expenditure of effort we continued to tight up to the last moment. Bülow negotiated untiringly at this time. In accordance with Tisza's request I made an interpellation to him with a view to calling forth a manifestation by which the Hungarian Parliament declared her readiness to adhere to Italy's friendship in future (May 17). We made new concessions, but Sonnino cried out sarcastically: "Troppo tardo." Terror and passion throttled every counter-argument. The majority in Parliament gave way, and the Government declared war on May 23.
If this crisis had occurred while no agreement had as yet been reached between Italy and the Entente, and before public opinion was imbued with the feeling that we would regard an agreement as such a disgrace that we would have to reject it at the first opportunity, everything could still have been regularized.
Could we have counted on Italy's tenacity to neutrality if we had come to a final agreement, and need we not have feared that she would desert us in the end? We are not justified in assuming that the Italian Government would, of their own accord, have violated her definite undertaking before the ink was dry upon the signatures. Moreover, it is to be assumed that her neutrality would have brought about such successes that our friendship would have developed into an imperative interest for Italy. It is also to be assumed that if the Italian attack had not hampered our fighting power for years, we would have gained such successes on the other fronts, especially in the
