It is needless to say that great indignation is felt
in Italy, and some of the newspapers declare that the submarine was a German, though flying the Austrian flag. That they point out, makes the dastardly crime much worse, as Germany is, theoreti- cally, not in a state of war with Italy. And here we may say that we hope that this appalling piece of savagery will make the Italians realize that they ought at once to put an end to the farce of not being at war with Germany. They gain nothing by the maintenance of the farce, and we believe lose a great deal, and, quite wrongly of course, arouse a certain number of doubts in the minds of people here. As to the courage and bona fides of the Italian Government no well-informed person has the slightest shadow of a doubt, but people uneducated on public questions ask perplexedly what is the meaning of Italy's position. Commercially, Italy would, we believe, gain by a declaration of war. Germany has put herself entirely out of Court by violating the Hague Con- ventions as to rights between belligerents, and Italy might perfectly well refuse to be bound by them. Germany has become by her own act an outlawed nation. That does not mean that the war against her is to be fought with the brutality and lust of cruelty that she practises, but it does mean that the conventional rules of war which she rejects whenever convenient need not be applied in her case.
