at
one stroke brought disaster on Serbia and Montenegro, and stiffened
Greece into an attitude of unshakable neutrality.

CHAPTER XLVIII

PROBLEMS OF STRATEGY

Meanwhile, with more than half a year's fighting behind them, the
Italian commanders had c