furnishes irrefragable proof that in the administration of the state this most vital of national interests has been thwarted by a strife of persons and parties which has threatened not merely to discredit our representative institutions, but deeply to compromise their destiny.

Now, not only was this reasonable request for suitable armaments not made by the foes of any and every foreign alliance, but-for the reason that their agitation was founded on that popular favor which they were wild to secure and terrified at the thought of losingthey accompanied their arraignment of the Triple Alliance by proposals for disarmament, as magnanimous as they were insane,

In the actual condition of Europe, the Peace Conference, although promoted by Nicholas II, the head of the most powerful empire in the world, resolved itself into a purely platonic convention, to be speedily followed by the sangulnary conflict in South Africa and the more recent inauguration of war upon China, by all the great civilized Powers.

But in 1882, when the alliance was concluded between Italy and the Central European Powers, the conditions were even worse than now, and to speak of disarmament was to advocate suicide.

If the European concert had required of us that we should commit, in company with others, some heinous international crime, I could better have understood the theory of an isolation which could, at least, have given us the comfort and support of feeling our selves in the right, the reassuring testimony of a good conscience, the sense of having guarded our good name. now, after eighteen years of unbroken peace, it is childish to talk of mysterious dynastic interests at war with those of our people.

But

Instances are not lacking, it is true,

in the story of humanity, of successful national isolation. The most celebrated is that of the great French Revolution, which elected to cut itself off from outside aid, and conquered and renovated the world. But that movement was based on the principles of eternal justice; it had been preceded by the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the revolutionary spirit in arms-let it never be forgotten-proyed an irresistible engine of war.

Another and a noisier current contributed to the agitation of public opinion; and the radicals in the Chamber and the country sought by all possible means to direct the force of it against a frank understanding with Austria; continuing their "irredentist" propaganda, and advocating a closer intimacy with the French Republic, from which the Triple Alliance had a natural tendency to divide us.

The result of this artificial agitation, which was kept alive by arguments more loud than weighty, was to perpetuate the distrust with which Austria regarded us; insomuch that, during its first three years, the Triple Alliance bore but scanty fruit, and the weakness of our government at that time proved of great detriment to the country,

Alliances are, in fact, very like marriages. There are those of love and those of convenience. But sentiment had its share, no less than calculation, in the Triple Alliance; and neither the unwritten code of honor, nor the laws inscribed in the statute-books, permit any difference between one kind of marriage and the other in the fulfilment of the requisite pledges.

Undoubtedly as I said in Florence in 1890-our policy presented serious difficulties and constrained us to cultivate the virtue of silence; but it would have been flagrant disloyalty, a crime of lese-patria, to abandon it.

I do not revert to this period for the sake of burling back the unjust ac

And when all is said, it was not I who concluded the Triple Alliance. Ι neither signed the contract in the first instance, nor did I renew it. "When I joined the government, I found an international agreement already in force, which, as a man of honor, I scrupulously respected, albeit the occasion never arose for actually putting it in practice.

I might have reminded my adversaries that Mazzini was exceedingly averse to the Franco-Sardinian Alliance, opposing it with all the eloquence at his command, clearly foreseeing its manifold dangers. But it would have been of no use. France, on her part, in

view of the new situation in Crete, thought only of fortifying and garrisoning the confines of the Maritime Alps, while her friends in Italy defended her action and protested loudly against the policy of their own home government.

An alliance, of course, implies the ideas of equality and reciprocity. Its members are brothers in the fullest sense of the term, not subjects. The men who had bent their backs to the Austrian dominion might desire another master, but not we-who had driven out the Bourbons. We could neither forget the moral tyranny exercised by the French Empire from 1854 to 1870, nor the treaty of 1866, to whose provisions Napoleon III had agreed, nor Mentana, nor the old banner whose device had been the watchword of our policy "Italy for the Italians"-nor the military inferiority which would have put us at so decided a disadvantage with the nation which in 1859, already exulting in our weakness, abandoned the King of Sardinia after Villafranca,

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and compelled him to consent, first to 'an armistice and then to peace.

Our opponents would very gladly have laid the burden of all these memories on the shoulders of the French Empire, while meeting the French Republic with hopeful smiles. To us it seemed that an alliance with a Republican government stronger than our own would be nothing less than fatal to those monarchical institutions which were the symbol and guarantee of our national unity. Carlos Emanuel signed a treaty of alliance with France in 1799 and the next year he had to abdicate.

Nor is the objection valid that Russia has not shaken the bases of her autocratic régime by an alliance with France; for the Muscovite empire is the stronger of the two, and France has had no choice but to revolve in the or'bit of Russia's foreign policy-the obvious fact being that in the field of international politics, whether under warlike or peaceful conditions, might avails quite as much as right, if not more.

Generally speaking, however, the question-though so grave a one-was not freely and fairly discussed, and our adversaries were encouraged by our reserve to persevere in their efforts to hoodwink public opinion. Even now one meets the statement in print, and it is believed, that Italy took the initiative toward breaking off commercial relations with France; whereas the truth is that the navigation treaty, after having been signed by the plenipotentiaries, and endorsed in our Parliament, was rejected by the French Chamber. By the terms of that treaty England, under the "most-favored-nation" clause, would have enjoyed the same rights of ocean cruising which we claimed, and which France, in her turn, was bound to recognize. They would have done us little good, but incalculable harm to the French mercantile marine, which could by no means have

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