Then the politician spoke. Rather, to be precise, he wrote a little note to a faithful intimate, which was meant for the newspapers and got into them at once. It was a very innocent little note of a few lines in which he confided to "Caro Carlo" his opinion on the tense national situation: better stay with the old allies--the Austrian offers seemed sufficiently satisfactory. This may well have been a sincere, a patriotic judgment, as sincere and patriotic as Bryan's resignation from the American Cabinet a few weeks later. But Italians did not think so. Almost universally they gave it other, sinister interpretations. Giolitti had been "bought," was nothing more than the knavish mouthpiece of German intrigue. Giolitti became overnight _traditore_, the arch-conspirator, the enemy of his country! It must have staggered the politician, this sudden fury which his innocent advice had roused. And, to condemn him, it is not necessary to believe him to have been a knave bought by German gold.
It is important to realize what happened overnight. Giolitti had become the most hated, most denounced man in all Italy, and in so far as he represented honest _neutralista_ sentiment the cause was dead. If that was what the Salandra Government wanted to achieve, they had got their desire. If, as the politicians say, they were "feeling out" popular sentiment, they need no longer doubt what it was. Columns of vituperation appeared in the anti-German newspapers, crowds began to form and shout in the streets. "_Traditore_," hissed with every accent of hate and scorn, filled the air. Giolitti's life was seriously in danger--or the Government preferred to think so. The great apartment house on the Via Cavour in which he lived was cordoned off by double lines of troops. Cavalry kept guard, all day and half the night, before the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore, ready to sweep through the crowded streets in case the mob got out of hand. Other troops poured out of the barracks over the city, doing _piquet a mato_ on all the main streets and squares of the city.
Giolitti had, indeed, swayed events,--"told the people what they wanted,"--but not in the expected manner. He had revealed the nation to itself, drifting on the verge of war, and they knew now that they wanted nothing of Giolitti or neutrality or German compromises. They wanted war with Austria. The remarkable fact is that a nation which had submitted in passivity to absolute ignorance of the diplomatic exchanges, waiting dumbly the decision that should determine its fate,--of which it could be said that a large number, perhaps a majority, were neutral at heart,--suddenly overnight awoke to a realization of the political situation and rejected the prudent advice of their popular politician, denounced him, and inferentially proclaimed themselves for war. At last they had seen: they saw that the Salandra Government in which they had confidence had come to the parting of the ways with Austria, and they saw the hand of Giolitti trying to play the game of their ancient enemy.