"This type of British Consul must be replaced by keen Britishers who have the interests of their country at heart and who are at the same time acquainted with the needs of the districts to which they are appointed. If we could only break with red tape, we could find numerous men, not far beyond the prime of life, but who have retired from an active part in business, who would gladly accept such appointments and place their knowledge at the disposal of their fellows.... "The state of things in our Consular Service is such as no business man would tolerate for a moment." Turning attention to our diplomacy on the shores of the Mediterranean and the Near East, those in the Secret Service knew that during the early days of the war at least our Foreign Office had nothing much to congratulate itself upon with regard to its representatives in Italy. For the first eight months of war an overwhelming volume of supplies and commodities, so sought after and necessary to the Central Powers, was permitted to be poured into and through that country from all sources. Even the traders of the small northern neutral states became jealous of the fortunes that were being made there. Daily almost they might be heard saying: "Why should I not earn money by sending goods to Germany when ten times the amount that my country supplies is being sent through Italy?" The tense anxiety, the long weary months of waiting for Italy to join the Entente, are not likely to be forgotten. When at last she was compelled to come in, it was not British cleverness in diplomacy that caused her so to do, but the irresistible will of her own peoples, the men in the streets and in the fields; the popular poems of Signor D'Annunzio, which rushed the Italian Government along, against its will, and as an overwhelming avalanche. The popular quasi-saint-like shade of Garibaldi precipitated matters to a crisis. "It is interesting as an object lesson in the ironies of fate to compare the fevered enthusiasm of the Sonnino of 1881 for the cultured Germans and Austrians, and his exuberant hatred of France, with the cold logic of the disabused Sonnino of 1915, who suddenly acquired widespread popularity by undoing the work he had so laboriously helped to achieve a quarter of a century before. European history, ever since Germany began to obtain success in moulding it, has been full of these piquant Penelopean Activities, some of which are fast losing their humorous points in grim tragedy."