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Updated: June 1, 2025
It looked innocent enough when you got it, in view of what I told you about knowing a man who would lend you the money. But pipe how it sounds with Sonnino's safe bored full of holes. Are you listening? 'It's all right. Niccolo Sonnino has got his safe crammed full to-night. Meet me at Bristol Bob's at eleven. J. Barca." There was silence in the room.
The Italian Government, dissatisfied with the degree of help received from Great Britain, was not slow to indicate it in official conversations with our Ambassador. Happily, the silence of our Foreign Office and the secrecy of Baron Sonnino concealed the rifts of the lute until most of them were said to be repaired.
The attainment of his own end does not in fact require it. For after all, what is his end? In what hope, with what aim, did he come down from the mountains of Sonnino? Do you really believe he thought of becoming the benefactor of the nation? or the saviour of the Papacy? or the Don Quixote of the Church? Not such a fool! He thought, first, of himself; secondly, of his family.
Some of his countrymen alleged that Baron Sonnino was his evil genius. One of the many sayings attributed to him during the Conference turned upon the quarrels of some of the smaller peoples among themselves. "They are," the Premier said, "like a lot of hens being held by the feet and carried to market. Although all doomed to the same fate, they contrive to fight one another while awaiting it."
That this procedure involved a gross breach of the covenant between the Ambassador and Sonnino stipulating the maintenance of absolute secrecy was deemed an irrelevant consideration. Seldom in modern times have such underhand methods been resorted to by the Government of a Great Power.
Austria pleaded that her invasion of Serbia involved no permanent disturbance, because no permanent annexation was intended; to which Baron Sonnino retorted that Austria had declared, during the Turkish-Italian war, that an Italian bombardment of the Dardanelles or even the use of searchlights against the Turkish coast would constitute a breach of the agreement.
Il Corriere della Sera and Il Secolo of May 26, 1919. In the Senate he defended this attitude on March 4,1919, and expressed a desire to dispel the misunderstanding between the two peoples. In April, 1919. It was Baron Sonnino who deprecated the publication of any statement on the subject by President Wilson. Cf. La Stampa, July 10, 1919. On January 10, 1919.
At this juncture his house in Rome became a center of neutralists, and Von Bülow began overtures to Baron Sonnino, the new Italian Foreign Minister, to discover what territorial concessions the Italian Government would demand as recompense for the action of Austria and as the price of adherence to the alliance.
Bülow confidentially informed Sonnino that Germany was sending Count von Wedel to Vienna to persuade the Cabinet there to cede the Trentino to Italy, and asked him whether, if Austria acquiesced, it would not be possible to announce to the Chamber that the Italian Government had already in hand enough to warrant it in assuming that the main aspirations of the nation would be realized.
Baron Sonnino accordingly declined to accord the permission asked for, and consented only to allow a large consignment of "correspondence" to be sent on. Cf. L'Idea Nazionale, March 7, 1915; Tribuna, April 1, 1915. Later on Turkish officers were sent to Libya to egg on the Arabs to harass the Italians there.
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