"_Viva Italia!_" the boy conscript shouted, leaning far out of the car window in a last look at the familiar fields and roof of his native village. "_Viva Italia!_" the King of Italy cried, and his people responded with a mighty shout,--"_Viva Italia!_" What do they mean? In the simplest, the most primitive sense they mean literally the earth, the trees, the homes they have always known--the physical body of the mother country. And this primal love of the earth that has borne you and your ancestors seems to me infinitely stronger, more passionate with the European than with the American. We roam: our frontiers are still horizons.... But even for the simple peasant lad, joining the colors to fight for his country, patriotism is something more complex than love of native soil. It is love of life as he has known it, its tongue, its customs, its aspects. It is love of the religion he has known, of the black or brown or yellow-haired mother he knows--of the women of his race, of the men of his race, and their kind. Deeper yet, scarce conscious to the simple instinctive man, patriotism is belief in the tradition that has made you what you are, in the ideal that your ancestors have seeded in you of what life should be. Therefore, patriotism is the better part of man, his ideal of life woven in with his tissue. Men have always fought for these things,--for their own earth, for their own kind, for their own ideal,--and they will continue to give their blood for them as long as they are men, until wrong and unreason and aggression are effaced from the earth. The pale concept of internationalism, whether a class interest of the worker or an intellectual ideal of total humanity, cannot maintain itself before the passion of patriotism, as this year of fierce war has proved beyond discussion. Italian patriotism, which in the last analysis Italy evinced in making war against Austria, was composed of all three elements. Italian patriotism is loyalty to the Italian tradition, hence to the Latin ideal which is fighting a death battle with the Teutonic tradition and ideal. Teutonism--militaristic, efficient, materialistic, unimaginative, unindividual--has challenged openly the world. Italy responded nobly to that challenge. VI _The Eve of the War_ Rome became still, so still as to be oppressive. Her heart was elsewhere,--in the north whither the King was about to go. Rome, like all the war capitals, having played her part must relapse more and more into a state of waiting and watching, stirred occasionally by rumors and rejoicings. The streets were empty, for all men of military age had gone and others had returned to their normal occupations. Officers hurried toward the station in cabs with their boxes piled before them. And the sound of marching troops also on the way to the station did not cease at once.