Exhortations of this kind are to be deprecated as mischievous. They are likely--if they produce any effect at all--to damage the cause which they are meant to further. Italy must be allowed to understand her own vital and secondary interests at least as well as the amateur diplomatists who so generously undertake to ascertain and promote them, and all of whom have an axe of their own to grind. In the eyes of the world, though not in those of her ex-allies, Germany and Austria, she has completely vindicated her right to hold aloof from her allies in a war of pure aggression, waged for the hegemony of the Teutonic race. But to pass from neutrality to belligerency, to treat the allies of yesterday as the enemies of to-day, without transition and without adequate provocation, would be in accordance neither with the precepts of ethics nor the promptings of statesmanship. The reproach hurled at Italy for her long co-partnership with Austria and Germany appears to me to be unmerited. It was neither a foolish nor an ungrateful move. On the contrary, I feel, and have always felt, convinced that it was the act of an able statesman whose main merit in the matter was to discern its necessity and to turn that necessity into a work of apparent predilection. As a member of the Triple Alliance, Italy discharged a twofold function, national and international. She avoided a war against Austria-Hungary which, whatever the military and naval upshot, would have secured for her no advantages, political or territorial, and would have exhausted her resources financial and military. And in this way, while directly pursuing her own interests, she indirectly furthered those of all Europe. Even under the favourable conditions realized by her membership of the Alliance, it was no easy task to repress popular feeling against Austria. At one time, indeed, when Count Aehrenthal was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, an Austro-Italian war was on the point of breaking out. The late Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his protégé, Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff, who was then, and is now, Chief of the General Staff, were strongly in favour of severing the links that bound the Habsburg Monarchy to Italy and delivering an ultimatum to the Consulta. Between their quarrel and overt war stood a solitary individual, Count Aehrenthal, who had the courage of his opinion and refused to countenance the projected breach. His resignation or a pacific settlement were the alternatives which he laid before his sovereign, and this perspective, together with his lucid exposé of the sinister results of the proposed plunge, enlisted the aged Emperor on his side, and Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff was gently removed--for a time--from the General Staff and appointed to a different post of trust.