Prince von Bülow and Baron Macchio might as well have discontinued their daily visits to the Consulta after the 7th of May. Whatever they might have hoped to accomplish with their diplomacy to keep Italy neutral had been irretrievably ruined by the diplomacy of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. The smallest match, the scratch of a boot-heel on stone, can set off a powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match. If the King and his ministers were waiting for the country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they had their desire. From the hour when the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came over the wires, Italy began to mutter and shout. The months of hesitation were ended. There were elements enough of hate, and Germany had given them all focus. "Fuori i Barbari!" I bought a sheet from the old woman who went hurrying up the street shouting hoarsely,--"Fuori i Barbari!" ... "Fuori i Barbari!" ... "Barbari!".... II _The Politician Speaks_ Giovanni Giolitti came to Rome, a few days after the Lusitania affair. Ostensibly he had come to town from his home in little Cavour, where he had been in retirement all the winter, to visit a sick wife at Frascati. Montecitorio, home of politicians, began to hum. Rome quivering with the emotions of its great decision muttered. What did Giolitti's presence at this eleventh hour signify? Remember what the shrewd American observer had said the week before,--"Giolitti will tell the Italians what they want." The master politician, the ex-Premier, the heir to Crispian policies, was received at the railroad station by a few faithful friends, much as Boss Barnes or Boss Penrose, returning from a voluntary exile in New York or Pennsylvania, might be received by a few of the "boys." They were Deputies from Montecitorio frock-coated and silk-hatted, like politicians all the world over, not a popular throng of a hundred thousand Romans singing and shouting, such as a few days later was to gather in the piazza before the same station to greet the poet, D'Annunzio. It is well to understand the significance of this unobtrusive coming of the political leader at the moment, to realize what sinister meaning it had for the existing Government, for the Italian nation, for the Allies--for the world.