nations do, the obligation to take the usual precaution of visit and search to ascertain whether, etc.'

In the same Note the President, still taking a wider outlook than that of the injured neutral, tells the German Government that

'the objection to their present mode of attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity which all modern opinion regards as imperative.' 'Impossibility' is perhaps too strong a word; it is, e.g., quite possible that the submarine should signal to a ship to stop and send a boat with her papers for examination (see the case of the Davanger' in the 'Morning Post,' June 16). But, in any case, the observance of the rules referred to is not dispensed with by the fact that they are hampering to the belligerent. Belligerents in time past have submitted to be similarly hampered; thus, the effectiveness of the Northern blockade of Southern ports in the American Civil War would have been much greater, had the blockading squadron thought itself justified in sinking the blockade-runner instead of trying to capture him.* The belligerent may no more place himself outside the rules named, on the plea of convenience, than he may place himself outside the rules against the use of poisoned weapons or against the butchery of prisoners. This is the contention of the American President. How inconsistent with this the German attitude is, the case of the Falaba' shows. When this liner was sunk-merely on the ground of her nationality and not as engaged in rendering military service-non-combatants, including an American citizen, lost their lives. The German Government sought to free itself from responsibility for this by pleading (see Note, 'Times,' June 1) that the commander of the submarine 'fired a torpedo only when suspicious craft were hasten. ing to the assistance of the "Falaba." That is to say, the rules of humanity were violated in the name of belligerent convenience; the necessary limitations of the submarine

* See Soley's 'The Blackade and the Cruisers,' p. 165.

were turned to the detriment not of the submarine itself but of non-combatants, neutral and other. The American answer (Times,' June 12) was :

'These are not new circumstances. They have been in the minds of statesmen and international jurists throughout the development of naval warfare. . . . Nothing but actual forcible resistance or continued efforts to escape by flight, when ordered to stop for the purpose of a visit, on the part of a merchantman has ever been held to forfeit the lives of her passengers and crew.'

It is hard to quit this topic without at least a mention of the word which lies across the brow of Germany like the brand of Cain, Lusitania.' Even if everything be conceded that is alleged against this liner-that it was constructed for conversion in case of need into an auxiliary cruiser; that it was carrying contraband; that it was armed for defence; and even if it be assumed that the passengers, neutral and other, had assented to run the risks of war by embarking on such a vessel, its destruction would remain a crime, in that the maximum military effect which the action could produce was utterly and obviously disproportionate to the suffering certain to be caused. We are invoking here a principle too often ignored by the Germans in this war. The outrage differed from others perpetrated by the Germans during the last ten months only in degree-in its staggering magnitude and in its dramatic setting-not, however, in kind. It is one of many incidents which show that the fabric of international law is threatened with the fate of Louvain. We trust that the arresting hand of a strong neutral will avail to save it; he is its rightful custodian, and his warrant is higher than mere self-interest.

JOHN PAWLEY BATE.

Art. 14. DRAMATIS PERSONE OF THE ITALIAN CRISIS.

THE present European upheaval supplies us with a striking confirmation of the contested proposition that occasion does not always bring to the top leaders fitted to preside over the destinies of nations at critical turning points of their development. For most of the well-meaning statesmen who swayed the vast forces-economic, political and military-of European peoples during the period which immediately preceded the outbreak of the great conflict, far from recognising the ultimate destination of their labours, were firmly convinced that these must efficaciously contribute to the elimination of violent interruptions to steady progress. And so entirely possessed were they by this hallucination that they construed the frequent warnings and sure foretokens of the coming storm, which were periodically reported from Germany, as part of their soothing dream, and fitted them into its harmonious scheme. Their pacifist philosophy construed the elaborate and feverish preparations for the great Teutonic war as so many fresh guarantees of stable peace. In London, Paris, and Petrograd the chiefs of the Governments, men whose sterling characters and humanitarian aims were untouched by the perturbing force of genius, displayed in their public acts and private conversations a strong sense of the all-pervading presence of moral law in the political world, and gave their future adversaries credit for the same wholesome intuition. Modest apostles of steady evolution whose slow rate is measured by the process of the suns,' they expected no sudden new birth of mankind and feared no lapse into the prehistoric fury of savage passion. One and all they were deaf to the temptation of unscrupulous ambition and loth to think their rivals less inaccessible than themselves to its promptings. Slow, steady, pacific, national development, through law and order and obedience to duty, exhausted their notions of political progress. National movements and racial ferment they could not prevent, but they would force them into the straight and narrow channels thoughtfully provided for their course. Among all these respectable leaders of peoples there was not any world-compeller endowed with

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the clear, flashing vision which pierces the veil of the future, or charged with the irresistible electric force and consuming fire that radiates passionate words which thrill the heart and nerve the arm to deeds of epic heroism. However, as the contest is not between dynasties, or armies, or governments, but between nations and races, it is perhaps not inappropriate that in this democratic age no individual head should tower high above the dead level of the educated crowd.

Even the Germans, who finally let loose the blighting storm, failed, down to the last and fatal moment, to discern the magnitude of the deluge of misery for which they were opening the sluices. Carefully preparing for the worst, they based their main calculations on the coincidence of conditions most favourable to their own nefarious designs. The political theologian, BethmannHollweg, plumed himself on his aversion from the use of military force, and the Kaiser was proud of his selfconferred epithet of peace-preserver; for both ruler and subject interpreted these terms in their German sense, as connoting a resolve not to wage war unconditionally, but only if its fruits could not be reaped at the cheap price of military bluff and a diplomatic campaign. And they had little doubt of their ability to win this bloodless victory. But behind them was a vast reservoir of elemental forces, created by themselves, which, bursting its bounds, scattered their scraps of paper and overwhelmed all Europe. Thereupon the Chancellor, it is said, wept bitterly, just as the German Ambassador at Petrograd, on hearing M. Sazonoff utter his quiet non possumus, dropped his head on his arm and sobbed out: 'How can I ever show my face in Berlin after this?' The various postulates and mainstays of Germany's military breakwater, which in its pristine shape rested on the battlefields of Serbia-namely, the neutrality of Russia, of Great Britain, of Italy-have since broken down one by one and bid fair to bury in their ruins the scourge of Europe for a time.

But in none other of the great European States was the advent or the tremendous force of the European upheaval less clearly foreseen or more dimly realised than in Italy. Even to the governing classes there, the bearings of the conflict upon the destinies of the Kingdom

seemed a mere matter of diplomacy, to be settled by a leisurely appeal to treaty clauses and an amicable shifting of frontiers. Inertness and listlessness accompanied and followed almost every fitful glance cast by public men at the rapidly succeeding phases of European politics, even when these bore directly upon the interests of the Peninsula. For all classes of the nation were lulled to comatose sleep by a vampire that sucked their life-blood while soothingly flapping its wings. Public sentiment was numbed, public opinion canalised and turned upon questions of parochial interest, while the warnings of the few press organs which, like the 'Corriere della Sera' and the 'Idea Nazionale,' courageously sounded the tocsin, seeking to arouse the nation to a sense of its danger and waken its instinct of self-preservation, rang out like voices in a wilderness, eliciting no audible response. The explanation of this phenomenon is not far to seek. From a constitutional country governed by a Cabinet responsible to parliament, Italy had fallen to the level of a community of henchmen bound to serve a liege-lord whose power was supreme and practically absolute in the legislature, the administration, the judicature, and the army. This uncrowned monarch was Giovanni Giolitti.

This remarkable transformation sheds a lurid light on the conception of patriotic duty entertained by its authors, on the low ebb of political morality prevalent among the governing classes, and on the supine indifference of the bulk of the nation to the momentous matters that lay beyond the narrow purview of its various provinces and class interests. This work of demoralisation had been begun by Depretis, the Premier who concluded the first treaty of alliance with Germany and Austria; and it was continued and perfected by Signor Giolitti, who was Prime Minister when that diplomatic instrument was renewed for the last time in 1912. The theory of Giolittism' was to seize the reins of office by means of corruption, and to exercise the power thus obtained for the purpose of preserving it. It was power for power's sake, without regard for political principles and with a cynical contempt for public morality. First bread and then virtue.'

During his possession of power, which was much