TOPICAL PORTRAIT SERIES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 89, 18 April 1906, Page 1

TOPICAL PORTRAIT SERIES.

;, THE KING OF ITALY. AND THE WEAKENING OF THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE.

King Victor has set a fashion which is probably now endorsed by a majority of his countrymen—the fashion of Latin to Latin iv preference to Latin to Teuton. The Triple Alliance is in danger, it it said, and if so the reason is plain. Italy is seeing in a weakened France a friendly France (Latin to Latin), and realising that if a Saxon friend is necessary England with little to endanger the peace is far safer than Germany with so much. The influence which King Edward has exercised in this direction will probably never be fairly approximated during his life-time, but that it has been enormous and stays so is well realised by those who follow great happenings closely. He won France's President, and Fiance's President won France; he won Italy's King, and Italy's King won Italy; he has also put a Avedge between Austria and Germany, the full effects of which are yet to be felt. Whatever may be in store on the last account it is very evident that the Bismarckian Treaty is in danger of collapsing from the Italian end, and it is quite as likely that there will develop a new Triple Agreement—and Anglo-Franco-Italian one, with Russia complaisant on the north, and Spain and Portugal on the south. Germany, in a word, stands more- than a chance of being isolated, from which point, when it is finally reached, it is probable we shall see a new shuffling of the giltedged cards of diplomacy, the Fatherland seeking strength at new points of the compass, with this to prove her incentivejs-her own preservation. The world often wonders how the prosaic Teuton can tolerate arms as th,£ chief profession of his country, tmfc in-Bis-marck's time the description was just enougJW'Gevniaiiy is Uko a beleaguered fortress in the midst of armed Europe." How true this remains today is a matter of opinion, but very little could make it as true as and so the Fatherland un\f?£ j-^sfc on a halfdrawn sword asjwi'e as' surely as Great Britain does on the sea. And even as the latter,, with all her fQ.ro©, is glad to seek support, so m\ist the former, and hence the interest i v the developments which must follow the ending of tlite Triple Alliance by Italy. What) strange " bedfellows " are possible is shown in the instance ot |!n,gland, in the way she advances* now, arm-in-arm vf\tl\ a Latin on the land and an Asiatic on the sea. The resourcefulness of the Teutoi\ is not less, perhaps, and the, memory of what Bismarck accomplished with Russia in the way of a secret treaty will suffice to suggest possibilities if it does nothing else. Perhaps fifty years from now it will be England, the Latin Powers, and Asia as a lieutenant-ally on the one side, and Germany and Russia on the other, Austria being at the beck of the first, and Hungary halt subject tq thq call of tiie second,