The commonplace statesmen who, in rash frivolity of mind and mistaken in all their calculations, set fire last July to the whole of Europe and even to their own hearths and homes, have now noticed their fresh colossal mistake, and in the Parliaments of Budapest and Berlin have poured forth brutal invective of Italy and her Government with the obvious design of securing the forgiveness of their fellow-citizens and intoxicating them with cruel visions of hatred and blood. ["Bravo!"] The German Chancellor said he was imbued not with hatred, but with anger, and he spoke the truth, because he reasoned badly, as is usually the case in fits of rage. ["Hear, hear!" and laughter.] I could not, even if I chose, imitate their language. An atavistic throwback to primitive barbarism is more difficult for us who have twenty centuries behind us more than they have. ["Hear, hear!"] The fundamental thesis of the statesmen of Central Europe is to be found in the words "treason and surprise on the part of Italy toward her faithful allies." It would be easy to ask if he has any right to speak of alliance and respect for treaties who, representing with infinitely less genius, but with equal moral indifference, the tradition of Frederick the Great and Bismarck proclaimed that necessity knows no law, and consented to his country trampling under foot and burying at the bottom of the ocean all the documents and all the customs of civilization and international law. [Cheers.] But that would be too easy an argument. Let us examine, on the contrary, positively and calmly, if our former allies are entitled to say that they were betrayed and surprised by us. Our aspirations had long been known, as was also our judgment on the act of criminal madness by which they shook the world and robbed the alliance itself of its closest raison d'etre. The Green Book prepared by Baron Sonnino, with whom it is the pride of my life to stand united in entire harmony in this solemn hour after thirty years of friendship--[prolonged cheers and shouts of "Long live Sonnino!"]--shows the long, difficult, and useless negotiations that took place between December and May. But it is not true, as has been asserted without a shadow of foundation, that the Ministry reconstituted last November made a change in the direction of our international policy. The Italian Government, whose policy has never changed, severely condemned, at the very moment when it learned of it, the aggression of Austria against Serbia, and foresaw the consequences of that aggression, consequences which had not been foreseen by those who had premeditated the stroke with such lack of conscience. [Illustration: BARON SYDNEY SONNINO Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs (_Photo from Paul Thompson_)] _As proof of this statement, Signor Salandra read the following telegram sent by the Marquis di San Giuliano to the Duke of Avarna (Italian Minister in Vienna) on July 25 last:_