The little villino that I occupy is cared for by a couple whose only child is a little girl of eight. From my window I survey her activities and I have never yet seen her in play,
"Seen no little plan of chart or fragment From her beam of human life Shaped by herself with newly learned art."
When I look out in the morning she is likely to be sitting outside the gate as if awaiting something to transpire that would be worthy of observation, attention, or partic.i.p.ation. When I return in the middle of the day and again in the evening and when Sundays or other times I am in my rooms for a protracted period, I see her ever busily engaged in doing nothing. The only imaginative or emotional activity that I have ever witnessed her display is that sometimes I find her humming and she always smiles and greets me most affably. At times I see other children make a visit to her, but it is obviously a ceremonious one, for there are no shrieks or yells, no tumbling or rolling, no scampering or chattering, none of that display of physical vitality and joy of living that lambs or colts or calves or even puppies or kittens make. They are like a miniature group of Giacondas, older than the rocks upon which they sit, who have tasted all the joys to satiety. The doll that I gave her has apparently been put away, not at all unlikely with a scapular or holy beads. At least, I have never seen her with it in her arms since the day she received it. There is no sign of miniature wheelbarrow or shovel or sandpile, no little wooden geegee, no bicycle or miniature locomotive, no blocks or other material from which to construct a castle or a kitchen, no indication whatsoever that she attempts to portray any of the vagrant thoughts or fleeting fancies that arise in her budding mind. When I go on a Sunday to the little villages in the Campagna or in the Castelli Romani to which the proletariat repair with their families in villeggiatura, I see hundreds of children, but never once have I seen any of them playing, nor are they noisy and boisterous. If they are clamorous and restless, it is for food or for appeas.e.m.e.nt of some other physical need. Even the little boys do not play in the streets. Their one source of amus.e.m.e.nt is for a number of them to gather around a pile of small stones used for repair of the road and to divert themselves by hurling them at one another when a carriage or an automobile is not pa.s.sing, at which time they concentrate their efforts on attempts to slay the occupants of these vehicles with the deadly missiles at hand.
On the Janiculum where I live there is a paradise for children, a little park with the roaring, splashing fountain of St. Paolo at one end of it and the entrance to the broad, shaded driveway that traverses the Janiculum to St. Onofrio at the other. On either side of this drive are broad lawns interspersed with flowerbeds and shaded with most seductive trees, amongst which is Ta.s.so"s oak, now fallen into such a state of decrepitude that it has to have artificial support and braces. The place is often alive with children, painfully decorous and silent. They often remind me of Millet"s "Man with the Hoe," bowed down with the weight of ages. Not infrequently I meet in the morning and in the evening whole troops of children going and returning from the accessible fields of Monte Verde, always lined up like soldiers, two abreast, and the only manifestation of externalized emotion I have ever seen in them is that occasionally their keepers-priest, nun, or sour-visaged guardian-permit them to break into song-patriotic anthem or lyric wail.
It is notorious that games play no such part in the diversion of the adult Italian as they do in the countries peopled by our own race. Golf, tennis, football, cricket, baseball are practically unknown except as they have been established by foreigners for their own use. Naturally they have attracted some Italians, but there is no general interest in them. Contests of endurance, such as bicycle races and rowing, they have, and horse-racing has a certain vogue, but chiefly because it facilitates taking chances on the winner. This is the more remarkable, for when they do go in for games they often excel, showing apt.i.tude, endurance, and daring. There is no nationality that compares with them in their riding, for instance. It is not true to say that they do not play games. The Spanish game of ball known as pelota is played in some centres where the jeunesse doree segregate, and another game of ball called pallone is played a little, but with no enthusiasm, and it arouses no considerable interest. In fact, nothing included under the head of sport plays a great role in Italy. Fortunately it is being encouraged, and within a generation we may confidently antic.i.p.ate a decided change. It would, of course, be ridiculous to say that they do not shoot and fish. You often encounter in tramping through the country a man with a gun on his shoulder, but usually he is a pot-hunter, and now and then your rambles bring you face to face with a Nimrod, but in nine cases out of ten he likewise is animated by the desire for succulent food.
On superficial examination it seems extraordinary that this state of affairs should exist in a country which for many centuries seemed to have had its chief enjoyment in murder, sense-gratification, games, and contests of courage, strength, and endurance. No one can read the history of the days of Roman supremacy without being struck with the fact that the chief amus.e.m.e.nt of the populace of those days was play, display of strength, skill, dexterity, and inventiveness. Archaeologists and others interested in unearthing and interpreting archaic remains tell us that the aphorism that there is nothing new under the sun is true so far as games are concerned, and I expect any day to hear that they have disinterred a golf course at Ostia, a diamond or a football field at Salerno. However, after reflection, it occurs to me that there are many reasons why the Italians, young and old, do not play spontaneously and intentionally, or as naturally and pleasurably as those of other nations. It is easy enough to understand why all play ceased in those days of intellectual apathy, artistic sterility, and emotional decay which, beginning with the fourth century A.D., continued for nearly a thousand years. I have never looked into the matter with sufficient care to be able to say whether or not there was a renaissance of the play instinct or any elaborate and wide-spread manifestation of it beginning with the fourteenth century, but my impression is that there was. We have records of tournaments and jousts and games of various kinds in certain cities of Italy, such as Salerno; there still exist the physical features or foundations of such play. Any one who has read Italian history until the successful movement of nationality of 1870 will not be astonished that play in any form did not have a great vogue during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The people were too busy devising plans to outwit their neighbors and to get possession of their lands and their treasures to have time for play.
The Italian nature or temperament is not favorable to development of the play instinct. The Italian likes to act, or to display histrionic possession, more than anything else; it has often been remarked that they are born actors, and not only do they produce more great actors and actresses than any other country but you see more finished and artistic acting in Italy than in any other country of the world. They are devoted to mimicry, adepts in pantomime, and their "marionettes" have reached a high degree of artistic development. As for the cinema, they go to it with the ardor of a lover to his mistress. The theatre and gambling is the Italian idea of diversion, relaxation, and amus.e.m.e.nt.
The display and satisfaction of the play instinct spell work, oftentimes most laborious work carefully planned and elaborately carried out. The successful pursuit of games of all sorts requires not only work but oftentimes protracted physical training and profound physical effort. The Italians do not take kindly to them. In the south of Italy there are six months of the year and often more when no one is keenly disposed to active physical effort and at no time in the year is there that atmospheric incitation to physical activity that exists in England or in our own country. It may well be that children of the South do not take kindly to play because of the great and protracted heat, during which they are taught to remain within doors several hours in the middle of the day, and children of the lower cla.s.ses are often obliged to work during the cool hours.
Italian children mature very early, and the emotional disequilibrium that comes with the supremacy of a new internal secretion makes them self-conscious, bashful, retiring, and inimical to play. I am not inclined to lay much stress on any of these occurrences as an explanation for the apathy for play shown by Italian children. Jewish children, who live in countries quite as hot as Italy, and who certainly mature as early as Italian children, are naturally playful, and not only playful but inventive of games. If one reads the biographies of some of the literary Hebrews of America who have set forth in print their renunciations and their successes, it will be seen that despite their most unfavorable surroundings the play instinct in childhood-which, after all, is the imaginative faculty-is often very strong.
Another thing that is very curious in Italy is that children of both s.e.xes do not play together. It is true that no particular effort is made to keep them apart when they are very young, but there is no more unusual sight in Italy than a boy from ten to fourteen with a girl of the same age, unless it is to see a young man with a young woman who is not his wife. There is no open and fraternizing relationship between the s.e.xes. If you say in Italy that a young woman is the amica or friend of a man, you mean what is signified in French by chere amie. In certain parts of Italy, and particularly in the South, the position of women in society and in relationship to men savors very much of the Oriental.
Every one is agreed that play does two things for the young child-it promotes its physical welfare and it facilitates its budding imagination. More than this, it contributes materially to its education and, particularly, it develops its constructive faculties. It teaches older children and youths who partic.i.p.ate in games of skill and control the principles of give and take, bear and forbear, and it shows them how to be victors without arrogance and losers without venom. It instils principles of honesty, favors frankness and directness, and generally paves the way for successful dealing with their fellows socially, commercially, and politically in mature life. When one considers the pains and money that are expended in our own country and in England to teach young people how to play, it is astonishing how apathetic the Italians have been toward the matter.
My belief is that Italy is awakening to the fact that play is one of the most important factors in the development of the people, and if this war had not come on I should most likely not have had occasion to make these observations and to draw conclusions from them. I am told that a few years ago they began to have mixed schools, that is, schools where children of both s.e.xes are a.s.sembled during school hours, and in many cities there were stadia where sports of all sorts were encouraged and fostered.
There are many factors that have tended to impede the development of play in this country and the recognition of its importance, but aside from that there is something in the Italian temperament or nature that is antipathic to the play instinct and inimical to sports. Pedagogy has recognized its importance but it has not succeeded in promoting and developing it.
I have often wondered whether the suppression of the play instinct practically to the point of abnegation is not manifest in the energies and success of a people. Aside from the field of mechanical application as represented by that in the profession of engineering, I do not know of any realm in which the Italian of the past three or four generations has signally distinguished himself. There have been poets, artists, architects, physicians, priests, statesmen, philosophers, explorers, or interpreters of life and events whose names have taken permanent places in the world. I mean to say that in this period there have been many Italians who have attained eminence and earned immortality, but there has been no one from whom an epoch dates: no Pasteur, no Deisler, no Thompson, no Devries, no Stanley, no Edison, no Langley, no Wright, no Morgan, no Eddy-to enumerate only a few of those that are legitimately put in the cla.s.s of supermen.
This paucity of genius may be no more than a coincidence, but it strikes me, nevertheless, as extraordinary that a country which has enjoyed freedom as this country has for the past fifty years, has not manifested the fruits of its liberation from tyranny and oppression such as were manifested in France after the French Revolution, when once its devastation had been cured.
If the child is father to the man, it stands to reason that indulgence and training during childhood will manifest their effect during maturity, and success in any activity of human life stands in direct relation to imagination or vision and industry. It likewise follows that if we neglect to facilitate the development of the former and to develop the appet.i.te for and form the habit of the latter during the early years of life, it is too much to expect the display of them in later years. It is quite possible, it seems to me, that the reputation for lack of directness in their dealings with the peoples of other nationalities, their circuitousness in the business affairs of life, their secrecy or lack of frankness and candor, their ceremoniousness, their failure to cement a solid friendship with other nations of Europe, may, in some measure at least, be linked up with the suppression of the play instinct in childhood and the subservient place which they have given to women.
CHAPTER XVII "IF A MAN WALKETH IN THE NIGHT, HE STUMBLETH BUT IF HE WALKETH IN THE DAY HE SEETH THE LIGHT OF THIS WORLD"
My morning walks take me the length of the Janiculum. In the early light of these autumn days Rome and its settings take on an expression of seductive resignation due largely to the clouds which rob it of that glare which is the most trying feature of summer in Rome. The clouds permit streams of light to filter through, as if from a monstrous search-light, especially over the Castelli Romani and the Alban Hills. Ordinarily Monte Cavo is on the horizon line, but to-day, after the sun had been nearly an hour on its diurnal way, hundreds of parallel bundles of light were directed perpendicularly upon it, so that another chain of mountains came into view beyond, and the decaying villa surmounting it seemed to be in a valley atop of a mountain peak backed by other peaks. The way from my villino to St. Peter"s is past the Garibaldi monument, and I am well acquainted with the countenances of his generals and his guard, whose life-size busts in marble flank the monument in long, parallel rows, const.i.tuting an alley leading up to it. If their effigies do them justice, they were fine-looking, intelligent, and resolute.
It takes me also past the hideous lighthouse which Argentina thrust upon the Italians, and which has been erected upon a spot from which one has perhaps the most commanding view of Rome, its near and distant environment.
This morning I determined that I would spend a half-hour in the Church of S. Onofrio and refresh my recollections of the frescoes of Balda.s.sare Peruzzi and of Pinturicchio, and pay a tribute to the memory of the greatest poet of the late Renaissance, Torquato Ta.s.so. On the side of the steps that lead down to the shoulder of the hill surmounting St. Peter"s is an oak-tree, long since dead, but securely banded and spliced and propped by indestructible metal. Here, it is said, Ta.s.so sat and contemplated, too forlorn and ill further to poetize, during those months of 1594 while he was awaiting his call to the capitol to be crowned poet laureate. When the illness to which he succ.u.mbed increased to such extent as to incapacitate him he repaired to S. Onofrio "to begin my conversation in heaven in this elevated place, and in the society of these holy fathers." It is strange enough that Ta.s.so is a very real and living force in Italy to-day. Not only are many of his poems, and selections from them, read in the schools, but "Jerusalem Delivered" on the screen has recently had a remarkable success in Rome and in other cities of Italy.
The Convent of S. Onofrio is now scarcely more than a reminder of what it was in its golden days. Long before the Italian Government had abolished the right of monasteries to hold property, and therefore delivered the death-blow to the parasitical grasp which they had upon this country, the Ospedale Bambini Gesu had taken possession of a large part of it and converted it into a work of mercy and of salvation which finds, I fancy, more favor in the eyes of people to-day than does conventual life. The church, rather impressive from without and particularly when approached from below, is small and dainty and has distinctly a spiritual atmosphere. It is what the Italians call molto carina. When I entered the church there was one solitary female prostrate before an image. I fancied that she had had a troubled night and had repaired to this sacrosanct environment early in the morning to purge herself of her sins and to ask forgiveness. For a long time she remained in an att.i.tude of profound contrition, and I was curious to see if, on arising, she displayed in feature or in form any evidences or manifestations of indulgence in those transgressions which we are taught are so offensive to the Lord. My vigil was rewarded by the sight of age, deprivation, and poverty. Had pulchritude or pa.s.sion ever been a part of her, all sign of them had pa.s.sed; had sins of commission ever brought to her riches or the semblance of riches, she had long since forfeited them; had her transgressions been translated into fugitive pleasures, no signs of them remained. Like Ta.s.so, she had repaired there to begin the conversation she hoped to continue in heaven. It is much more likely, however, that she had gone to church without definite antecedent thought or determination. It seems to be as much an act of nature for women in Italy when they reach a certain age to haunt the churches as it is for their hair to turn gray. They do it quite as mechanically as they do their housework. I often doubt that there is any spiritual or emotional feeling accompanying it whatsoever. I am certain that the recitation of prayers which were learned in infancy, and which have been repeated thousands of times without the smallest attention to the significance of the words, as children recite them, is not a.s.sociated with any spiritual alteration, neither humility nor exaltation. It is part of the meagre, barren daily life of these old women, and they get from it something which for them const.i.tutes pleasure and satisfaction.
As I sat in contemplation of the frescoes surrounding the high altar, and which set forth the coronation of the Virgin, the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt, a middle-aged monk or priest came forward and volunteered to draw the curtain that more light might fall upon them. He was incredibly dirty and dishevelled, and he had lost an eye, but he was gentle and simple and friendly. He told me what he knew about the frescoes; he bemoaned the evil days upon which the world had fallen, and he expressed the hope that peace and tranquillity would soon again be ours; but when I attempted to talk to him about the significance of the war and the universal awakement to man"s rights that would flow from it, I found that his comments were ejaculatory and that his reflections had no root in thought or reason. It is incredible that a person so nave and so lacking in every display of intelligence, culture, and perspicacity can be a spiritual teacher or guide. Perhaps it is that faith alone is necessary that one shall satisfactorily fulfil his duties as priest.
He called my attention to an oil graphite on the side walls of the chapel which had been uncovered in recent times. In early days its artistic merit or value was not appreciated and it had been covered over with other pastels or paintings thought to be more appropriate or more fitting. The composition is a figure standing in what seems to be a square box and on either side a number of closely ma.s.sed masculine figures, each one having a different facial expression, one of astonishment, another of incredulity, another of humility and satisfaction. It depicted the Resurrection of Christ, my little friend thought, but when he saw a figure outside the box that resembled Christ, he thought it must be the resurrection of Lazarus, and then in the most childlike way he remarked that the figure in the box seemed to be a female one, and as that didn"t seem to fit in with the resurrection of Lazarus he gave it up. I fancy that he had never read that when Martha and Mary made their successful appeal Lazarus had been dead four days, and that after Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me," Lazarus came forth bound hand and foot with grave-clothes and his face was bound about with a napkin. These accoutrements of the grave would successfully conceal s.e.x, even from the eyes of a sacerdotal Sherlock Holmes.
I persuaded him to take me into the convent that I might see Leonardo"s lovely fresco of the Virgin and the Child, and standing before it he spoke of the sweetness of the mother"s expression and of the dignity and n.o.bility of her pose and carriage in a way that made me forget his ignorance and his unattractive exterior.
In the northwest chapel of the little church is the grave and monument of Ta.s.so. There is nothing particularly meritorious about the monument, and there is nothing even suggestive of poetry. The effigy represents the poet in the costume of a Spanish cavalier as he appeared at the age of his greatest activity. The chapel opposite is a jungle of frescoes depicting scenes in the life of S. Onofrio, who lived like an animal in the desert for more than half a century, and who, for thus outraging nature"s laws, was brought to Rome to teach others how to live acceptably in G.o.d"s eyes. After he had gone to his final reward, which we trust was the opposite of a desert, the church in its wisdom made him a saint.
I did not attempt to visualize the desert-dweller or his activities as I descended the steps that lead from this lovely hill to the Tiber, for I was soon lost in contemplation of a view with which I was very familiar but which now presents itself at a different angle, for I had never been down this well-worn stone staircase. The little street led first past the fine old Salviati Palace, a vast, ma.s.sive structure built apparently to provide a sumptuous piano n.o.bile and a great impressive court. It has, I suppose, a definite architectural beauty, but to me it looks merely ma.s.sive, c.u.mbersome, and overgrown. It reminds of nothing so much as of a lady whose figure, once worthy of admiration, had become altered by the adipose that is fatal to beauty. From here it is but a few steps to the Villa Farnesina, with its priceless possessions from Raphael"s hand, but my way leads me across the rickety iron suspension bridge immediately in front of the Salviati Palace, to cross which one must pay a penny. From the middle of this bridge one gets a stunning view of the Castle of S. Angelo and the Holy Ghost Hospital. The latter, an enormous Renaissance structure, accommodates upward of five thousand patients. It looks to-day much as ill.u.s.trations of it show that it looked five hundred years ago. In those days it was the last cry in hospitals, but it is far from that to-day. In fact, as a hospital it leaves much to be desired. I go there sometimes to visit the library, which has one of the largest collections of incunabuli in the world. As you look over it from the end of the Ponte Ferro, the dome of St. Peter"s seems as if it were suspended from the heaven and its marvellous symmetry is most impressive. When you look at the dome of St. Peter"s and the church together, there is something a little incongruous. I do not attempt to define it, but it is the same thing that you get when you look at a man whose hat doesn"t fit.
After crossing the Tiber I strike into the heart of the densely populated city through a succession of narrow streets without sidewalks, and flanked on either side with never-ending little shops, now and then crossing a piazza which gives s.p.a.ce and light to some ma.s.sive mediaeval palace. But none of them solicits me to stop until the Palazzo Braschi comes into view. I have seen its wondrous staircase, with its many columns of Oriental granite, so often that I would pa.s.s it by without a thought were it not for the brutally hideous figure of Pasquino, who greets me from his pedestal like an old acquaintance. I realize quite well that he has been called one of the most beautiful remains of antique sculpture, and that the expert eye, guided by a knowledge of h.e.l.lenic art supremity, may see charm and wondrousness in it, but I have bid him good-morning and good-day many times, and, like some old acquaintances, he does not get nearer my heart as I learn to know him better. There have been innumerable conjectures as to what the figure represents. The one most generally accepted is that it represents Menelaus supporting the dead body of Patroclus after the vile Trojan had stabbed him in the back while Hector was engaging his attention. You have such a feeling of pride in Patroclus and the wonderful things that he did with his Myrmidons that your heart goes out to him. When the Trojan War was going badly, he was persuaded to take up the direction of the forces against the enemy, and one cannot help feeling grateful to Menelaus for having played the good Samaritan to him at the end. But if this old King of Sparta had made Helen behave better when Paris came to visit them, she might never have eloped with that hazardous youth after he had made the memorable decision on Mount Ida, spurning power promised by Juno, and glory and renown tendered by Minerva, in order that he might have the fairest woman in the world for wife. But one should not be too hard on the old king. There is no telling just how far Helen acted on her own initiative and how far Venus was responsible for the flight. Still, were it not for this little irregularity in the conduct of the royal household, we would have been denied a knowledge of the greatness of Greece and a record of its accomplishments in one of the greatest poems, which has been a solace and a stimulation to countless lovers of literature the past two thousand years.
Though I bring no trained eye or accurate information to the discussion of Pasquino"s ident.i.ty, I am convinced, since seeing the bronze statue of a boxer which Lanciani unearthed in excavating the Baths of Constantine in 1885, that this statue is no other than an early marble setting forth the same subject. To me it is the effigy of a fighting brute. Whatever his name or his profession may have been, he has become known the world over as Pasquino, and satires and sarcasms similar to those which he is supposed to have uttered to the amus.e.m.e.nt and edification of the Romans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have become known as pasquinades all over the world.
Italians like to write stories concerning historic incidents and to embellish them with a veneer of verisimilitude. They like particularly to give them a personal note, deprecatory or laudatory. When the Egyptian obelisk was being forced to a perpendicular position in the Piazza of St. Peter"s, the crowd had been admonished under penalty of death to be silent. The stillness of the piazza, broken only by the creaking of the ropes, was suddenly torn asunder by a shout of "Wet the ropes." Thus the famous obelisk was preserved intact, and the man whose discernment had accomplished it, instead of having his head cut off, was allowed to furnish the palms for St. Peter"s every Palm Sunday. Incidentally he was enn.o.bled, and since that time his reward has been the family"s chief a.s.set. In the same way, one of the river G.o.ds of the fountain set up in the middle of the Piazza Navona seems to be drawing a mantle up over his head while the others, those of the Danube, the Ganges, and the Rio della Plata, are looking straight ahead. Bernini, who built the fountain, says that Nile was so shocked by the facade which Borromini, a contemporary architect, added to the Church of St. Agnes, which is immediately in front of it, that he had to veil his face.
The story of Pasquino is that he asked questions concerning the conduct of the reigning power, which, of course, in those days was the pope, and made reflections which Marforio, the river G.o.d which stood between the horse-tamers in the Piazza della Quirinale, answered. Pasquino, in short, became the organ of public opinion, and it was not subject to the censor, for the authors prudently kept out of sight. His most poisonous venom and destructive wrath were directed against popes and cardinals. If he said the things that he is alleged to have said about Alexander VI and Innocent XI (the holy man who started the Inquisition), it is easy to understand that one of their successors wished to throw him into the bottom of the Tiber, the resting-place of countless priceless objects of art for many centuries. As a matter of fact, however, the stories about Pasquino to be found in every guide-book are, like many other stories when run to earth, largely fiction.
Thirty years ago there was published in the Nuova Antologia an article by Domenico Gnoli which sets forth the real history of Pasquino. When Cardinal Carraffa went to live in the Braschi Palace he had the statue set up at one of the corners, and there it has since remained. In those days religious processions were as common as automobiles and bicycles are to-day. The priests in them often rested at this corner, and it became the custom to make up the statue to represent different personages, and the man who was intrusted with this task happened to be a professor in the adjacent university. He encouraged his boys to write epilogues, elegies, and epigrams which they pasted or stuck on the statue. At first these were purely literary efforts, juvenile flights to Parna.s.sus, but later they took on a political and social flavor, while still later they became concerned with the doings of the Curia. These pasquinades have been collected in book form, and some of the volumes exist at the present time. The majority, however, have been lost-perished in flames, destroyed as having no value, or disappeared in other ways. Thus the statue was initiated as a news-bearer or organ of public opinion.
Immediately across the road from the statue there was a tailor or barber shop, and the name of the chief operator was Pasquino. It was in this shop that the messages stuck on the statue were collected, deciphered, and discussed, and when the witty tailor died they gave his name to the statue and thus immortality was thrust upon him. In reality, after the cessation of the publications, "Carmina quae ad Pasquillum fuerunt posita in anno," and the murder of the professor who had encouraged his students to put forth their youthful efforts, men groaning under the oppression of their rulers, men big with ideas of what we now call liberty, men in whom the germs of freedom and equality had been implanted, saw a fairly safe way of getting their sentiments before the public, and they utilized Pasquino as a forum from which they could radiate their ideas and their sentiments. During the entire sixteenth century these men conveyed to the Borgias and to Julius II and Paul III and Innocent X and Innocent XI and Pius VI an expression of their feeling and conviction concerning their conduct, individually and collectively. Whether these contributions had anything to do with shaping public opinion and leading up to the great Reformation, it is impossible to say.
Whatever Pasquino accomplished or didn"t accomplish seems not to concern him, for there he sits tranquilly upon six blocks of volcanic stone, indifferent to the pa.s.sing show and to the transpirations of the world.
A few paces beyond the Palazzo Braschi I suddenly come upon one of the most attractive and alluring piazzas in Rome, the Piazza Navona, or, as it is sometimes called, the Circo Agonale. By its oblong form, its seductive symmetry, its elaborate decorations-three beautiful fountains, the central one surmounted by an Egyptian obelisk which once stood in the Circus of Maxentius; by its boundaries, which include the Palazzo Pamfili, the Church of S. Agnese, and the Church of S. Giacomo of the Spaniards, and innumerable small and large houses-it succeeds in conveying to the observer, who is susceptible to aesthetic impressions, sensations which are as purely pleasurable as anything can possibly be. Were it not for the distinctively Italian architecture one might easily imagine that he was in the centre of some provincial large city of France. It has, more than any other public square that I have ever been in, that quality which we speak of as foreign. No two buildings are alike, and, mean though many of them are, and especially toward the northern end, they blend in such a way as to produce a perfect harmony of color and architectural effect. In olden times they held races here, and I can imagine how marvellous a sight it must have been with the palaces and houses gayly decked with flags and drapery, rich rugs hanging from the window-sills, on which leaned beautiful ladies, frail and strong, attended solicitously, perhaps watchfully, by cavaliers and admirers, and the square below filled with the pleasure-loving crowd whose conduct betrayed nothing else save a desire to be amused and diverted. During the summer I often sat for a half-hour on my way home in this square, and, while watching the countless children from the surrounding tenements in those simple indulgences which they call play, tried to fancy some of the events that had taken place in the square and in the palaces and churches bordering it.
It was in the Pamfili Palace, built by Innocent X in 1650 for his predatory and dissolute sister-in-law, Olympia Malacchimi, that the fortunes of the Pamfili family began. Here she sold bishoprics and beneficences, and here she externalized that conduct which brought infamy on her name. What a story an account of the intimate doings of that family would make! Their palace in the Corso is one of the most beautiful Renaissance residences in the world, and their villa on the Janiculum is an approximation to a rural paradise. All that is left of the family is a faded, sad, suggestible, middle-aged princess, whose English appearance and manner betray a lifelong habit of emotional suppression, and one son who is eking out his miserable days in the mountains of Switzerland.
Immediately adjacent to the palace is the Church of St. Agnes, built about the same time and on the spot where the girl whose name it commemorates was supposed to have had miraculous delivery from humiliations and outrages similar to those to which the Belgian nuns were subjected by the Germans. I say "Germans" advisedly, for I am unable to understand why any one should think for a moment that the term "Hun," so widely applied to them, carries with it any such obloquy or opprobrium as the simple name "German." I venture to say that in years to come, when any one wishes to describe abominations, cruelties, savageries for which no name is adequate, he will use the term "Germanic." Then even the most inexperienced in crime and sin will get a glimmering of what is meant.
It is related that when Agnes was about fourteen years old she was taken to a lupa.n.a.lia and there, bereft of all her clothing, became the target of the word and the conduct of a group of lubricitous monsters. Overwhelmed with shame, her head fell upon her chest and she prayed. Immediately her hair took on such miraculous growth that it concealed her nakedness. But there were other more startling experiences in store for her. For her rebelliousness and general contumacy she was condemned to be burned alive. When the flames were about to devour her they suddenly became possessed of a dual quality, one radiating refreshment upon her, the other destruction upon her executioners. The lady had many other experiences which have long since been denied her s.e.x, but it is popularly believed that she devotes much attention in her heavenly home to seeing that maidens who request her in a proper frame of mind and body, which for the latter is twenty-four hours" abstinence from everything but pure spring water, are provided with husbands. It would be trivial of me to add that she probably is overworked these days when so many prospective husbands are at the front, but I have no real information on the matter, and I sincerely hope that the nubile Italians have no serious difficulty in finding spouses.
From here my route is to the Corso, which at this early hour is nearly deserted. There are many streets that I may take: one that leads to the Pantheon; another that goes past the Palazzo Madama and other interesting public and private buildings. As a rule I take the latter, for it leads me to the Via Condotti, which ends in the Piazza di Spagna. Before the war this piazza was the rendezvous of American tourists. The vendors of objects of art and of Roman pearls, the antiquarian who had his wares fabricated around the corner or in the Trastevere, the dealer in genuine Raphaels and Tintorettos, the rapacious dealers in old books are all there, but most of them are on their knees in their shops with half-closed shutters, praying for the war to end so that the gullible rich Americans may come again. Their prayers are heard and their supplications will soon be answered. Meanwhile I cast a glance at the wretched monument erected a half-century ago to commemorate the promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, look lovingly at the semi-sunken boat-shaped fountain just in front of the steps, and begin slowly to mount the most impressive steps in Rome, which seem to lead up like heavenly stairs to the ma.s.sive, double-belfried Church of Trinita dei Monti, with the graceful Egyptian obelisk in front of it. Nowadays the steps are not so picturesque as I have often seen them in peace time, when lovely artists" models, picturesque loafers and the exponents of the dolce far niente collected on the steps and made, in conjunction with the flowers and plants that were exhibited there for sale, an almost unique picture. It is now deserted save for some hazardous Greek or Italian who attempts to eke out a living by disposing of flowers that have been camouflaged to look fresh. Nevertheless the staircase and its environment make an appeal which repeated visits serve only to increase. From the top of it, in the little square in front of the church, one gets an attractive, though limited, view of the city and of Monte Mario, but it is a view that convinces him that he is in a city quite unlike any other in the world.
A picturesque old woman who sells papers at the bottom of the stairs has made a regular customer out of me, and I scan the morning news as I ascend the steps, and by the time I have reached the top I find thoughts of beauty and of the good old days are being replaced by thoughts of work and of the war. As I walk across the Pincian Hill I am conscious that I am big with joy at what the past twenty-four hours have accomplished at the battle-front, and throbbing with antic.i.p.ation of what the following day will bring forth. That it will soon bring victory, complete and absolute, even the professional warrior is now forced to admit, and soon we shall bask again in the light of a livable world.
CHAPTER XVIII THE AMERICAN EAGLE CHANGES HIS PERCH
The shrieks of the American eagle have been joyous sounds to American ears since 1776, when we discovered his capacity to render our hymn of freedom. Heretofore our national bird has been in best voice on his native soil. When brought to Europe by statesman or hero, by citizen or delegate, it was found that certain conditions there impaired his vocality and the flap of his wings. Suddenly in 1918 all this changed. Conditions were not only favorable-they were ideal. Perched upon a parapet of Guildhall, sitting majestically on the Eiffel Tower, alight on the campanile that crowns the Capitoline Hill, his shrieks conveyed a message to the people of Europe whose ears have awaited it longingly for centuries, and the flapping of his wings created a current that stimulated and energized them. Floating majestically through the empyrean, he was to those human beings, weary of war, of tyranny, and of privilege, what the dove was to the occupants of the ark-the emblem of salvation. Nothing could then convince the peoples of Italy that this harbinger of hope had not been liberated by Woodrow Wilson. I cannot believe that the American eagle has permanently forsaken the United States of America. I antic.i.p.ate hearing there again the familiar scream. One tolerates him better at home than in Europe, but I must accord the bird great sapiency in having selected the autumn of 1918 to give the European people the opportunity to judge of the quality and quant.i.ty of his vocal production.
It is a plat.i.tude to say that no prophet or potentate, no king or conqueror was ever greeted with such spontaneous, whole-hearted, genuine enthusiasm as President Wilson was greeted in Italy, and, if I may judge from newspaper accounts, the reception which was offered him there was not unlike that which he received in England and France. He went to Italy when its people were incensed by the conduct of the newly fledged Jugoslavs, and when the press was in the throes of inflammatory polemics over the fate of the Treaty of London. It was widely known in Italy that President Wilson was not in sympathy with the Sonninian alleged imperialistic policies and that he was fully in sympathy with the Jugoslav aspirations. Nevertheless, the Italians, from royalty to peasant, welcomed him with a spontaneity and warmth, an enthusiasm and whole-heartedness, a genuineness and devotion that was as moving as anything I ever witnessed. The hour of his arrival in Rome was not definitely known until shortly before he arrived. But despite this hundreds of people remained in the street all night, and thousands of them gathered there before sunrise in order that they might not miss the opportunity of looking upon him whom they firmly believed to be the apostle of liberty and freedom, the herald of light and brotherly love. It was not curiosity alone that prompted them to this effort and sacrifice of comfort. Curiosity undoubtedly entered into it, but the potent reason for the outpouring that took place that memorable January was that their presence might convey to our President an expression of their esteem and an earnest of their appreciation of his efforts.
No American, though he had the heart of a frog and the emotional caliber of a lizard, could suppress the succession of thrills that mounted from his bowels to his brain on seeing with what dignity, suavity, and self-respecting composure their Chief Magistrate comported himself as he was transported through the Via n.a.z.ionale, seated beside the most democratic and beloved king in the world. Though the American spectator had spent his time impregnating with venom darts which he believed he would gladly drive into the President, he had to admit that there was a man who more than satisfied all of Kipling"s "Ifs." When he encountered him later in the Palazzo del Drago acting as host at the table of his country"s charming amba.s.sadress, or at Montecitorio, where he told the Solons of Italy of his country"s hopes, ideals, aspirations, and willingness, or in less solemn moments on the Capitoline, when he received the honorary citizenship of Rome, he knew that his first impressions were founded in verity and he lent a willing ear to the screech of the American eagle which revealed itself throughout the entire Italian press. Every city of Italy clamored for a visit, and though he spent but a few minutes in Genoa and a few hours in Milan, the outpouring of the people to welcome him was no less remarkable than it was in Rome. The tribute which Europe gave Mr. Wilson seemed to depress many of his countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. It is an extraordinary thing that while Europe rocked with his fame America reeked with his infamy.
After having lived two years in Italy I found many things about the Italians difficult to understand. After having lived fifty years in the United States of America I find some things about the Americans beyond comprehension. Nothing is so enigmatic as their att.i.tude toward Woodrow Wilson, the man who was accorded higher esteem in Europe than was ever vouchsafed mortal man, and who gave and has since given earnest of such accord. From the day he decided to represent our country in the Peace Conference the papers and magazines began to contain the material from which could readily be formulated a new hymn of hate. What was the genesis of this display? What was the cause of this distrust? From whence did this venom emanate? How could a man whose life was a mirror of integrity, whose ideals were of the loftiest, and who attempted to conform his conduct to them excite such contempt? Why should the only statesman who had revealed the ability to formulate a plan which, put in operation, led to cessation of hostilities, who was the leader in formulating the terms of peace, and who insisted, and had his insistence allowed, that it should incorporate a covenant whose enforcement would make for perpetual peace, be hated and distrusted, vilified and traduced, thwarted and misrepresented by so many of his countrymen? What had he done, by commission or omission, that such treatment should be accorded him? I propose to attempt to answer these questions and thus to suggest why he has been a failure as President. I know the replies usually given to these questions by his depreciators and defamers. "His nature is so imperious and his temper so tyrannical that he cannot co-operate with others; he neither solicits advice nor heeds counsel; he selects his coadjutors, aides, and advisers from those whom he knows he can dominate; the pa.s.sport to his favor is flattery, and intimacy with him is maintained only by the cement of agreement; he neither made preparation for war when there was ample time for doing so nor did he wage war until months after repeated casus belli; he is hypocritical in having sought and accomplished election under the slogan "He kept us out of war," and immediately on being elected he "thrust" the country into war; he was "too proud to fight" in 1916, but keen to fight in 1917; he has hebrewphilia and popophobia; he is a socialist masquerading as a liberal; he is a Bolshevik beneath the mask of a radical. In brief, he is temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States; intellectually and morally unfit to represent its people; and withal so completely under the dominion of an insatiate ambition to be the greatest man the world has ever known that every kindly human feeling has been crowded from him."
Intelligent, educated men who have never seen him, who know little of his career save that he was president of Princeton University and governor of the State of New Jersey and twice President of the United States, elected by the Democratic party, hate him as if he were a bitter personal enemy, malign him as if he had injured their reputation for honesty and probity, calumniate him as though he were a man without character, depreciate him as though his career were barren of signal accomplishment, and distrust his motives and procedures as though he had once, or many times, betrayed them. Men who are unable to give the smallest specificity to their dislike of him feel that they add to their stature by detracting from his accomplishments and defaming him. Not one of them with whom I have talked has been able to state the facts of his disagreement and rupture with the trustees of Princeton University. My understanding was that he insisted that the university should submit to certain reforms that would make it democratic in reality as well as in name, and that would enhance its pedagogical usefulness, and that there should not be a privileged cla.s.s in the university, viz., members of exclusive clubs whose portals were opened by money. He maintained that his training as an educator, his experience as an administrator, his accomplishment as a student of history and as an interpreter of events, his experience with men, ent.i.tled him to a judgment concerning the needs of such an inst.i.tution that should be given a hearing, and he contended that his recommendations, rather than those of trustees whose training had been largely in the world of affairs, be put in operation and at least be given a trial. He had the courage to jeopardize his very bread and b.u.t.ter, and that of his family, at a time in his life when his physical forces had reached their zenith rather than sacrifice what he believed to be a principle. The men who were permitted to take Woodrow Wilson"s measure in that contest had no more idea of his stature than if they were blind. They would have laughed to scorn the idea that five years later the people of the United States would select him for their president. It was in this episode that his repute not to be able to do team-work with his equals and his inferiors originated. Time has shown that it isn"t only a question of being able to do team-work, he cannot do his best work in an atmosphere of friction and dissent. It is as impossible for him to yield a position which he has taken, and which we will a.s.sume he believes to be right, as it is impossible for the magnet to yield the needle that it has attracted; therefore he adopts the only course for him-he doesn"t enter contests, save golf with his physician.
His cabinet meetings are a farce, so say they who have never attended one and who have never even spoken to a cabinet member. He selects pygmies for his cabinet and for his aides in order that they may proffer him no advice, resent no contradiction or protest indignities to their offices. This in face of the fact that he and his cabinet and his aides have conditioned the only miracle of modern times, namely, throwing a whole country, millions of whose people were adverse to war, into a bellicose state which was never before witnessed; conditioning and transporting the men and material resources of that country across the Atlantic and into the fighting lines at a crucial moment, at a time when the backs of the Allies were against the wall, according to the statements of their own authorized spokesmen; who succeeded in engendering in the composite mind of the American people a determination to win the war that was more potent than men or weapons; who impregnated the composite soul of the Allies with a faith that the world would be an acceptable abode for the common people once the enemy was crushed, that transcended in its intensity the faith of the Christian martyrs; who filled the heart of every statesman of the Allied nations with a hope and belief that there was within him the masterful mind that would conduct their legions to victory and salvation. If he and his pygmies accomplished this, I am one who maintains they are myrmidons and giants. But they didn"t do it, his detractors say. The rejoinder to which is: "I know, a little bird did it!"
If we had entered the war after the sinking of the Lusitania, when the wise men of the West say we should have gone in, countless lives and inestimable expenditures would have been spared. Where is the man in the United States of America to-day who has revealed the Jove-like mind that ent.i.tles him to make such sentient statement? When he is found, how can he possibly know? What delivery of thought, idea, conception, execution has he ever made that ent.i.tles him to be heard, not to say believed? How can any one possibly know what would have been the result of our entrance into the war at that time? If any one thing is responsible for America"s efficiency in the war, it is that it had the American people fused into one man with one mind, determined to win the war. I am sure that I encountered nothing in the United States in my travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again in the spring of 1916 that made me believe that the people of our country wanted war, or that there could be developed in them at that time a sentiment which would make for such internal resistance of the people as they displayed in the spring of 1917 and continued to display until November 11, 1918. I cannot speak from personal knowledge, for I was not in the United States during the year of its war efficiency, but I am told that there was never a whisper of disloyalty or a syllable of disparagement of the President personally during that time. But many of those who were silent then are strident now. Their enforced silence has enhanced the carry-power of their voices, and their clamor prevents the harmony that the world is seeking. They not only defame Wilson, but they contend that the part we played in the war has been overestimated. It has been, but not by us. It has been evaluated by those whom it was our most sacred privilege to aid. They neither minimize our efforts not underestimate our accomplishment. The British know that they were steadfast; the French realize that they were resolute; the Italians appreciate that they were brave. We know it, but that does not prevent us from realizing the magnitude of the role we played, and the man who was responsible for it is the man to whom the world, save a political party in the United States, gives thanks and expresses appreciation. His name is Woodrow Wilson. Americans do not boast of the part they played in winning the war, but they do encourage that which is far worse than boasting-lying about it, particularly when the motive for such perversion of truth is deprecation of their Chief Executive.
He is an idealist and theorist. He is the kind of idealist who destroyed the Democratic machine in the State of New Jersey, which had been the synonym for corruption in politics for a generation; the kind of idealist who put through the Underwood Tariff Bill, which at one stroke did more to strangle the unnatural mother of privilege than any measure in the past twenty years; the kind of idealist who, when the transport system of the entire country threatened to be hopelessly paralyzed by reason of the determination of the railway magnates to refuse the demands of locomotive engineers that their working-day should consist of eight hours, sent for representatives of the plutocrats and the proletariats and told what they were to do and when they were to do it, and the whole civilized world approved. He is the idealist who has done more to make our government a republican government representative of the people and not of party bosses than any one in the memory of man. He is the idealist who is a scholar, a thinker, a statesman, a creator, an administrator, and a man of vision. More than that, he is an efficiency expert in the realm of world-ordering. It is to our inestimable misfortune that his personality has successfully obstacled his projects.
His secretary of war is a failure; his secretary of state is a figurehead; his secretary of finance is his family, and so on ad nauseam.
I am not a competent judge whether Mr. Baker has been a good secretary of war or not, but I am sure that he is not so unfit as Simon Cameron was. No one has said of him: "Cameron is utterly ignorant and regardless of the course of things and probable result. Selfish and openly discourteous to the President. Obnoxious to the country. Incapable either of organizing details or conceiving and executing general plans" (Nicolay). President Wilson has never had to say of any of his cabinet what Lincoln said of Seward: "The point and pith of the senators" complaint was that they charged him, Seward, if not with infidelity, with indifference, with want of earnestness in the war, with want of sympathy with the country, and especially with a too great ascendancy and control of the President and measures of administration. While they seemed to believe in my honesty, they also appeared to think that when I had in me any good purpose or intention Seward tried to suck it out of me unperceived."