Friends newly arrived from Italy tell me that not even in Rome (where one always feels as if one were living on the borderland of the old world and the new, with thousands of years behind and thousands of years in front) can anybody remember anything so moving as the substance and the reception of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s speech from the balcony of the Hotel Regina. We can well imagine it. The spirit of Time itself could have found no greater scene, no more thrilling moment. The broad highway on the breast of the hill going up to the Porta Pinciana, faced by the palace of the Queen Mother and flanked by the gardens of the Capuchin monastery, with the Colosseum, the Capitol and the Forum almost visible to the right--what a theatre to speak in! There were 5000 persons below, all “Romans of Rome,” and the Queen Mother was on her balcony. But the orator was worthy of his audience, and his theme. He had the past for his prologue, and the future for his epilogue. Cæsar, Brutus, Cicero, the story of the old oppression from which the world had freed itself after agelong tribulation, and then a picture of the new tyranny that was sweeping down from across the Rhine. What wonder if the warm-hearted Roman populace, to whom patriotism is a religion, were carried away by an appeal which seemed to come to them with the voice of Dante, Mazzini, Carducci, and Garibaldi from the very earth beneath their feet! So on May 20,1915, knowing well what the terrors of war were, and how remote the prospects of early victory, Italy took her place in arms by the side of the Allies. And now the heart of old Rome, so long perturbed, is tranquil. With heroic confidence she relies on her brave sons, led by her dauntless King, to justify her. And when she hears the truculent boast of our enemy that after he has disposed of Russia, he will destroy Italy as a power in Europe, she answers calmly, “Yes, when the last Roman capable of bearing arms lies dead in Roman soil--perhaps then, but not sooner.” THE PART PLAYED BY THE NEUTRAL NATIONS And then the neutral countries--what is the part which they have played in the drama of the past 365 days? I think I may fairly claim to have had better opportunities than most people for studying one aspect of it, its moral aspect, and therefore I trust I may be forgiven if I make a personal reference. Seeing, in the earliest days of the war, that Germany was doing her best to divert the eye of the world from the crime she had committed in Belgium, and being convinced that Britain’s hope both now and in the future lay in keeping the world’s eye fixed on that outrage, I moved the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ to the publication of “King Albert’s Book.”