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Updated: June 29, 2025
After the fall of Orlando's Cabinet, M. Tittoni repaired to Paris as Italy's chief delegate. His reputation as one of Europe's principal statesmen was already firmly established; he had spent several years in Paris as Ambassador, and he and the late Di San Giuliano and Giolitti were the men who broke with the Central Empires when these were about to precipitate the World War.
The ganglia of our economic life seemed struck with mortal disease. Labor ran riot in strike after strike. The very bureaucracy seemed to align itself against the State. The measure of our spiritual dispersion was the return to power of Giolitti the execrated Neutralist who for five years had been held up as the exponent of an Italy which had died with the war.
The first occasion was a little crowd of boys and youths, not precisely riff-raff, rather like our own college boys, and they did less mischief than a few hundred freshmen or sophomores would have done. They marched down the street from the Piazza Tritone, shouting and carrying a couple of banners inscribed with "Abasso Giolitti."
Von Keudall was succeeded by his antithesis, a nullity in court and country of whom even his fellow diplomats could say nothing in praise. The Rudiní ministry had no long life and merited no more, while that of Giolitti, which followed, ended in scandal and disaster.
The Press of Berlin and Vienna was jubilant. Panegyrics of Giolitti and of Bülow filled the columns of their daily Press. But a deus ex machina suddenly descended upon the scene in the unwonted form of an indignant nation.
Those Deputies were chosen, as we Americans know only too well how, by mean intrigues of party machines, by clever manipulation of trained politicians like Giovanni Giolitti, who by their control of appointed servants the prefects of the provinces can throw the elections as they will, can even disfranchise unfriendly elements of the population.
The cavalry, that had been sitting their mounts all day before Santa Maria Maggiore guarding the unwelcome Giolitti from the angry mob, had charged the packed street, sweeping it clear with the ugly sound of horses' hoofs on pavement and cries of hunted men and women. That was the end.
Rumor says that it was buttressed with patronage as American machines are, and, more specifically, that Giolitti when in power had diverted funds which should have gone into national defense to political ends, also had deferred the bills of the Libyan expedition so that at the outbreak of the war Italy found herself badly in debt and with an army in need of everything.
On the Campidolgio, D'Annunzio again sounded the tocsin of the heroic Thousand, and lauded the army which had been belittled by the followers of Giolitti. Already the troops were leaving Rome.... Then Parliament opened. The meeting of the Deputies if memorable was short. The square and streets about Montecitorio had been carefully cleared and held empty by cordons of troops.
At the eleventh hour the state was left thus leaderless because its real desires were to be thwarted by a politician who took his orders from the German Embassy. Thereupon the "demonstrations" against Giolitti, against Austria and Germany, began in earnest. The first popular "demonstration" which I saw in Rome was a harmless enough affair, and for that matter none of them were really serious.
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