_I go to Germany on a false passport. Italy in the early days of the war. I meet the Kaiser and talk to him about Mexico and the United States._ It was peaceful sailing in those early days of the war, and our ship, the _Duca d’Aosta_, reached Genoa with no mishap. I had but one moment of trepidation on the voyage, for on the last day the ship was hailed by a British cruiser. Here, I thought, was where I should put my passport to the test, but as it happened, our ship was not searched. An officer came alongside inquiring, among other things, if there were any Germans on board, but he accepted the captain’s assurance that there were none—to my great relief. Genoa, like all the rest of the world, was in a state of great excitement in those days. Rumors as to the possible course of the Italian Government were flying about everywhere, and one could hear in an hour as many conflicting statements of the Government’s intentions as he might wish. The country was a battlefield of the propagandists at the moment. Nearly all of the German consuls, who had been forced to leave Africa at the declaration of war, had taken up their quarters in Italy, and were busily disseminating pro-German literature of all sorts. I was told, too, that the French Ambassador had already spent large sums of money buying Italian papers, in which to present the Allied cause to the as yet neutral people of Italy. And when I went into the office of the Imperial German Consul General, von Nerf, I was amused to see a huge pile of copies of—of all papers in the world!—the Berlin _Vorwaerts_, which had been imported for distribution throughout the country. Here was a pretty comedy! That newspaper, which during its entire existence had been the bitterest foe of German autocracy in the Empire, had become a propagandist sheet for its former enemy and was now being used as a lure for the hesitating sympathies of the Italian people! In German, French and Italian editions it was spread about the country, carrying the message of Teutonic righteousness to the uninformed. I found von Nerf to be a large man, with whiskers that recalled those of Tirpitz, although without that gentleman’s temperament or embonpoint. He assured me that Italy would never enter the war; there were too many factions in the country which would oppose such a step. “Why, consider,” he bade me, “we have the three most important parties on our side. The Catholics will never consent to a break with Germany; the business men are all our staunch partisans; and the Labor Party is too violently opposed to war ever to consider entering it. Besides,” he continued, “laboring men all over the world know that it is in Germany that the Labor Party has reached its greatest strength. Why, then, should they consider taking sides against us?” “But do you think that there is any chance of Italy entering the war on our side?” I asked him.