. The
case against the Germans--this case in which the Banca Commerciale
Italiana appears, I am convinced unjustly, as a suspect--is that they
have turned this natural and proper interchange with Italy into the
acquisition of German power. That they have not been merely easy
traders, but patriotic agents. It is alleged that they used their
early "pull" in Italian banking to favour German enterprises and German
political influence against the development of native Italian business;
that their merchants are not bona-fide individuals, but members of
a nationalist conspiracy to gain economic controls. The German is a
patriotic monomaniac. He is not a man but a limb, the worshipper of a
national effigy, the digit of an insanely proud and greedy Germania, and
here are the natural consequences.

The case of the individual Italian compactly is this: "We do not like
the Austrians and Germans. These Imperialisms look always over the Alps.
Whatever increases German influence here threatens Italian life. The
German is a German first and a human being afterwards.... But on the
other hand England seems commercially indifferent to us and France has
been economically hostile..."

"After all," I said presently, after reflection, "in that matter of
_Pecunia non olet_; there used to be fusses about European loans in
China. And one of the favourite themes of British fiction and drama
before the war was the unfortunate position of the girl who accepted a
loan from the wicked man to pay her debts at bridge."

"Italy," said Captain Pirelli, "isn't a girl. And she hasn't been
playing bridge."

I incline on the whole to his point of view. Money is facile
cosmopolitan stuff. I think that any bank that settles down in Italy is
going to be slowly and steadily naturalised Italian, it will become more
and more Italian until it is wholly Italian. I would trust Italy to make
and keep the Banca Commerciale Italiana Italian. I believe the Italian
brain is a better brain than the German article. But still I heard
people talking of the implicated organisation as if it were engaged in
the most insidious duplicities. "Wait for only a year or so after the
war," said one English authority to me, "and the mask will be off and it
will be frankly a 'Deutsche Bank' once more." They assure me that
then German enterprises will be favoured again, Italian and Allied
enterprises blockaded and embarrassed, the good understanding of
Italians and English poisoned, e