It may seem curious to call the July crisis and the first months of World War I an epilogue. Yet, for the foreign policy of Antonino Di San Giuliano, and for the traditions of diplomacy in Liberal Italy, a real European crisis and a real European war were disasters, talked about before, but, in reality, unlooked for. So much of Italian policy in the last years had been a conjuring trick, the sort of sleight of hand which was encouraged by Italy's role as the least of the Great Powers; but, from August 1914, conjuring tricks were unlikely any longer to be good enough. All the other Great Powers had gone to war. The simple corollary was that Italy, as a Great Power, must also, sooner or later, enter the war. For this task perhaps she would have to rely on the King and his generals, given the ultimate realities enunciated by Victor Emmanuel III some years before:

Yet, a reliance on bayonets and cannon was not a comfortable prospect in Liberal Italy, for bayonets and cannon had seldom brought military triumph, and an Army, wasted by the conflict in Libya and the continued need for ‘pacification’ there, was hard to regard as likely to be an immaculate agent of an ever victorious foreign policy.

It was also regrettably true that the Army was needed at home.