Such a picture, reflected in Bethmann-Hollweg's splenetic phrase, is a complete delusion of the German mind. I was in Rome and saw the real piazza at work. I was on the streets all hours of day and night, and what I saw was nothing like the trite imaginings of the German Chancellor. As I have said in a previous chapter, the "demonstrations" did not begin in any perceptible form until the bungling hand of Prince von Bülow betrayed his intrigue with Giolitti and the politician's intention of defeating the Salandra Government in its preparations for war became evident. At no time did the rioting in the streets equal the violence of what a third-class strike in an American mill town can produce. Such as it was the Government showed the determination and ability to keep it strictly within bounds. Rome was filled with troops. Alleyways and courtyards oozed troops at the first shouts from the piazza: the danger points of the Corso, especially the Piazza Colonna on which the Chigi Palace, the residence of the Austrian Ambassador, fronts, were kept almost constantly empty by cordons of troops. All told, the destruction done by the mobs could not have amounted to several hundred dollars--a few signs and shop windows smashed, a few pavements torn up in the Via Viminale. It is true that after war was declared upon Austria there was some pillage of Austrian and German shops in Milan, which has been greatly exaggerated by the German and pro-German press; it was nothing worse than what happened in Berlin to English residents in August, 1914. And the Italian Government immediately took severe measures with the officials who had permitted the disorders--removing the prefect and the military commander of Milan.
There is no saying, of course, what might have happened had the King offered the premiership to Giolitti, and had that astute politician been rash enough to accept the responsibility of forming a government in accord with his own _neutralista_ sympathies. It is more than likely that revolution would have ensued: possibly Italy would have entered the war as a republic. For the Italians are not Greeks, as has been amply proved. But the King of Italy, whatever his own sympathies may have been, showed plainly that he had enough political understanding not to run counter to the expressed will of his people, to deal with the "traitor." After a week of tempestuous inter-regnum, in which the piazza expressed itself passionately, the Salandra Government returned to power with all which that implied in foreign policy. Then the piazza became quiet. If the piazza must shoulder the responsibility of Italy's decision, it must be credited with knowing marvelously well its own mind.