The Anglo-Saxons, conquerors of the War and
the peace, have drawn themselves aside. Italy has no alliance and
cannot have any. No Italian politician could pledge his country, and
Parliament only desires that Italy follow a democratic, peaceful
policy, maintaining herself in Europe as a force for equilibrium and
life.
France, apart from her military alliance with Belgium, has a whole
system of alliances based largely on the newly formed States: shifting
sands like Poland, Russia's and Germany's enemy, whose fate no one can
prophesy when Germany is reconstructed and Russia risen again, unless
she finds a way of remedying her present mistakes, which are much more
numerous than her past misfortunes. Thus the more France increases her
army, the more she corners raw materials and increases her measures
against Germany, the more unquiet she becomes.
She has seen that Germany, mistress on land, and to a large extent on
the seas, after having carried everywhere her victorious flag, after
having organized her commerce and, by means of her bankers, merchants
and capitalists, made vast expansions and placed a regular network of
relations and intrigue round the earth, fell when she attempted her
act of imperialistic violence.
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