e visitor.

The general trend of France's European policy was repugnant to Italy.
She looked on it as a well-laid scheme to assume a predominant role on
the Continent. That, she believed, was the ultimate purpose of the veto
on the union of Austria and Germany, of the military arrangements with
Britain and the United States, and of much else that was obnoxious to
Italy. Austria was to be reconstituted according to the federative plans
of the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to be made stronger than before as
a counterpoise to Italy, and to be at the beck and call of France. Thus
the friend, ally, sister of yesterday became the potential enemy of
to-morrow. That was the refrain of most of the Italian journals, and
none intoned it more fervently than those which had been foremost in
bringing their country into the war. One of these, a Conservative organ
of Lombardy, wrote: "Until yesterday, we might have considered that two
paths lay open before us, that of an alliance with France and that of
an independent policy. But we can think so no longer. To offer our
friendship to-day to the people who have already chosen their own road
and established their solidarity with our enemies of yesterday and
to-morrow would not be to strike out a policy, but to decide on an
unseemly surrender. It would be tantamount to reproducing in an
aggravated form the situation we occupied in the alliance with Germany.
Once again we should be engaged in a partnership of which one of the
partners was in reality our enemy. France taking the place of Germany,
and Jugoslavia that of Austria, the situation of the old Triple Alliance
would be not merely reproduced, but made worse in the reproduction,
because the _Triplice_ at least guaranteed us against a conflict which
we had grounds for apprehending, whereas the new alliance would tie our
hands for the sake of a little Balkan state which, single-handed, we are
well able to keep in its place.

"We have had enough of a policy which has hitherto saddled us with all
the burdens of the alliance without bestowing on us any advantage--which
has constrained us to favor all the peoples whose expansion dovetailed
with French schemes and to combat or neglect those others whose
consolidation corresponded to our interests--which has led us to support
a great Poland and a great Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not we,
were indifferent."[238] A pr