but that any too pointed allusion to the war, any too violent attack upon the Teutonic bandits would arouse protests which might injure our cause.  I, being no orator, had only my poor written speech, which, as I could not alter it, became dangerous.  It was necessary to prepare the ground.  Destree mounted the platform and, in a masterly improvisation, began by establishing a long, patient and scholarly parallel between Flemish and Italian art, between the great painters of Florence and Venice and those of Flanders and Brabant; and thence, by imperceptible degrees, he shifted his ground to the present distress in Belgium, to the atrocities and infamies committed by her oppressors, to the whole story, to the whole series of injustices, to the whole danger of this nameless war.  He was applauded; the barriers were broken down.  Anything added to what he had said was superfluous; but everything was permissible.

3

For the rest, it must be admitted that a wonderful impulse of pity and admiration for Belgium sustained the orator and lent his every word a range and a potency which it could not otherwise have possessed.  This unanimous and spontaneous sympathy assumed at times the most touching and unexpected forms.  All difficulties were smoothed away before us as by magic; the sternest prohibitions were ingeniously evaded or benevolently removed.  From the towns which we were due to visit the hotel-keepers telegraphed to us, begging as a favour permission to give us lodging; and, when the time came to settle our account, it was impossible to get them to accept the slightest remuneration; and the whole staff, from the majestic porter to the humblest boot-boy, heroically refused to be tipped.  If we entered a restaurant and were recognized, the customers would rise, take counsel together and order a bottle of some famous wine; then one among them would come forward, requesting, gracefully and respectfully, that we would do them the honour of drinking with them to the deliverance of our martyred motherland.  At the memory of what that unhappy country had suffered for the salvation of the world, a sort of discreet and affecting fervour was visible in the looks of all; it may be said that nowhere was the heroic sacrifice of Belgium more nobly and more affectionately admired and understood; and it will be recognized one day, when time has done its work, that, although other causes induced Italy to take upon her shoulders the terrible burden of what was not an inevitable war, the only causes that really, in the depths of her soul, liberated her resolve were the admiration, the indignation and the heroic pity inspired by the spectacle, incessantly renewed, of our unmerited afflictions.  You will not find in history a nobler sacrifice nor one made for a nobler cause.

* * * * *

ON REREADING THUCYDIDES

XIII