as the Palace, but when the two are playing the international chess game and one is regarded as an enemy and the other as a possible traitor, the popular mind is likely to take a heated and prejudiced view of the small incident. Less obvious to the public, but none the less untactful, was the manner in which the German Ambassador tried to use his social connection in Rome, his family relationships in the aristocracy of Italy, to influence the King and his ministers. He might have taken warning from the royal speech attributed to the Queen Mother in reply to the Kaiser: "The House of Savoy rules one at a time." He should have kept away from the back stairs. He should have known Italy well enough to realize that the elements of Roman society with which he was affiliated do not represent either power or public opinion in Italy any more than good society does in most modern states. Roman aristocracy, like all aristocracies, whether of blood or of money, is international in its sympathies, skeptic in its soul. And its influence, in a decisive question of life and death to the nation, is nil. The Prince von Bülow was wasting his time with people who could not decide anything. As Salandra said, with dignified restraint in answer to the vulgar attack upon him made by the German Chancellor,--"The Prince was a sincere lover of Italy, but he was ill-advised by persons who no longer had any weight in the nation"--as his colleague in London seems to have been ill-advised when he assured his master that Englishmen would not fight under any circumstances! The trouble with diplomacy would seem to be that its ranks are still recruited from "the upper classes," whose gifts are social and whose sympathies reflect the views and the prejudices of a very small element in the state. Good society in Rome was still out on the Pincian for the afternoon promenade, was still exchanging calls and dinners these golden spring days, but its views and sympathies could not count in the enormous complex of beliefs and emotions that make the mind of a nation in a crisis. Prince von Bülow's motor was busily running about the narrow streets of old Rome, the gates of the pretty Villa Malta were hospitably open,--guarded by _carabinieri_,--but if the German Ambassador had put on an old coat and strolled through the Trastevere, or had sat at a little marble-topped table in some obscure café, or had traveled second or third class between Rome and Naples, he might have heard things that would have brought the negotiations at the Consulta to an abrupter close one way or the other. For Italy was making up its mind against his master. * * * * *