Produced by Eric Eldred, Anne Reshnyk, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE WORLD DECISION BY ROBERT HERRICK CONTENTS _PART ONE--ITALY_ I. ITALY HESITATES II. THE POLITICIAN SPEAKS III. THE POET SPEAKS IV. THE PIAZZA SPEAKS V. ITALY DECIDES VI. THE EVE OF THE WAR _PART TWO--FRANCE_ I. THE FACE OF PARIS II. THE WOUNDS OF FRANCE III. THE BARBARIAN IV. THE GERMAN LESSON V. THE FAITH OF THE FRENCH VI. THE NEW FRANCE _PART THREE--AMERICA_ I. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO US? II. THE CHOICE III. PEACE THE WORLD DECISION PART ONE--ITALY I _Italy Hesitates_ Last April, when I left New York for Europe, Italy was "on the verge" of entering the great war. According to the meager reports that a strict censorship permitted to reach the world, Italy had been hesitating for many months between a continuance of her precarious neutrality and joining with the Allies, with an intermittent war fever in her pulses. It was known that she was buying supplies for her ill-equipped army--boots and food and arms. Nevertheless, American opinion had come to the somewhat cynical belief that Italy would never get further than the verge of war; that her Austrian ally would be induced by the pressure of necessity to concede enough of those "national aspirations," of which we had heard much, to keep her southern neighbor at least lukewarmly neutral until the conclusion of the war. An American diplomat in Italy, with the best opportunity for close observation, said, as late as the middle of May: "I shall believe that Italy will go into the war only when I see it!"