résistance de la Bohême devrait être proportionnellement accrue et ne pourrait l'être qu'aux dépens de la force générale de résistance de la Monarchie autrichienne. Or, la sûreté de l'Autriche importe trop à l'Europe pour ne pas exciter la sollicitude particulière du Roi.

(2) En créant au sein du Corps germanique, et pour un de ses membres, une force d'aggression hors de proportion avec les forces de résistance de tous les autres, ce qui, mettant ceux-ci dans un péril toujours imminent, et les forçant à chercher des appuis au dehors, rendrait nulle la force de résistance que, dans le système général de l'équilibre européen, le corps entier doit offrir, et qu'il ne peut avoir que par l'union intime de ses membres."

Of course, Prussia protested that she desired to obtain all Saxony, not in order to overthrow Austria, but merely in the interest of European peace, that she had not the slightest intention to attack her neighbour. Prince Hardenberg handed to Prince Metternich on December 2nd, 1814, a note verbale in which he stated that "Prussia thought less than any other Power of increasing her territories." However, Prussia's protestations were not believed. The Duke of Coburg wrote to Lord Castlereagh, the British representative :

"La Saxe donnée à la Prusse suffirait pour diviser l'Autriche et la Prusse. Les frontières de l'Autriche seront compromises, ses mouvements militaires gênés et menacés, et les deux états, placés aux portes de l'un et de l'autre, se trouveront tôt ou tard dans une situation hostile permanente, dangereuse pour eux et pour l'Europe."

Talleyrand clearly foresaw the danger with which not only Austria, but all Europe, was menaced if the important strategical position occupied by Saxony should fall into Prussia's hands. Hence, he wrote on December 20th, 1814, to Louis XVIII. :—

"Il est évident que l'Allemagne, après avoir perdu son équilibre propre, ne pourrait plus servir à l'équilibre général, et que son équilibre serait détruit si la Saxe était sacrifiée."

Prince Metternich, the Austrian representative, plainly foretold that Prussia's possession of Saxony would threaten Austria, and that Prussia desired to use the Saxon territory for attacking Austria. At the sitting of January 28th, he put before the Congress a written protest in which we read :

"L'incorporation de la Saxe à la Prusse est également contraire aux intérêts directs de l'Autriche dans la supposition d'une divergence ou d'une réunion des vues politiques de l'Autriche et de la Prusse. Dans le premier cas, parce que, abstraction faite des considérations purement politiques et administratives, la Saxe, réunie sous un même sceptre avec la Silésie, complète un système militaire offensif contre l'Autriche. Cette combinaison, que le caractère personnel des monarques qui occupent les trônes de Prusse et d'Autriche rend sans doute beaucoup moins inquiétante pour le moment actuel, acquiert néanmoins sous le point de vue tant politique que militaire un double poids par la nature des nouvelles frontières de la Prusse et de l'Autriche en Pologne."

Unfortunately, the English representatives in Vienna did not sufficiently realise the importance of maintaining the integrity of Saxony. Owing to their attitude and to that of the British Government a compromise was effected. Thus Prussia received the larger half of the Kingdom of Saxony, containing about twofifths of the inhabitants. In 1866 the danger which Talleyrand, Prince Metternich, and the Duke of Coburg had foretold came true. Prussia, greatly strengthened by the possession of Northern Saxony, attacked and defeated Austria, and weakened Saxony could not offer an adequate resistance to the Prussian invader.

Saxony has suffered quite as much at Prussia's hands as has Austria herself. She has no reason to bear goodwill to Prussia, but she has reason to deplore the loss of her northern territories to Prussia. When the map of Europe comes to be redrawn Saxony may regain the provinces which Prussia took from her a century ago. They are inhabited by about 3,000,000 people. Their possession would increase the population of the Kingdom of Saxony to about 8,000,000, and if Saxony should rejoin Austria, Austria's population would be increased by not merely 21,500,000, the figure given previously in this article, but by nearly 25,000,000 Germans.

Prussia has been the hereditary enemy not only of Austria but of Saxony as well. Will Austria at last pursue an Austrian policy, or will she continue to follow a Prussian policy? The answer to that question will determine Austria's fate and Austria's future.

V.

ANTONIO SALANDRA: THE ITALIAN PREMIER.

To those not intimately in the "know," the sudden prominence of Antonio Salandra, and yet more his power to frustrate the intrigues and cabals engineered against him by the "clients' of Giolitti, who had urged his selection as a temporary diversion of public discontent from his own policy, came as a veritable surprise. Those who knew were perhaps less astonished, though even they were unprepared for Salandra's unobtrusive grip. This is the man who to-day governs Italy with the enthusiastic consent of the whole nation, accorded to him in a remarkable popular tribute in the troublous days of early May, and on him the nation has imposed its will-that Italy should participate in the great European conflagration.

Aged but little over sixty, florid and robust of aspect, energetic, frank, and good-natured of mien, speaking courteously and gently, he might very easily be judged a gentleman farmer of good

stock.

He puts on no airs, has no pretensions, never poses as being above the common. Hence at first sight it is difficult to grasp that we have to do with the greatest statesman Italy has produced since Cavour and Francesco Crispi.

On this account, too, the Italian people love him, for Antonio Salandra personifies their best qualities, i.e., strength without arrogance, audacity without provocative contempt, craft without malignity.

The Italians are a people of industrious and parsimonious burghers. Antonio Salandra is their worthy interpreter, for Italy, though unaffected by imperialist mania, is nevertheless in an ascensional period of her story, and her sons recognise that their duty bids them be alert; and Antonio Salandra, in the great world crisis, understood how to reconcile the honest utility of an initial neutrality with the open intervention of to-day beside the Triple Entente.

In all this he has interpreted and seconded the national soul, arousing it to unanticipated pulsations of pride and vitality. He has come into political life from what since ancient times have been known as “le Puglie assetate."

Now if there be in Italy a region which harbours wonderful, latent vitality, and which hitherto has lacked the means to put it to the proof, it is Apulia. Only within the last few days the

long-promised, long-worked-at Apulian aqueduct has begun to distribute its waters to Apulian agriculture and industry. Until then, this region developed but slowly, and was almost abandoned, because the Motherland had carelessly neglected this unadulterated corner of Italian earth. Nevertheless the peculiar conditions of Apulia have greatly influenced the character and political temperament of its inhabitants and its leaders, who have arrived at political power athwart a solid and careful preparation, and this because the regional problems included not only the question of the South, that burning and unsolved Italian governmental perplexity, but the whole internal and foreign Italian policy relating to the Adriatic.

None of Apulia's sons entered office better prepared than Antonio Salandra, for he had specialised as professor of administrative law, a "faculty" he taught for many years at the University of Rome.

As professor he was never a celebrity. His name never figured among those most quoted; his lectures were not eagerly attended; his grave, rather professional language was pronounced dull.

A collection of speeches and essays just published1 contains nothing that is truly genial, no spark of that fire which inflames and rouses youth to enthusiasm.

The truth is, Antonio Salandra was not born to be a professor. His is a political temperament; the Chamber arouses his passion rather than the Cathedra. The study of law was for him only

solid and weighty basis for the parliamentary combats into "hich he threw himself with ardour when his native city, Lucera, ected him its deputy.

Born at the close of the national Risorgimento, he entered political life at a depressed moment, when Italy was not yet securely welded into moral unity, but was anæmic and depleted in the economic sphere; when the body politic oscillated between the self-seeking factions, and false demagogic airs began to stir.

Like all countries of new political formation, Italy passed through her crisis led by Governments that opposed parliamentary intrigues and individual ambitions to solid governmental authority and an organic development of the State.

Divergent parties sought to win the favour of the multitude and the facile applause of the populace, advocating a lax, stunted, time-serving policy founded solely on concessions and compromises.

It was at such a depressed moment of national existence that Antonio Salandra entered the Chamber, and he entered it as a Conservative.

(1) Latenza, Bari, 1915.

There had lately arisen in the ranks of the constitutional parties a small but strong party of clear and decided political opinions ready to sacrifice individual popularity to the general good, and to revive in Italy that spirit of discipline and of collective duty that had grown weak and nerveless. Its leader was the actual Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Sidney Sonnino, and with him Antonio Salandra not only associated himself, but soon became one of the strongest supports of the group.

At this period, the Governments of the Left that succeeded each other were all, with the sole exception of the one presided over by Crispi, led by ministers with programmes entirely occupied with internal questions, without vaster horizons and higher ideals.

The Sonnino-Salandra group, named "The Party of Constitutional Opposition," fought ardently to vanquish the political degeneracy, upholding the banner of established authority.

Their purifying influence became ever more needful, as both in the Chamber and in the country there began to dominate the baneful phenomenon called Giolittismo, after its unscrupulous inaugurator.

For over ten years this man Giolitti held the reins of government, slowly corroding and sapping the fibres of the State, inoculating with favouritism all branches of the public administration, acquiescing in demagogic agitations, in anticlericalism, in the appropriation of State and public offices on the part of greedy, ignorant, and irresponsible personages.

It was at this period that the group Sonnino-Salandra fought epic parliamentary battles on behalf of the morality and authority of the State. They were in the minority, it is true; nevertheless, the country admired and venerated the austere deportment o men who refused to take office in order better to defend and indicate the right path for the nation to tread; men who, in the midst of the general depression, rose above factions and calmly debated many burning questions with studied and weighty arguments devoid of personalities or personal ambitions.

And how many, many battles were they called upon to fight! To peruse the volume just published by Salandra called La politica nazionale ed il partito liberale, wherein the Premier has collected his most important parliamentary and election speeches, is to realise the historic moments of Italian public life during the last two decades.

Thus, dealing with the question of the South, Salandra, who is profoundly acquainted with its problems, its needs, and its evils, advocated a policy of austere justice, of impartiality, and of labour in order to overthrow the Camorre, constituted of small