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of Milanese syndicalism and the rich magnates of the north, thelittle middle-class shopkeepers of the towns, and the great numbersof trade-unionists and farmers, to produce the final result in Italythat has brought so much misery to the world.VIII · Time for GreatnessITALY, moving along the current of ideas described here, floatedinto the first decade of the century with all the elements of disasterin her body. An economic prophet might have predicted doom forItaly in a few years. Yet that doom did not come for twenty years,and then only after an interlude of seeming prosperity and theimpact of a great war. But that war, which postponed the catastrophe,rendered it more inevitable and darker in the end.The man who was to preside over the most critical of these yearswas Giovanni Giolitti, described by Benedetto Croce as the greatestItalian of his era. Yet history must record that he was in no sensea great statesman. He was a master politician. He little understoodthe dark forces that were undermining his world. He was one ofthose ministers whose first aim is to remain in power. His businesswas not to solve problems but to settle disputes and to win thevotes of deputies. This he did by avoiding fixed principles and relyingon an ever-shifting opportunism. He spent and borrowed freelyand without scruples. He promised with liberality. He was all thingsto all men, took no firm stand against any school, compromised,soothed, wheedled. If he failed to solve any of the problems ofItaly he at least won in four elections, in 1902, 1904, 1909, and 1913.The secret of his tenure of power was that he listened attentivelyto the tremors of the soil, located every stream of thought and ranwith those streams, cajoling all the powerful minorities of labor,capital, and farmers, talking with firmness but taking no firmposition on any subject save as votes demanded it. He was a leaderof the Left. He made an alliance with the socialists, and, by virtueof that alliance, his spending, and his wars, remained in power33