Byron and Shelley, the
Brownings, Swinburne and Meredith--who were filled with a passionate
devotion to the Italian cause.[1] There were statesmen--Palmerston, Lord
John Russell and Gladstone--who did good work for Italian freedom, and
Italians still remember that in 1861 the British Government was the
first to recognise the new Kingdom of United Italy, while the
Governments of other Powers were intriguing to harass and destroy it.
There were individual, adventurous Englishmen, such as Forbes, the
comrade of Garibaldi, who put their lives and their wealth at the
disposal of Italian patriots. But, beyond all these, it was the great
mass of the British people which stood steadily behind the Italian
people in its long struggle for unity and freedom.

[Footnote 1: Even Tennyson, who was not very susceptible to foreign
influences, invited Garibaldi to plant a tree in his garden.]

Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour, "the soul, the sword and the brain,"
which together created Modern Italy, all had close personal relations
with this country. Mazzini, driven from his own land by foreign
oppressors, lived a great part of his life in exile among us, and here
dreamed those dreams, which still inspire generous youth throughout the
world. When Garibaldi visited us in 1864, he was enthusiastically
acclaimed by all sections of the nation, by the Prince of Wales, the
Peerage and the Poet Laureate, no less than by the working classes. It
is recorded that, used as he was, as a soldier, to the roar of battle
and, as a sailor, to the roar of the storm, Garibaldi almost quailed
before the tumultuous roar of welcome which greeted him as he came out
of the railway station at Nine Elms. Cavour was a deep student and a
great admirer of British institutions, both political and economic, and
in a large measure founded Italian institutions upon them. And the first
public speech he ever made was made in London in the English tongue.
These great men passed in time from the stage of Italian public life,
and others took their places, but amid all the shifting complexities of
recent international politics, no shadow has ever fallen across the path
of Anglo-Italian friendship. And indeed during the Boer War Italy was
the only friend we had left in Europe.

Italy's membership of the Triple Alliance was always subject to two
conditions, first, that the Alliance was to be purely defensive, and
second, that Italy would never support either of her partners in w