"I am glad, too, of this, that I myself am a denationalized individual, and if I have a motherland at all, it is this beloved stepmother-land, who for so long has treated me as one of her children. Damnable as I think war is, I think I could fight for her, if anyone slapped her beautiful face. And yet how could I fight against the country to whom we owe not only so much of the art and science, but of Thought itself? Germany taught mankind how to think.
"Let me know how things go in England. It looks as if you could keep out of this hurly-burly. So if Italy does too, I hope to see you here again in September. Seraphina suggests that Italy should make pretence of being friends with the '_bestia fedente,_' by which she means the Austrians, and that when they are fighting the Russians, she should run swiftly from them and seize the Trentino again. There seems much good sense in this, for 'the Trentino is ours, and it is right and proper to take what belongs to us.'
"England must be peculiarly beastly with all these disturbances going on. Why don't you pack up your tooth-brush and your comb and come back again at once? The _Palazzo a mare_ is better than Piccadilly, and the purple figs are ripe, and the cones are dropping from the stone-pine, and never were there such fat kernels for Seraphina to fry in oil. Perhaps if you come back the _strega_ would continue walking; she seems to have had no exercise since you were here. Your room is empty, and the door makes sorrowful faces at me as I go along the passage. It frowns at me, and says it isn't I it wants. And I share the silent verdict of your door.
"I don't see what quarrel England can have with Germany, and it is unthinkable that Italy should go in with the Central Powers against the Triple Entente. Besides, how is England to fight Germany? It is the elephant and the whale. England hasn't got an army, has it? I can't remember anything connected with soldiers in England, except some sort of barracks with a small temple or chapel in front of it somewhere in St. James's Park. And I suppose the German fleet is only a sort of herring-boat compared to a liner, if it comes to ships. So really I don't see how the two countries could fight each other even if they wanted to.