In the last period, extending over thirty years, she
maintained her system of alliances and friendships chiefly
with the object of thus assuring the European equilibrium,
and, at the same time, peace. In view of the nobility of this
aim Italy not only subordinated her most sacred aspiration,
but has also been forced to look on, with sorrow, at the
methodical attempts to suppress specifically the Italian
characteristics which nature and history imprinted on those
regions.
The ultimatum which the Austro-Hungarian Empire addressed last
July to Serbia annulled at one blow the effects of a
long-sustained effort by violating the pact which bound us to
that State, violated the pact, in form, for it omitted to
conclude a preliminary agreement with us or even give us
notification, and violated it also in substance, for it sought
to disturb, to our detriment, the delicate system of
territorial possessions and spheres of influence which had
been set up in the Balkan Peninsula.
But, more than any particular point, it was the whole spirit
of the treaty which was wronged, and even suppressed, for by
unloosing in the world a most terrible war, in direct
contravention of our interests and sentiments, the balance
which the Triple Alliance should have helped to assure was
destroyed and the problem of Italy's national integrity was
virtually and irresistibly revived.
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