Giovanni Giolitti came to Rome, a few days after the Lusitania affair. Ostensibly he had come to town from his home in little Cavour, where he had been in retirement all the winter, to visit a sick wife at Frascati. Montecitorio, home of politicians, began to hum. Rome quivering with the emotions of its great decision muttered. What did Giolitti's presence at this eleventh hour signify? Remember what the shrewd American observer had said the week before,--"Giolitti will tell the Italians what they want."
The master politician, the ex-Premier, the heir to Crispian policies, was received at the railroad station by a few faithful friends, much as Boss Barnes or Boss Penrose, returning from a voluntary exile in New York or Pennsylvania, might be received by a few of the "boys." They were Deputies from Montecitorio frock-coated and silk-hatted, like politicians all the world over, not a popular throng of a hundred thousand Romans singing and shouting, such as a few days later was to gather in the piazza before the same station to greet the poet, D'Annunzio. It is well to understand the significance of this unobtrusive coming of the political leader at the moment, to realize what sinister meaning it had for the existing Government, for the Italian nation, for the Allies--for the world.
The Italian Deputies who had been elected two years before, long before even the astutest politician had any suspicion of the black cloud that was to rise over Europe, were Giolittian by a great majority. Giolitti was then the chief figure in Italian politics and controlled the Chamber of Deputies. The Giolitti "machine," as we should say, was the only machine worth mention in Italy. Rumor says that it was buttressed with patronage as American machines are, and, more specifically, that Giolitti when in power had diverted funds which should have gone into national defense to political ends, also had deferred the bills of the Libyan expedition so that at the outbreak of the war Italy found herself badly in debt and with an army in need of everything. Soldiers drilled in the autumn of 1914 in patent leathers or barefooted and dressed as they could, while the Giolittian clubs and interests flourished. Also it was said that the prefects of the provinces, who in the Italian system have large powers, especially in influencing elections, were henchmen of the politician. I do not know how just these accusations may be, nor how true the more serious accusation shortly to be hurled abroad that Giolitti had sold himself for German gold. The latter is easy to say and hard to prove; the former is hard to prove and easy to believe--it being the way of politicians the world over.