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 Book....uL 
 
 PRESExNTED BY 
 
Italy's Problems 
 
 and 
 
 Achievements 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
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 Italy's Problems 
 
 and 
 
 Achievements 
 
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 With an Introduction by 
 
 WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
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 COMPILED BY 
 
 FERNANDO CUNIBERTI 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 1918 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction William Roscoe Thayer 1 
 
 Address before the New York State Bar Association 
 
 Count Macchi di Cellere 5 
 
 Austria's Responsibility for the War . Charles Upson Clark 10 
 
 Treachery against Italy During the Triple Alliance 
 
 Arthur Bennington 14 
 
 - - The Aspirations of Italy and the Rights of Civilization 
 
 Arnaldo Agnelli 28 
 
 Italy's Effort Paul Deschanel 44 
 
 Italy's Claim to Istria Charles Upson Clark 46 
 
 Putting Albania Back on the Map . . Amy A. Bernardy 52 
 
 Dalmatia, Fiume and the other Unredeemed Lands of 
 
 the Adriatic Idea Nazionale 61- 
 
 Italy at the Piave Diana Watts 86 
 
 Italy and the War Emilio Guglielmotti 95 
 
 The Battle for Venice Walter Littlefield 100 
 
 The Problems of Victory Medill McCormick 105 
 
 Italy and the Real Villain . Will Irwin 108 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By William Roscoe Thayer 
 
 The articles which follow ought to give American readers 
 a much better idea than they now have, of the great service 
 which Italy has rendered to the cause of civilization, dur- 
 ing the present war. This is well, for Italy has been the 
 most misjudged of all the Allies. From the beginning of 
 the war, at the end of July, 1914, the world misunder- 
 stood her position, and the Germans spread lies about it 
 and calumniated her. The truth, known to a few then, 
 ought to be clear to all now. 
 
 Italy could not join the Allies, or go to war at all, because 
 her recent campaign in Africa had exhausted her muni- 
 tions and supplies, and made it necessary to remodel and 
 equip her army. This work required eight months. But, 
 at the very start, she gave immediate help to the utmost 
 of her power by informing the French Government that 
 she would not fight on the side of the Teutons. This was 
 of immense military service, because it released the French 
 army corps watching the Italian frontier, and the moral 
 service was, and is, and will be, of prime importance — 
 because it meant that Italy, knowing much of the secret 
 intrigues preceding the outbreak of hostilities, declared 
 that the Germans were bent on a war of conquest and 
 aggression. 
 
 Italy, it must be remembered, had been for thirty-two 
 years a partner of Germany and Austria in the Triple 
 Alliance, and when she refused to join their piratical cam- 
 paign, they charged her with backsliding and treachery. 
 Article VII, of the Triple Alliance pact, however, distinctly 
 stated that the partners should aid each other only in 
 case they were attacked; no aggression against foreign 
 nations was contemplated by them. With this clause 
 standing within everyone's knowledge, we wonder why 
 
the Germans took the trouble to lie about it; the only- 
 answer to this question is that lying is the natural expres- 
 sion of the German spirit. 
 
 During the winter of 1914-15, Italy prepared for war. 
 She was also beset by German and other emissaries who 
 urged her to declare for the Allies, or for the Entente, or to 
 remain neutral. The Germans sent their most efficient 
 pander, Prince Biilow, who alternately tempted and 
 threatened. He even offered to hand over the Trentine 
 and Trieste, with or without Austria's consent, if Italy 
 would keep out of the war. She had, meanwhile, great 
 internal difficulties. The Socialists, there as elsewhere, 
 were secretly Pro-German; the Papalists and some of the 
 high nobility were likewise pro-German; the new Pope, 
 Benedict XV, was believed to side with the Teutons, and 
 neither his actions nor his public messages dispelled this 
 suspicion. The emperors of Germany and Austria had 
 promised him, it was said, to restore the Temporal Power 
 of the Popes, and this matter was publically discussed 
 and approved in the Bavarian Diet. A large part of the 
 Italian populace was lukewarm; it saw no profit in entering 
 the war; neither did many of the deputies and politicians, 
 who had been for years manipulated by Giolitti, the most 
 wily politician United Italy had ever had, and one who was 
 supposed to be, politically and personally, in the favor of 
 the Germans. 
 
 But there was a saving remnant which represented the 
 intelligence and conscience of Italy, and this remnant 
 gradually led the country to perceive that, in a war between 
 barbarism and civilization, Italy must do her duty and 
 fight the barbarians. So she broke with Austria on May 
 24, 1915. Then began her active, military assistance. 
 Her campaigns for two years in the Alps, and along the 
 Isonzo, were among the marvels of military ingenuity, 
 fortitude, and heroism. In 1916 she declared war on 
 Germany also, having been obliged to delay so long because 
 the Germans had "peacefully penetrated" northern Italy 
 to such an extent that they controlled most of its industries 
 and commerce. 
 
Italy's cooperation with the Allies kept a considerable 
 portion of the Austrian army busy. It was also of great 
 value to the French and English in the Mediterranean. 
 Had Italy gone with the Teutons, her fleet might have 
 menaced Marseilles and other French ports, and her sub- 
 marines would have done great damage to the English 
 and French transports. Her own southern harbors 
 would have sheltered the Teutonic submarines and cruisers. 
 
 I do not expatiate on the splendid endurance of the 
 Italians during the war. The civil population saw their 
 food diminish and their fuel disappear, but, like the soldiers, 
 they bore the privations and the losses without complaint. 
 The Italians have always been a long-suffering people. 
 In this war, what troubled the soldiers more than their 
 own hunger was the thought that their wives and children, 
 at home, were unprovided for; and the reptilian agents of 
 the Kaiser played upon their anxiety. Many elements 
 contributed to the disaster at Caporette, on October 27, 
 1917 — war weariness, the Pope's peace message, the sedi- 
 tious enticements of the Socialists, the open intrigues of 
 German spies, the treachery of a few officers, the growing 
 belief among the army that the United States and the 
 Allies had abandoned Italy to her fate. To me, the won- 
 der is, not that the disaster came, but that the fugitive 
 Italian army corps had strength and courage to stop at 
 the Piave, to turn on their pursuers, and to hold there 
 until they could make further pursuit impossible. 
 
 During the winter and spring of 1918, the Italian army, 
 stiffened by several corps of French and English troops, 
 prepared to repel the expected onslaught of the Austrians. 
 This came in June, and the Italians drove the enemy back, 
 saved Venice from danger, and stood ready to advance to 
 their former frontiers when Marshal Foch should give the 
 word. This is a splendid example of recovery by a nation 
 which had been beaten. 
 
 Italy, we must remember, lacks both coal and iron, the 
 two staples on which our modern industrial civilization 
 and our modern warfare depend. We must remember, 
 also, that she has been, in spite of her hard-working popu- 
 
 3 
 
lation, a poor country. Now she has redeemed herself 
 and proved her right to stand among the Great Powers. 
 Like the United States she entered the war on the side of 
 the Allies, of her own free will. It would have been as 
 hideous if she, the nation which was built by Mazzini and 
 Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Cavour, had denied her 
 birthright and the ideals of her great founders, had joined 
 the Huns, as if this mightiest of all republics, ark of 
 liberty, had foresworn its conscience and fought under the 
 black and red pirate flag of despotism. 
 
ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW YORK STATE BAR 
 ASSOCIATION, JANUARY 12, 1918 
 
 By His Excellency, Count Macchi Di Cellere 
 Italian Ambassador to the United States 
 
 Sir Frederick Smith, the Attorney General of Great 
 Britain, in his brilliant words to you last night discussed the 
 problems that will confront us at the close of this great war. 
 This afternoon at the Lawyers' Club he was gracious 
 enough to speak briefly and clearly of one or two of the 
 features which have marked the place which my nation has 
 taken in the struggle. For this exposition by him of our 
 stand and for his clear statement of the appreciation that 
 his great nation has of the value of Italy's contribution to 
 the Allied Cause, I thank him. 
 
 We are all joint partners in this great fight against the 
 forces of armed brutality. It is of the highest importance 
 that we should all appreciate to the full the unselfishness 
 and purity of purpose of each of our associates. The mag- 
 nificent and unselfish stand which the United States has 
 taken for the preservation of democracy by its entry into 
 war is fully realized by my nation. And it is with the hope 
 that I may make clear and distinct to you the unselfishness 
 and purity of purpose of Italy that I undertake in a few 
 words to recall to you her situation. Italy's position in 
 this war has been perverted into one of faithlessness 
 by a clever propaganda of our common enemy; but, 
 fortunately your great President and you and others of the 
 people of the United States have come to recognize that 
 this accusation is hideously false. This German propa- 
 ganda has centered around two points: That we were 
 
traitors to the Triple Alliance; that we entered the war only 
 for selfish ends. How far from justified are these two 
 accusations, with all the consequences that follow them, 
 you know. I will, however, discuss them from the Italian 
 point of view. I could easily disregard the accusation of 
 treason made by our enemies against us. The word 
 treason is unknown to Italy in principle and in fact, and 
 only Teutonic mentality could apply it to us. Italy did 
 not betray her former allies. She was brutally and 
 repeatedly betrayed by them. One needs merely to con- 
 sider the spirit and the wording of the treaty of the Triple 
 Alliance to be at once convinced of the truth of my state- 
 ment. Italy joined the Austro-German combination at a 
 period when her national existence had hardly begun. 
 Unable to withstand the dangers of isolation, Italy became 
 a party to the treaty, but stipulated that the Alliance 
 should be purely defensive and that no step whatever 
 should be taken by any of the signatories without previous 
 consultation with the others. Italy kept her word to the 
 last. How the Teutonic powers kept theirs is demon- 
 strated by their sending their ultimatum to Serbia without 
 even letting Italy know that they were contemplating such 
 a tremendous step. They kept Italy in the dark because 
 they knew by experience that Italy would oppose their 
 plans of aggression against Serbia or any other nation, and 
 they realized that if their plans had been known in time the 
 war they wanted to provoke and did provoke would not 
 have been possible. Italy had stood by Serbia when, 
 after Austria's annexation of the Serbian provinces of 
 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Central Powers were preparing 
 new aggressions in the Balkans and were looking for pre- 
 texts which Italy's attitude always forestalled. Knowing 
 that Italy would never consent to their criminal plans, 
 Germany and Austria prepared in secret. When they 
 considered themselves ready, they broke the peace of the 
 world. What Italy's attitude would have been if she had 
 known what the Central Powers were preparing is demon- 
 strated by the efforts she made with her noble and tradi- 
 
 6 
 
tional friend England to prevent a war which everybody 
 knew would be the ruin of Europe and would involve 
 the whole of the world. Our efforts were as vain as were 
 those of England, because the crimes which the Central 
 Powers were plotting against humanity and civilization 
 had been determined upon. Italy was betrayed by her 
 former allies in 1908, when Austria with the knowledge 
 and open support of Germany annexed Bosnia-Herze- 
 govina; she was betrayed again during her war with 
 Turkey in 1912, when Austria threatened instant war if 
 Italy should attack Turkey at Prevesa, and when Germany 
 sent her officers and men to lead the Turks and the Arabs 
 against the Italian soldiers ; she was betrayed once more in 
 1914, when Germany and Austria struck without consult- 
 ing her. Italy did the only thing she could possibly do 
 at the time — she refused to join them, and at once declared 
 her neutrality. 
 
 The history of Italy, even in its darkest periods, abounds 
 in instances of nobility and greatness. The Italian nation 
 could not have become a party to a crime against humanity 
 — a crime so cunningly premeditated that the most 
 repulsive crimes of all suffer in comparison. 
 
 The Teutonic assault on Serbia had released Italy from 
 any obligation under the Triple Alliance — an assault which 
 was only the consummation of a series of crimes all pre- 
 paratory to the same end, and committed in full view of the 
 civilized world, which nevertheless could not be brought to 
 realize what was about to happen. 
 
 We are all paying dearly now for our blind faith that no 
 nation would dare to break a peace which the world had 
 expended so much to secure. 
 
 Let me say, gentlemen, that in the bloody sacrifices 
 civilization is making to overthrow barbarism once for all, 
 Italy is second to none. 
 
 But then (to take up the second point of my argument 
 against the subtle Teutonic propaganda) why did Italy 
 merely declare her neutrality instead of immediately taking 
 up arms and joining the Entente in August, 1914 ? All who 
 follow the course of international affairs appreciate the fact 
 
that in 1914 Italy was just emerging from a war with 
 Turkey, in which she had suffered atrociously as a result of 
 Turkish cruelty and Austro-German treason. 
 
 I have already referred to the episode of Prevesa and the 
 fact established by official documents that German officers 
 and men took part on the Turkish side in the Italo-Turkish 
 war. Our military stores were exhausted, our artillery was 
 reduced to nothing, our armies had been largely disbanded, 
 and only a very small number of them remained under 
 arms. The result to the Allies of an immediate Italian par- 
 ticipation in the war, under these conditions, is easily seen. 
 Italy would have been overrun at once, put out of business 
 altogether, and lost to the cause of the Allies probably 
 forever — certainly for the duration of this war. 
 
 However, the mere declaration of neutrality was, in 
 itself, a proof that Italy had made her decision — she would 
 not be on the side of the aggressors. But it meant far 
 more; it meant that heroic France, reassured about our 
 attitude, could, as she did, immediately withdraw all of 
 her soldiers from the Italian frontier and send them to 
 immortalize themselves at the Marne. Thus Italy, by 
 making possible the victorious defense of Paris, contrib- 
 uted in saving the war for the Allies. 
 
 The Central Powers understood what Italian neutrality 
 meant, and began a work of corruption and intrigue which 
 did not however, alter the course of events. Italy had not 
 been ready when the voice of history called her to be true 
 to her immemorial traditions of love for liberty and justice; 
 but she prepared with all speed to make her participation 
 in the war of material advantage. You all know of what 
 technical importance has been Italy's contribution to the 
 war, in the perfecting of trench, mountain and heavy 
 artillery, in the wonderful evolution of the aeroplane, in 
 the development of warfare among the clouds. 
 
 But let me recall to your minds the immediate practical 
 effects of Italy's entrance into the struggle. 
 
 Russia was being rapidly driven back, apparently with- 
 out any hope of recovering from the hammering blows of 
 the Austro-German forces. Only a diversion, and a power- 
 
 8 
 
ful one, could prevent a crushing disaster to the Allies. 
 Italy undertook the task of creating such a diversion. She 
 declared war on Austria, crossed old iniquitous boundaries 
 imposed upon her by Austria and Germany in 1866, and 
 forced the instant transfer of all available Austrian forces 
 from the Eastern theatre of the war to the Italian front. 
 Italy had created the necessary diversion and Russia was 
 saved for her victories of a few months later. 
 
 For two and a half years Austria had been kept on the 
 verge of disaster by the bravery of a country that has been 
 paying for her lack of artillery, ammunition, fuel and food 
 with the purest blood of her sons. 
 
 Then last October, owing to a combination of circum- 
 stances now known to all, Teutonic trickery and violence 
 got the better of us. Our country was invaded, our army 
 brought near destruction, our monuments razed with bar- 
 baric thoroughness, our women and children martyred. 
 For the moment it seemed that we were lost, not only to 
 the cause of the Allies, but even to our own traditions. 
 Thank God that impression proved false! Never was Italy 
 so great as the day she realized her danger and transformed 
 what appeared to be one of the greatest defeats known in 
 military annals into a victorious rally of all her forces 
 against the invader. The day will come when we shall 
 hear the name of the Piave mentioned in the same breath 
 with that of the Marne, thus uniting in a halo of glory the 
 two greatest episodes in the history of those nations which 
 are shedding their blood in the cause of true civilization. 
 Of this we are assured by the miraculous revival of the 
 fighting spirit of our soldiers and by the evidence that our 
 country is fully aware of the part history has called upon 
 her to play for the triumph of those principles of justice 
 which the world originally learned from Italy. 
 
 With this faith in our destiny, with the assurance that 
 right cannot be permanently destroyed by might, with the 
 confidence and gratitude that the entrance of this glorious 
 republic in the war on our side has added her sense of right 
 and her unlimited strength, we face the future bravely, 
 certain that victory will be ours. 
 
 9 
 
AUSTRIA'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 
 
 By Prof. Charles Upson Clark 
 Of the American Academy in Rome 
 
 We are apt to forget two fundamental facts with re- 
 gard to the present conflict: First, that it is a Balkan 
 war to settle Serbia's status, and second, that Austria 
 precipitated it. In our indignation at Germany's con- 
 duct of the war, we neglect to bear in mind Austria's 
 maneuvers during the past decade; and as several of 
 them seem not to be well known in this country, I shall re- 
 hearse them, taking full advantage of the interesting 
 recollections of Senator Tittoni, 1 the former Italian 
 Foreign Secretary, and later Ambassador at Paris. 
 
 This war is a sequel of Austria's seizure, in 1908, of the 
 former Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
 which she had been administering under the treaty of 
 Berlin (1878). This action was a warning to Serbia, if 
 one was needed, that Austria was seeking expansion in 
 that direction, but consternation at Austria's cynical 
 infraction of the Treaty of Berlin was almost as great at 
 Rome. Under article VII of the Triple Alliance, if either 
 Austria or Italy obtained further territorial aggrandize- 
 ment in the Balkans, the other country had a right to 
 compensation. The Italian Foreign Office was very anxi- 
 ous to avoid a controversy with Austria, but felt that 
 Italy's rights must be safeguarded, and that various 
 clauses in the Treaty of Berlin should be revised. Eng- 
 land was worried over Austria's mobilization against 
 Serbia, and in February, 1909, Sir Charles Hardings and 
 Minister Tittoni sounded Berlin with regard to a confer- 
 
 X I1 Giudizio della Storia sulla responsabilita' della guerra. Sena- 
 tore Tommaso Tittoni — Milan — Treves. 
 
 10 
 
enee. Germany replied that she was prepared to support 
 Austria in any step Austria might take. Thereupon 
 Minister Tittoni proposed to England and Russia an inter- 
 national conference, which should sanction the treaty 
 between Austria and Turkey in reference to Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina, should recognize Bulgaria's independence of 
 the Porte, and should discuss certain clauses of the 
 Treaty of Berlin. When news of this proposed confer- 
 ence leaked out, it was saluted with joy even by the 
 Lokal-Anzeiger and Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of 
 Berlin, the Reichspost, Vaterland and Zeit of Vienna, and 
 the Pester Lloyd of Buda-Pesth; and Europe, in general, 
 breathed a sigh of relief. In fact, on March 15, 1909, 
 the German Chancellor and Foreign Secretary notified 
 Minister Tittoni that, while not speaking officially, they 
 were personally well disposed towards the proposed con- 
 ference, and France and Russia were heartily in favor of 
 it. Suddenly, without a word of warning, Berlin notified 
 St. Petersburg that Russia must immediately recognize 
 Austria's annexation of these Turkish provinces, without 
 waiting for any conference, otherwise war should be de- 
 clared. It was a bitter humiliation for the Russian 
 government; Russia was official protector of the Balkan 
 Slavs and her prestige was deeply involved. But Russia, 
 as Germany well understood, was not ready for war, and 
 had to swallow the affront; on March 23, she notified 
 Germany that she acknowledged Austria's annexation of 
 Bosnia-Herzegovina. 
 
 Having succeeded in her brutal bluff with Russia, Ger- 
 many decided that Italy's turn came next. On March 
 25, Minister Tittoni had just entered the Foreign Office 
 and was at the window enjoying the early sunlight on 
 the marble group before the Quirinal and the Dome of 
 St. Peter's through the luminous morning mist, when the 
 German Ambassador was announced. He gravely noti- 
 fied Minister Tittoni that he had come to make a state- 
 ment of the utmost importance. His government had 
 charged him to demand from Italy the immediate recog- 
 
 11 
 
nition of Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
 In vain did Minister Tittoni protest that a conference 
 would shortly decide the question. Baron Monts re- 
 plied that a conference was now unnecessary since Russia 
 had already recognized the legality of Austria's action. 
 To this Minister Tittoni objected that he had received no 
 word from Russia and that in any case he had formally 
 declared in the Italian Chamber that Italy could sanction 
 Austria's action only if it were accompanied by certain 
 modifications in the Treaty of Berlin. Thereupon 
 Baron Monts asked the fateful question: "Is that your 
 last word?" Minister Tittoni, fully realizing that he was 
 pledging Italy to stand by Serbia even to the point of war 
 with Germany, had just replied that it was his last word, 
 when Count Lutzow, the Austrian Ambassador, was 
 shown in. He was more conciliatory, and at once ad- 
 mitted that article XXIX of the Treaty of Berlin should 
 be modified; negotiations to that end were initiated; and 
 Germany rested satisfied with her humiliation of Russia. 
 
 It would be instructive to compare this action of Ger- 
 many's with that in the Agadir affair, but it is more 
 germane to our present purpose to follow Minister Tit- 
 toni in remarking the extraordinary similarity to her 
 procedure in July, 1914. Again the Powers had nearly 
 succeeded in calling an international conference to pre- 
 vent the spread of the Balkan war w x hich Austria had 
 brought on; again it was Germany which made a sudden, 
 humiliating demand upon Russia. This demand is 
 generally interpreted as merely a pretext trumped up by 
 Germany for the general war which she had decided on. 
 But it has just been pointed out by the Serbian General 
 Vesnitch (see New York Times of January 1, 1918) that 
 Count Portales had notified his home government at 
 Berlin from St. Petersburg that revolution would break 
 out in Russia, should the Russian army be mobilized; 
 and theie is another curious fact, noted at the time but 
 since forgotten, which indicates that in 1914 also, Ger- 
 many expected that her threat would suffice, and that 
 
 12 
 
she might again be acknowledged mistress of European 
 politics, while biding her time for the great reckoning 
 which most careful students of European affairs expected 
 in 1916 or 1917. When Count Portales came to send 
 the official note declaring war to the Russian Foreign 
 Office, he sent, instead, the note which had previously 
 been drawn up, expressing Germany's satisfaction at 
 Russia's acceptance of her suggestions, and the mistake 
 passed unnoticed for some hours. But Russia's resolu- 
 tion to brook no further humiliation at the hands of 
 Germany and Austria made the Central Powers begin 
 the conflict earlier than they had previously intended — 
 particularly as internal politics in France and England 
 seemed to make the moment a favorable one. 
 
 Let another instance or two bring out Austria's primary 
 responsibility for this Balkan war. In November, 1912, 
 Austria asked Italy to recognize Serbia's new status after 
 the second Balkan war, but only on this condition, that 
 Austria should be allowed to exact from Serbia certain 
 guarantees. As always, Italy again showed herself 
 Serbia's best friend (for it will be remembered that the 
 policy of France in the Balkans has been phil-Hellene, 
 and England broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia 
 for some years) and answered that these guarantees must 
 not compromise Serbia's independence, and must not be 
 to the sole advantage of Austria. Austria made no reply, 
 having evidently resolved on war, as will be shown later. 
 On April 30, 1913, Tittoni (now Ambassador at Paris) 
 received a telegram from his successor in the Italian 
 Foreign Office, the Marquis di San Giuliano, to the effect 
 that Austria had notified Italy that she was about to 
 proceed against Montenegro. Tittoni telegraphed back 
 to let Austria understand that if she occupied Monte- 
 negro, Italy, under article VII of the Triple Alliance, 
 would proceed to the immediate occupation of the 
 Albanian ports of Durazzo and Vallona. Foiled again, 
 Austria notified Italy in the summer of 1913 that she 
 desired her aid in a war against Serbia; Italy answered 
 
 18 
 
that the Triple Alliance was a defensive and not an offen- 
 sive combination, and that she must deplore any such 
 action on Austria's part. So Austria postponed this 
 long-cherished dream of gobbling up Serbia as she had 
 Bosnia, until the summer of 1914 gave her so good a 
 pretext. But this time she did not take Italy into her 
 confidence. 
 
 I hope these items — Austria's illegal annexation of 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, followed by Germany's 
 application of brute force at St. Petersburg in 1909; 
 Austria's endeavor in 1912 to humble Serbia after Serbia's 
 successes in the second Balkan war; her plan in 1913 to 
 annex Montenegro, and her announced intention of 
 declaring war against Serbia one year before she finally 
 did — are enough to show Austria's prime responsibility 
 for the conflagration. It is well for us in America to 
 understand not only this, but also that if the Austrian 
 Empire survives this war, it will continue to be a dis- 
 turber of the peace in the Balkans. The discussion of 
 this, however, in the present connection, would lead us 
 too far afield, as would also the outrageous treatment of 
 Italy by her partners in the Triple Alliance during Italy's 
 recent war with Turkey. Suffice it to say that no broad 
 view of the European situation, particularly when peace 
 negotiations c r me to be discussed, should leave out of 
 account the infinite possibilities of the Austrian Empire 
 as an anachronism and trouble maker, not only in the 
 all too recent past, but in the grim and shadowy future 
 which Austria's misdeeds have created for us. 
 
 14 
 
TREACHERY AGAINST ITALY DURING THE 
 TRIPLE ALLIANCE* 
 
 By Arthur Bennington 
 
 When the secret archives of the European chancelleries 
 shall be opened and their contents studied by future 
 historians, one of the darkest pages in the annals of diplo- 
 macy will be found in the true record of the Triple Alliance. 
 Not until then can the full measure of German and Aus- 
 trian perfidy and treachery be taken. Since Italy finally 
 broke with her allies of thirty-four years, statesmen whose 
 lips had heretofore been sealed have revealed a few of the 
 black secrets that had been hidden behind the veil. Some 
 of these secrets have found their way piecemeal into the 
 columns of the press; not many, it is true, but enough to 
 make thinking men amazed at the long-suffering meekness 
 with which Italy kept turning the other cheek after her 
 allies had smitten her over and over again. 
 
 In the last few months it has been the writer's privilege 
 to have a peep behind the scenes of the Triple Alliance. I 
 have been placed in possession of some hitherto unrevealed 
 incidents of diplomatic history; one or two statesmen whose 
 authority is beyond question have related them to me and 
 given me permission to make some of them public. What 
 follows is a brief resume of facts of treachery on the part 
 of Germany and Austria in their relations with their ally. 
 Some of them have been told before and are retold today 
 with those revealed for the first time, merely to make as 
 complete as possible the astounding record of Teutonic 
 perfidy. 
 
 First of all, a very brief summary of the facts of the 
 Triple Alliance. 
 
 ♦Reprinted from the New York World, September 23, 1917. 
 
 15 
 
HOW THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE WAS MADE 
 
 Italy was virtually forced into the Triple Alliance. In 
 1882, when the treaty was made, she was faced with many 
 troubles, at home and abroad. France had just taken 
 Tunisia, to which Italy had long aspired, being encouraged 
 in her aspirations by Bismarck, who wanted to weaken 
 France in the Mediterranean. Her relations with France 
 had been embittered by a massacre of Italian workmen at 
 Marseilles. Bismarck was threatening to interfere in 
 Italy's relations with the Papacy, and his newspaper 
 organs were busy urging that Germany step in and 
 restore Rome to the Pope. He was also plotting to strain 
 still further the already tense relations between Italy and 
 France. Italy's army and navy were so small and 
 inefficient that she dared not risk a rupture with France. 
 Therefore, her statesmen were glad to accept the alliance 
 with Germany and with their hereditary enemy Austria, 
 for they wanted peace above everything else at that 
 moment. 
 
 Germany's object in admitting a then so insignificant 
 nation as Italy to an alliance was to offset the growing 
 power of France in the Mediterranean and at the same time 
 to curb Italy's hostility to Austria. This hostility mani- 
 fested itself in a determination to add to the newly united 
 Italy the Italian provinces that still remained under 
 Austrian rule. It was especially Trieste, Istria and Dal- 
 matia that Germany feared might be lost to Austria, thus 
 depriving the Germanic powers of t leir one outlet to the 
 Mediterranean. They figured that with Italy their ally 
 she must give up her aspirations for the acquisition of these 
 provinces on the Adriatic. 
 
 WHY ITALY REPEATEDLY RENEWED IT 
 
 The Italian people never loved the Triple Alliance, and 
 though this was renewed in 1887, again in 1891 and again 
 in 1902, its hold upon Italy became weaker and weaker as 
 Italians saw how their allies disregarded it whenever it 
 suited their purpose. The successive renewals of the 
 
 16 
 
alliance on Italy's part were due solely to her desire to 
 preserve the peace of Europe, for it is very difficult to 
 discover any single benefit that Italy has ever derived 
 from it. The world has often wondered why, in view of 
 the repeated treachery of her allies, Italy kept on renew- 
 ing the treaty of the Triple Alliance. To explain this 
 mystery I cannot do better than quote some words from a 
 speech made in Paris on June 22, 1916, by Signor Tittoni, 
 who had been one of the most ardent supporters of the 
 Triple Alliance throughout his long career: 
 
 "We were with Austria for peace, for the equilibrium of 
 the Adriatic, to guarantee the independence and integrity 
 of the Balkan states, and we remained faithful to her up 
 to the moment that she, by abandoning that programme, 
 constrained us to seek elsewhere for its effectual operation. 
 Those of us who for many long years have loyally sup- 
 ported Italy's alliance with Austria, serving the cause of 
 our country and of the peace of Europe, do not go back 
 on our past; on the contrary, we reaffirm it loudly because 
 that past in no way contradicts our present attitude, but 
 is rather its efficacious justification. It is not Italy that 
 betrayed the alliance. Austria betrayed it when she 
 betrayed the cause of right, of justice and of peace." 
 
 It was in 1884, only two years after the Treaty of the 
 Triple Alliance was signed, that Germany and Austria 
 first violated its provisions, ignored their ally and made a 
 secret treaty with Russia. One of the several reasons why 
 Italy had allied herself with Germany and Austria was the 
 desire to protect herself against Russian and Austrian 
 aggression in the Balkans. By this bit of Machiavellian 
 diplomacy Bismarck won the promise of Russia and 
 Austria to maintain "benevolent neutrality" in the event 
 of Germany becoming involved in war with France, in 
 return for which he pledged himself to further the ambi- 
 tions of Austria and Russia by "honest brokerage" in the 
 Balkans. 
 
 The secret alliance with Russia made Italy a negligible 
 quantity in the eyes of Bismarck and of the Austrian 
 statesmen who danced when he pulled the strings. 
 
 17 
 
THE DOUBLE CROSS FOR ITALT 
 
 In 1892, a year after the second renewal of the Triple 
 Alliance, the commercial treaties which Italy had with 
 Germany and Austria expired. These were separate and 
 distinct treaties in no way depending upon the Triple 
 Alliance. They were not even concurrent and the terms 
 were different, each covering special relations between 
 Italy and the country to which it applied. Negotiations 
 for the renewal of these treaties went on for several 
 months; the terms of the treaty with Germany were settled 
 without any difficulty; Austria, on the other hand, raised 
 objection after objection to the terms proposed to her by 
 Italy, endeavoring to wring from her ally commercial 
 concessions of a most onerous nature. The Marquis di 
 Rudini, then Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs, anxious to 
 get the treaties arranged, made some concessions, but a 
 point was finally reached beyond which he could not yield. 
 Vienna continued to hold out for terms that Rudini 
 regarded as oppressive and to reject the reasonable treaty 
 that he had submitted. 
 
 In the meantime, although the terms of the treaty with 
 Germany had long since been agreed upon, Germany's 
 signature ratifying the treaty was not forthcoming. 
 
 Rudini was pressing Germany to sign and pressing 
 Austria to come to reasonable terms, when he received a 
 despatch from the Italian Ambassador in Berlin informing 
 him that the German Government had intimated to him 
 that Germany would not ratify her commercial treaty 
 until Italy should agree to Austria's terms, Germany and 
 Austria having a secret agreement to that effect. 
 
 Thus were Italy's allies trying to squeeze her between 
 the upper and the nether millstones and force her to agree 
 to conditions that would put her commercially at their 
 mercy. 
 
 CHECKMATE WITH A DOUBLE ULTIMATUM 
 
 But the Marquis di Rudini was a more astute statesman 
 than either Berlin or Vienna gave him credit for being. 
 
 18 
 
This is how he checkmated the "double cross" that had 
 been planned for Italy by her allies: 
 
 He sent for the German and Austrian Ambassadors. 
 The former, General Solms, was the first to arrive. The 
 Marquis received him standing and did not ask him to take 
 a seat. Putting his monocle into his left eye, the Italian 
 Minister addressed the German Ambassador about as 
 follows : 
 
 "Your Excellency, the delay in ratifying these commer- 
 cial treaties ii a species of blackmail on the part of the 
 government that you represent. I now have the honor 
 to inform you that if the pending treaty be not signed 
 within twenty-four hours I shall tear up the Triple 
 Alliance and announce my reasons to the rest of the world." 
 
 A few minutes later the Austrian Ambassador arrived, 
 and the Marquis di Rudini treated him in precisely the 
 same manner, saying: 
 
 "Your Excellency, I wish to repeat to you the words I 
 addressed a few minutes ago to your German colleague, and 
 to add that they apply precisely to the treaty now pending 
 between the Government of Italy and that of His Majesty 
 the Emperor of Austria." 
 
 Two astonished and crestfallen ambassadors left the 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs and rushed to their respective 
 embassies, whence the telegraph wires to Berlin and Vienna 
 soon began to sizzle. 
 
 Before the twenty-four-hour limit had expired both 
 Berlin and Vienna signed the treaties. 
 
 And Germany and Austria were Italy's allies! 
 
 It was round about 1904 that Austria began the 
 elaborate fortification of the lofty mountain peaks that 
 overlook Italy. It must be remembered that the frontier 
 between Austria and Italy runs along the base of these 
 mountains, they and almost all of the foothills being on 
 the Austrian side of the line. In 1905 the Austrian Army 
 held its grand manoeuvres, at which the Emperor was 
 present, precisely in these mountains along the Italian 
 frontier. In this there was, of course, no breach of the 
 
 19 
 
Triple Alliance, but was the kind of menace that one ally 
 does not expect from another. 
 
 MOST FLAGRANT OF BETRAYALS 
 
 The most flagrant of all the betrayals of Italy was the 
 seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria in October, 
 1908. How flagrant this was can best be understood by 
 reading Article VII of the Triple Alliance. This runs as 
 follows : 
 
 "Austria-Hungary and Italy, who have solely in view 
 the maintenance, as far as possible, of the territorial status 
 quo in the east, engage themselves to prevent all territorial 
 changes which might be disadvantageous to the one or 
 the other of the powers signatory of the present treaty. 
 To this end they will give reciprocally all information 
 calculated to enlighten each other concerning their own 
 intentions and those of other powers. Should, however, 
 the case arise that in the course of events the maintenance 
 of the status quo in the territory of the Balkans or of the 
 Ottoman coast and islands in the Adriatic or Aegean Seas 
 becomes impossible, and that, either in consequence of 
 the action of a third power or for any other reason, 
 Austria-Hungary or Italy should be obliged to change the 
 status quo for their part by a temporary or permanent 
 occupation, such occupation would only take place after 
 previous agreement between the two powers, which would 
 be based upon the principle of a reciprocal compensation 
 for all territorial or other advantages that either of them 
 might acquire over and above the existing status quo, and 
 would have to satisfy the interests and rightful claims of 
 both parties." 
 
 ITALY KEPT IN THE DARK 
 
 Austria gave her ally no information as to her intention 
 to seize Bosnia and Herzegovina. Italy learned of it only 
 when Emperor Francis Joseph, in autograph letters to the 
 rulers of Europe, formally announced the annexation. 
 Of all the powers, Russia was the only one to protest, but 
 
 20 
 
an open threat of war from Germany silenced even this, 
 for Russia was not yet convalescent from the war with 
 Japan. Italy was in no condition to protest, for she was 
 not prepared to back up a protest with force, especially 
 as this would have meant fighting Germany as well as 
 Austria. 
 
 No "compensations" were offered to Italy, Turkey 
 being the only nation to which a sop was thrown. To keep 
 Turkey quiet, Austria withdrew her troops from the Sanjak 
 of Novibazar. Austria would not even discuss the matter 
 with Italy, though Italy was Austria's ally. 
 
 In spite of the terms of the clause just quoted, Austria 
 persistently fomented troubles in the Balkans and con- 
 trived to obtain whatever she wanted there without con- 
 sulting Italy or offering any compensations. Thus the 
 Kingdom of Albania was set up and a sovereign selected 
 by Austria imposed upon it; thus was Montenegro com- 
 pelled to give up Scutari and Serbia to renounce an outlet 
 upon the Adriatic; thus was the frontier between Serbia 
 and Greece laid out as Austria desired. 
 
 AUSTRIA PLANS TO INVADE ITALY 
 
 Two months after this seizure of Bosnia and Herze- 
 govina, just when the Messina earthquake had plunged 
 all Italy into mourning, Gen. Conrad von Hoetzendorff, 
 Chief of Staff of the Austrian Army, proposed what he 
 called " a military promenade " to Venice and Milan. The 
 Crown Prince and his powerful entourage supported this 
 plan for the invasion and reconquest of Venetia and Lom- 
 bardy in Italy's hour of distress. The project was 
 seriously discussed by the Imperial Cabinet and the 
 General Staff; it was openly urged in the columns of the 
 Armee Zeitung and other semi-official Austrian news- 
 papers. It would probably have been adopted had it not 
 been for the indignant opposition of Count von Aerenthal, 
 Chancellor of the empire, who absolutely refused to 
 countenance such a wanton and unprovoked attack upon 
 Austria's ally. 
 
 21 
 
Gen. Conrad von Hoetzendorff was forced to resign, but 
 lie had the active support of the Crown Prince Francis 
 Ferdinand, and the latter had the backing of the German 
 Emperor in the bitter campaign that began at once against 
 Count von Aerenthal. Francis Ferdinand was always 
 savagely anti-Italian in his sentiments, and never took 
 any pains to conceal the fact. 
 
 And Austria was Italy's ally ! 
 
 Italy's seizure of Tripoli and Cyrenaica in 1911 was 
 forced upon her by Germany's evident preparation to take 
 them. This territory had long been conceded as Italy's 
 rightful heritage, and the matter had been discussed openly 
 for several years with the leading statesmen of Europe. 
 But Italy discovered that Germany was getting important 
 concessions from Turkey for operations in those countries 
 and was making vast investments there. At the same 
 time, all Italian enterprise was being frustrated by German 
 machinations. Italy awoke to the fact that with the eastern 
 shores of the Adriatic Austrian, and the northern coasts 
 of Africa German, Italy would be merely a peninsula 
 sticking out into a German lake, and that this geographical 
 possibility was imminent. 
 
 STABBING ITALY IN THE BACK 
 
 It was a case of taking this territory now or never. The 
 famous visit of the German cruiser Panther to Agadir and 
 the events that followed it opened Italy's eyes to the 
 designs of her ally and aroused such popular indignation 
 that even Giolitti, the pro-German Premier, was forced 
 to act. And when Italy seized Tripoli, the chorus of 
 protest that rose against her was led from Berlin. 
 
 Germany, Italy's ally, did her best to make the conquest 
 of those Turkish provinces impossible. There is on file in 
 the archives of the Foreign Office in Paris a despatch from 
 Jules Cambon, then French Ambassador in Berlin, bearing 
 date in the spring or early summer of 1912 — a despatch so 
 sensational that it has never yet been made public. 
 
 I cannot quote the text of the message, for this has been 
 seen by very few persons — probably not more than twenty 
 
 22 
 
in all. But it recounts an incident that would have 
 "created a profound impression," as the diplomats say, 
 had its contents been known in Rome at that time. 
 
 It was just before the close of the war between Italy and 
 Turkey. At this time Turkey was helpless, ready to give 
 up and allow Italy to take Tripoli and Cyrenaica, the last 
 of Turkey's African possessions. 
 
 Ambassador Cambon's despatch related that during a 
 conference that morning between him and the German 
 Emoeror at Potsdam, an aide-de-camp sent word to the 
 Emperor that the Turkish Ambassador was there, request- 
 ing an audience. The Kaiser directed that the caller be 
 shown in at once, and remarked to Ambassador Cambon 
 that this was just the man he wanted to see. M. Cambon 
 asked if he should retire. The Emperor said no. The 
 Turk was shown into the room where the French Ambas- 
 sador still sat. The Emperor rushed to meet the caller, 
 shook a quivering finger before his face, and cried: 
 
 "I am ashamed of you! I am ashamed of Turkey! 
 We believed that you could beat the Italians; had we not 
 thought so we should not have backed you. Now we see 
 we put our money on the wrong horse!" 
 
 There was more to the same effect, and the poor Turkish 
 Ambassador stood there vainly trying to excuse his country 
 for having obtained Germany's backing and then been 
 defeated by Italy, but the Emperor was very excited and 
 indignant and the Turk had not much opportunity to talk. 
 
 THOUGHT THE KAISER WAS MAD 
 
 This was intensely interesting to the French Ambas- 
 sador, who took no part in the conversation, but made a 
 mental note of every word spoken by Italy's august ally 
 to the Ambassador of Italy's enemy. And when he left 
 the place, M. Cambon lost no time in telegraphing a 
 detailed account of the conversation to which he had 
 virtually been invited to listen, adding a comment to this 
 effect: 
 
 "That the Emperor in my presence should have spoken 
 so openly of the backing Germany had been giving to 
 
 23 
 
the enemy of her ally seems explicable only on the assump- 
 tion that His Majesty is losing or has lost his mind." 
 
 Thus France, Germany's hereditary enemy, was allowed 
 to know that Germany had been supporting Turkey in her 
 war against Italy, Germany's ally, a fact that was care- 
 fully concealed from Italy. 
 
 But though the Italian Government did not know that 
 Germany was playing traitor, it suspected that Turkey 
 was receiving support of many kinds from Germany. In 
 their campaign against the Arabs the Italian soldiers 
 repeatedly obtained what to them was certain evidence 
 that the enemy was led by German officers. They 
 reported this to Rome, but were unable to substantiate 
 their convictions by incontestable proof. The Italian 
 Ambassador in Berlin was informed of the suspicion that 
 officers of the German Army were in Africa leading the 
 Arabs against the forces of Germany's ally and was 
 directed to watch for direct proof. This was not forth- 
 coming for some time, but at last it came, and from a 
 source as authoritative as it was unexpected. It was 
 nothing less than an official bulletin of the German War 
 Department in the form of a list of officers to whom 
 pensions had been granted; this contained the names of 
 many officers pensioned because of wounds received in 
 service in Tripoli against Italy. 
 
 And Germany was Italy's ally! 
 
 THE FATAL ULTIMATUM TO SERBIA 
 
 The Italian Ambassador sent copies of this bulletin to 
 Rome, where the newspaper organ of the Nationalist 
 Party, L'Idea Nazionale, published a facsimile of it as 
 one of its strong arguments in urging the government to 
 denounce the Triple Alliance and join forces with the 
 Entente Allies in declaring war upon Germany. 
 
 Another instance of Germany's secret support of the 
 Arabs against Italy was the discovery that Herr von 
 Lochow, the supposed gentleman farmer of the oasis of 
 
 24 
 
Gurgi, was a German officer in disguise and that his resi- 
 dence was really an arsenal full of rifles and ammunition. 
 
 Austria capped the climax of her utter disregard for the 
 explicit provisions of the Triple Alliance when she served 
 her fatal ultimatum upon Serbia on July 23, 1914, without 
 consulting Italy or informing her of her intentions. 
 
 And after the European war broke out and Italy, 
 unable then to take an active part in it because her military 
 and naval munitions were practically exhausted, had 
 declared her neutrality, Germany roused Tripolitania to 
 rebellion against Italy. 
 
 Pro-German propagandists here and in Europe have 
 cried aloud about the terrible wrong that would be com- 
 mitted against the Slav majority of the population of 
 Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia if they were transferred from 
 Austrian to Italian rule. But the story of how these pro- 
 vinces came to have a Slav majority and of the Austrian 
 efforts to magnify the apparent size of this Slav population, 
 makes the matter appear in a very different light. In 1866 
 these districts were Italian by race, by language and by 
 tradition. If there were any doubt about this it would be 
 set at rest by the fact that in the Austrian laws regulating 
 their government they were officially called the "Italian 
 Districts," and by a reading of Meyer's "Die roemisch- 
 byzantische Municipalfassung in Istrien und Damaltien," 
 a book that can scarcely be accused of pro-Italian pre- 
 judice ! 
 
 Austria's domination over most of them began only in 
 1815. Austria obtained Istria only by the Treaty of 
 Campo Formio in 1797. Until 1813 Trieste was an 
 autonomous Italian commune, though nominally tributary 
 to Austria. 
 
 There had been a sporadic migration of Slavs into these 
 Italian territories for several centuries, but the deliberate 
 systematic process of turning them from Italian to Slav 
 became energetic in 1890. 
 
 25 
 
A PROTEST FROM THE PEOPLE 
 
 On January 5, 1899, all the Deputies of the provincial 
 district of Gorizia, Istria and Trieste, and all the "podesta" 
 of all the towns assembled in the City Hall of Trieste and 
 signed a formal protest against the "manifest effort to 
 denaturalize the education of our people even from infan- 
 cy," by depriving the schools of text books in Italian and 
 of teachers educated in Italian; by imposing Slav school 
 teachers in all grades and in the colleges; "against the in- 
 trusion of Slavism into the courts, public offices and 
 churches; against the corruption of names in maps and 
 books," etc. 
 
 Slav priests were assigned to the churches; the Govern- 
 ment offices, including railroad, posts and telegraphs, were 
 filled up with Slavs; in baptismal and marriage registers 
 and in electoral lists Italian names were changed to Slavic, 
 despite the protests of their bearers; arsenals and barracks 
 were filled up with Slav soldiers, and all these imported 
 Slavs were encouraged to settle down as permanent resi- 
 dents of the Italian cities and towns, the vote being given 
 to them after a three-years' residence. 
 
 Slav newspapers were subsidized; Slav banks were 
 started; everywhere the very existence of the Italian popu- 
 lation was made unbearable. From Tolmino to Dalmatia 
 the Slavic cry was: "Pri moru Taljanski!" (Into the sea 
 with the Italians !) The only history books allowed in the 
 schools were those carefully edited by Austrians to dis- 
 parage Italy. In Trieste it was even forbidden to teach 
 the history of the city, because this was too Italian. 
 
 In Dalmatia this denaturalization took the form of 
 physical force; in 1833 there was an actual massacre of 
 Italians by Croats at Spalato, and in 1897 the municipality 
 of Cattaro was captured by wholesale fraud. 
 
 The communal census shows that in 1900, 77 per cent of 
 the population of Dalmatia was Italian and 16 per cent 
 Slav; that in 1910 the Italian population was 74 per cent 
 and the Slav 20 per cent. The Government census shows 
 that by 1910 the Italian population was only 62 per cent 
 
 26 
 
and the Slav was 31 per cent. Whichever figures be 
 correct, the Slavs polled 10,666 votes in the 1910 elections, 
 against 6,438 in those of 1901. 
 
 JUGOSLAV AGITATION IS ARTIFICIAL 
 
 It would need a book to tell fully the terrible story of the 
 systematic denaturing of these Italian provinces, a story 
 that is paralleled only by Prussia's treatment of Poland 
 and by England's treatment of Ireland. The herosim with 
 which this separated fragment of the Latin race, numbering 
 only 450,000, has held fast to its ideals, and in the face of 
 the united efforts of many millions of Slavs of every kind, 
 officially and systematically organized by the Austrian 
 Government is one of the magnificent martyrdoms of 
 history. And this new-born propaganda for autonomy on 
 the part of the Jugo-Slavs, of which so much has been 
 heard in the last few months, especially in America, is only 
 a further development of Austro-German hostility to their 
 former ally. 
 
 That this is nothing but an artificial agitation is proved 
 by the fact that the entire male Slav population of all the 
 territories that are represented as pleading for autonomy — 
 Serbia alone excepted — are fighting loyally in the armies 
 of Austria-Hungary. They have never heard of this mush- 
 room Jugo-Slav movement; they have never made any 
 attempt to assert the "rights" that have suddenly been 
 discovered for them. Jugo-Slavism is said to have been 
 made in Germany, but in Rome they say it is really of 
 German-American origin. 
 
 This denaturing of the Italian provinces, while not 
 evidently in contravention of the Triple Alliance, is really a 
 phase of Austrian aggression in the Balkans, against which 
 Article VII, of the treaty, is specially directed. The 
 Jugo-Slav propaganda is its ultimate development, the 
 manifestation of its object — namely, the preservation of 
 the Adriatic to the Teutonic powers, so that they may con- 
 tinue to launch their warships into an arm of the Mediter- 
 ranean. 
 
 And Germany and Austria were for thirty-four years 
 Italy's allies! 
 
 27 
 
THE ASPIRATIONS OF ITALY AND THE RIGHTS 
 OF CIVILIZATION* 
 
 By Hon. Arnaldo Agnelli 
 
 Deputy in the Italian Parliament from Milan 
 
 My Dear Friend: 
 
 You have told me of your sympathy for the Italian 
 cause and of how you defend us when, in your presence, 
 imperialistic intentions and aspirations are attributed to 
 Italy; but you also add that you have need of accurate 
 data on the part which Italy is playing in the common 
 war and on the hopes which she expects to realize. 
 
 This information would mature your sympathy, trans- 
 forming it into profound and sure conviction, and more 
 than all would complete your authentic information on 
 the subject. 
 
 I am ready to give you satisfaction, and I will do it, 
 forcing myself to that impartiality and serenity of judg- 
 ment which is the first duty of one who speaks of his 
 own country to a stranger and a political adversary. I 
 will do it the more gladly because I have been able to 
 establish the necessity of making some corrections in the 
 opinions which are too often given currency in France as 
 in England, in Switzerland or elsewhere, the origin of 
 which must always be sought for in incomplete informa- 
 tion. 
 
 This lack of information does not surprise me. 
 
 In the history of the last thirty years in Italy, our na- 
 tional aspirations have had a singular impulse and de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Bound, as we were, by an alliance with Austria-Hun- 
 gary, as with Germany, the official politics of Italy has 
 
 *A letter to an influential member of the Socialist Party in France, who requested 
 enlightenment on the Italian question. 
 
always, as one might say, had to put the soft pedal on 
 the irridentisia question. The government was always 
 taking measures of increasing severity in this regard. 
 Occasionally it even went so far as to prohibit simple 
 patriotic demonstrations and theatrical performances 
 which referred to historic events perfectly well known to 
 all Italians. 
 
 Austria was always alert, and on the slightest pretext 
 never failed to make official complaints and remonstrances. 
 
 Naturally, the profound sentiment of the people and 
 the ideals of the best element of all the parties without 
 distinction, looked eagerly into the future for the fulfill- 
 ment of our national destiny. There was no lack of 
 organizations to cultivate this sentiment, to keep it from 
 dying out in the spirit of the people, above all to defend 
 our language and our civilization beyond the political 
 frontiers of Italy; but, officially, Italy never allowed 
 herself to refer to the restitution of tier territory. 
 
 We have had many characteristic proofs, both of the 
 vitality of this sentiment in the face of every obstacle, 
 and of the zeal of our government to intervene and pre- 
 vent its manifestation. 
 
 Marcora, President of the Chamber of Deputies, pro- 
 nouncing a public eulogy of an old Republican, the 
 deputy Socci, who had died shortly before, alluded to the 
 Trentino and called it in passing "our Trentino." Socci 
 had fought in 1866 with Garibaldi, up to the very gates 
 of Trent. The Italian government was obliged to apolo- 
 gize to Austria. 
 
 A general, Asinari di Bernezzo, saluting a flag which 
 the women of Brescia had presented to a newly formed 
 cavalry regiment, ventured to express his desire to see it 
 crowned with the laurels of victory for the liberation of 
 our brothers; a natural sentiment in a general himself a 
 veteran of the wars for Italian independence. He was 
 forced to resign his command. A former President of 
 the Cabinet, Fortis, spoke rather openly before the 
 Chamber of Deputies of Italy's legitimate anxiety over 
 
 29 
 
the enormous armaments of Austria, and over the fact 
 that preparations for an offensive against us were with- 
 out doubt in progress, especially in the Trentino. Fortis 
 found it very strange that we should be obliged, above 
 all things, to protect ourselves from aggression on the 
 part of our allies. This utterance was accorded an un- 
 paralled demonstration of approval by all the members 
 of Parliament. It was the triumph of truth. Tne next 
 day Fortis, on the advice of the more prudent, was obliged 
 to explain, to modify, to attenuate, to rectify, certain 
 details of his too spontaneous, but none the less perfectly 
 justified, outburst. 
 
 I could mention numerous instances, which, during the 
 period of our alliance, would furnish absolute proof that 
 the memory of our brothers, subject to the Austrian 
 dominion, was still keenly alive in our hearts; but that 
 at the same time the government deemed it necessary to 
 conceal it if not to suppress it completely. 
 
 I am not surprised that these facts were entirely un- 
 known to the world at large. A country is judged abroad 
 synthetically and en masse. It is impossible to make 
 known the hidden recesses of its mentality. 
 
 Compare, if you please, our condition with that of 
 France after 1870-1871. Your beautiful language so 
 well known over all the world, your literature, your novels 
 and your dramas which everyone reads and admires, your 
 books and your newspapers, the discourses of your ora- 
 tors, have spread so widely the knowledge of your suffer- 
 ings and of your lively hope in a day of reckoning, that 
 no educated person in Europe is unaware of the question 
 of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 
 It was notorious, I hasten to add, that the different 
 political parties offered different solutions of this great 
 question. We are familiar with the speeches of Jaures 
 and the book of Sembat, as well as with the activity of 
 Deroulede and of Maurice Barres. I have nothing to 
 say in this regard except to note that the difference in 
 attitude corresponded to a different evolution of ideas; 
 
 30 
 
but I am satisfied to observe that your problem had been 
 placed before Europe. The same problem had been sub- 
 mitted to public opinion even for those countries which 
 had no existence except in the hopes of their exiled and 
 persecuted peoples, as in the case of Poland; while for us 
 profound silence shrouded our hopes and aspirations. It 
 was necessary to live a long time in Italy to realize how 
 widespread and well rooted were these aspirations of 
 which even the best informed among the foreigners were 
 unaware. Still the hope was strong in us and it was 
 founded upon incontestable right. 
 
 You undoubtedly know that Metternich said that 
 Italy in his time did not exist politically, that it was 
 only a "geographical expression." Without wishing to 
 do so, Metternich uttered the most forceful argument in 
 favor of our independence and unity. Indeed few na- 
 tions in the world have a geographic character so precise 
 and clearly determined and can claim frontiers so e cactly 
 delineated by nature. 
 
 For the national consciousness, when it was reawakened 
 in the first half of the nineteenth century, the summit of 
 the Alps and the sea afforded a boundary so exact, a 
 natural confine so suggestive that Italy saw indicated 
 there all her program. From this fact sprang a double 
 consequence, positive and negative, on which I ask you 
 to reflect a little. 
 
 Even if Italy did not think of expanding her present 
 territory, even if she renounced all intention of extending 
 to her natural boundaries, still her safety, her freedom of 
 action, her independence, her very dignity will be in peril 
 as long as a hostile power retains a foothold on this side 
 of the mountain chain which separates her from the 
 rest of Europe. 
 
 This is the reason why a feeling such as ours seemed to 
 sleep or to be momentarily calmed, but in reality it could 
 not be extinguished nor disappear without endangering 
 our national existence itself. 
 
 But there was another, or even stronger reason which 
 
 31 
 
held us back. A reason which I believe is analogous with 
 the state of mind of many of our friends, good Socialists 
 and good Frenchmen at the same time. 
 
 For, in this instance, without renouncing our hope in 
 the just working out of our destiny, we placed above 
 every consideration the supreme necessity of maintain- 
 ing peace. 
 
 I will indicate the character of this policy in the very 
 words of Jaures, who, in a certain sense, is the master of 
 us all. 
 
 "This policy," said Jaures in 1909, "necessitates neither 
 the repudiation of the right of conquest, nor the proclama- 
 tion of that right; it implies faith in the triumph of justice 
 which eventually will emerge from the development of 
 democracy and from the certainty of a permanent peace." 
 
 We knew, or at least we felt confusedly, what a terrible 
 catastrophe would be provoked by war. We had all 
 pondered upon that marvellously prophetic page in 
 which Jean Jaures spoke of how great would be the dis- 
 aster (from every point of view) of a general conflagration. 
 
 In Italy, our formula, both for the radicals and for the 
 reform socialists, was not to refuse any measure necessary 
 for the national defense; but we could not conceive and 
 would not have approved a policy of methodical prepara- 
 tion for war. 
 
 Maybe we were mistaken. But such was the fact and 
 the necessary consequence was the avoidance of any 
 aggressive policy. Many of us wished to reduce our 
 armaments and turn our attention and financial efforts 
 to economic and social reforms, to public education, and 
 to increasing the productivity of our country which had 
 just entered the industrial, commercial and agricultural 
 movement of the great civilized nations. But we could 
 not, without falling into flagrant contradiction, challenge 
 Austria with our indisputable right to complete national 
 unity, involving irredentismo and at the same time 
 curtail our military program. It is absurd to desire the 
 end without being willing to provide the means. This 
 was our predicament at the beginning of the war. 
 
 33 
 
As you know, our purely defensive alliance put us 
 under no obligation to act with the Central Powers. 
 
 I will say only a word about this matter: Read the 
 Austrian Red Book on the conflict with Italy. You will 
 find that the consequences of the seventh article of the 
 treaty of alliance are very subtly discussed but you will 
 not find the least recrimination, the slightest reproof for 
 our neutrality. Rather is the whole book dominated by 
 the idea that our right to remain neutral was unquestion- 
 able. Not for one moment, during those months of end- 
 less discussion, did Austria dare hold us to obligations 
 derived from a treaty which she had violated both in 
 letter and in spirit. 
 
 The "compensations" which were offered us implied 
 at the same time three logical consequences which are 
 most important to record; first, our full and absolute 
 right to remain neutral; second, the violation of the 
 treaty of alliance both by Austria and Germany; third, 
 the Italian nature, what we would call the ItaUanild 
 of the territory they proposed to cede to Italy. 
 
 Free in our actions, we chose deliberately the path 
 which we have held in conformity to our ideals of de- 
 mocracy. The whole movement from September, 1914 
 to May, 1915, the debates which established that our 
 intervention was inevitable and caused a radical change 
 in our foreign policy, were prompted only by sentiments 
 of justice and human solidarity, by indignation against 
 the Central Empires, by those very sentiments without 
 which humanity would revert into a horde of savages. 
 
 You have only to read the newspapers of that period, 
 tracing the course of events day by day, in the publica- 
 tions for propaganda, in the speeches in Parliament and 
 especially those made at public gatherings. You have 
 only to remember that two men, more than any others, 
 labored to mould our consciousness, embodying in those 
 confused months, the development of public opinion. 
 They were two socialists: Battisti, deputy to the Reich- 
 stag in Vienna, who spoke in the name of the Trentino 
 
 33 
 
and the other unredeemed provinces, and Destree, deputy 
 in the Belgian Parliament, who spoke in the name of his 
 own country. 
 
 Today, after two years and a half of sharp and arduous 
 warfare, after the intervention of America which has 
 without doubt given a new aspect to the conflict, have 
 we not the right to insist, even in the face of all Europe, 
 have we not the duty to stand firm until the day when 
 our brothers are liberated, exactly as do the French who 
 never lose sight of the question of Alsace-Lorraine? 
 
 Italy was party to a system of alliance solely for the 
 sake of maintaining peace. In 1913 she refused to be- 
 come entangled in another Bellum punitivum premedi- 
 tated by Austria and Germany against Serbia. Not 
 being responsible for the conflict, had she not the right 
 to expect results which would resolve the problems of 
 nationality, guaranteeing peace for the future? 
 
 I believe that we have the right to resist, especially 
 for our brothers who are still under the Austrian yoke, 
 the most terrible of all foreign dominations. 
 
 In fact the Hapsburgs have never known any scruples 
 in the methods which they use for dealing with the un- 
 happy races which are in the minority in the Austrian 
 Empire, the Czech-Slovenes and the Jugo-Slavs, in short 
 all those who are not either Germans or Hungarians. 
 The existence and the continuation of the Empire has 
 no other foundation than systematic persecution and 
 the racial hatreds which the ruling caste has known how 
 to arouse, and has always kept alive, letting it loose 
 sometimes with an incredible cynicism. 
 
 The Italians of these lands to be redeemed are worthy 
 of the sacrifices which they are costing Italy. For, heed 
 it well, a long history of struggle, of suffering, of martyr- 
 dom, had strengthened their desire and confirmed the 
 necessity of their union with their mother country. 
 
 The Trentino, eastern Friuli, Istria and the other pro- 
 vinces and cities of the eastern coast of the Adriatic 
 cherished the hope, during all the period of the Resorgi- 
 
 34 
 
mento, of being united to the other Italian provinces. 
 Many of their sons fought in the wars of independence. 
 Driven by the revolutionary force of their principles and 
 their energy, guided by men like Cavour and Garibaldi, 
 Italy developed into a nation, her various regions were 
 welded into unity around the center of Rome, the mother 
 city. What was this movement if not the continuation 
 and fulfilment of the impulse which the French Revolu- 
 tion gave to Europe? 
 
 No one then disputed the right of Trent and Trieste to 
 become a member of the great Italian family, any more 
 than that of Naples, of Milan, of Turin or Palermo. 
 Even Austria, who dominated directly such an important 
 part of Northern Italy, and had a strong indirect influence 
 in the entire peninsula, had not yet thought seriously of 
 undertaking a work of denationalization. After 1866 the 
 scene changes. A large Italian population of nearly a 
 million inhabitants is left on the margin on the Austrian 
 Empire. Austria, who in the treaty of peace had suc- 
 ceeded in holding a part of the Italian territory, hopes to 
 use the Trentino as an easy ingress and a constant men- 
 ace to Italy. By means of the eastern Friul , Trieste and 
 the coast, she wishes to insure for herself mastery of the 
 sea and of the hinterland, and dominion over the Balkans. 
 With this in view she promotes Pan-Germanism in the 
 Trentino and encourages the Slavic population in every 
 way to move to Istria in general and to Trieste in par- 
 ticular. In this scheme we may find the reason for the 
 abolition of any form of autonomous government for the 
 Trentino, notwithstanding the desire of all parties to 
 weld it with the German Tyrol. In this scheme we may 
 find the reason for the traditional policy of Austria, which 
 obstinately refused to establish an Italian University 
 and limited or abolished other Italian schools. After 
 the annexation of Venice to Italy the diplomas issued by 
 the University of Padua, which had been frequented for 
 centuries by the youth of the Trentino and Trieste, lost 
 all legal value in Austria. The right of the Italians to a 
 
 35 
 
higher education in their own tongue was incontestable. 
 To oblige them to study in the German language at 
 Vienna or Gratz was an injustice. This right was con- 
 ceded theoretically but denied in fact. After exerting 
 every sort of pressure, after enormous loss of time cover- 
 ing many years (only the Turkish Empire, her worthy 
 ally of today, can compete with Austria for systematic 
 and deliberate slowness of legal procedure) a law course 
 was instituted in the ultra-German city of Insbruck, 
 and even that course was not a complete one. 
 
 The lectures began on November 3, 1904; on November 
 4, they were suspended on account of disturbances caused 
 by the populace who persecuted the one hundred and 
 fifty Italian students. The populace was allowed to 
 enter and destroy the Italian law school. 
 
 After this admirable example of hultur the lectures 
 were not resumed. The Italian University was still 
 spoken of and all possible solutions were discussed, but 
 its institution at Trieste, its natural seat, unanimously 
 demanded by all Italians, was never permitted; and 
 there was never the least indication of putting into 
 effect the project which was in fact only a ruse. The 
 real purpose of the government was to prevent the forma- 
 tion and consolidation of a national consciousness among 
 the Italians. 
 
 There was not a single governmental high school in 
 Trieste; the only one existing was maintained by the 
 municipality. Instead there were many German and 
 Slav schools in purely Italian districts and everywhere 
 there were officials who did not understand either the 
 language nor the needs of the Italians. 
 
 Unheard-of restrictions as to liberty of education, of 
 meeting, of association, of thought, of discussion, were 
 aimed against the Italians as such, while the antagonistic 
 races were favored in every way. 
 
 Our countrymen waged their national war on the 
 ground of legality. Do you remember what Jaures 
 wrote about the similar struggle which was going on in 
 
 36 
 
Alsace-Lorraine? The analogy is very striking. Friend 
 of peace as he was, he nevertheless admired the task to 
 which your irredenfi had dedicated themselves. "No 
 longer awaiting," he said, the resumption of justice by 
 reason of the fortunes of war, Alsace has told herself 
 that her duty and her safety consisted at least in the 
 present territorial disposition of Europe, in preserving the 
 originality of her ideas, perpetuating under the yoke of 
 the conqueror that fragment of the soul of France which 
 she held in trust." And it is in this manner that among 
 all classes of the people of Alsace the French culture and 
 the French language have never been so universal as 
 they are today. Thus, in the present moment in Alsace, 
 all the parties are grouped together, without one conced- 
 ing anything to the advantage of another, each clinging to 
 its own ideals: Catholics, Socialists, Democrats, Anti- 
 Clericals, they are all united in demanding from Germany 
 a broader administrative autonomy, to protest against the 
 brutality of Prussian bureaucracy, to insist on the right 
 of the people of Alsace-Lorraine to continue their French 
 culture. 
 
 Austria did not, in fact, have the excuse of an exception- 
 al regime for the Italian provinces. The whole govern- 
 mental system in these provinces is in opposition to the 
 written guarantees of the Austrian constitution, and of 
 the fundamental laws defining the general rights of 
 citizens (December 21, 1867), as established by article 19: 
 "All the nationalities of the state have equal rights and 
 every nationality taken separately has the right to pre- 
 serve and cultivate its national life and language. Equal- 
 ity before the law for all languages of the country, in 
 schools, in public office, in public life, is recognized by 
 the state. In those provinces inhabited by people of 
 differing nationality the public schools shall be so con- 
 ducted that each nationality will find the necessary means 
 to acquire an education in its own tongue without being 
 obliged to learn another language of the country." 
 
 I wanted particularly to quote literally this paragraph 
 
 37 
 
to demonstrate the real value which new obligations 
 
 would have in Austria: They would be violated as usual. 
 ****** 
 
 Speaking to a foreigner and a Socialist I will take a 
 strictly international point of view. 
 
 In London, February 7, 1915, before Italy entered the 
 war, the Socialists of the Entente proclaimed their 
 principle: "In all Europe, from Alsace-Lorraine to the 
 Balkans, peoples annexed by force must recover the 
 right to dispose of themselves." 
 
 It is an elementary principle of any internationalism 
 that there is no real and sincere social progress without 
 absolute equality of conditions among the people, with- 
 out respect to race. On the other hand, why not say it? 
 It would seem in certain moments that preoccupation 
 with social questions might cause the question of nation- 
 ality to be forgotten. It may be true, for example, for 
 the English Socialists and for those of the Socialists in 
 France, Russia and Italy who do not live in constant 
 touch with the centers where, under the heel of foreign 
 oppression, the struggle for nationality still surges im- 
 placably. But for countries which are not in possession 
 of their independence, where racial animosities are still 
 alive, where an astute government aggravates it to the 
 limit of its power, the two battles become merged, and 
 any social progress is paralyzed; any serious victory is 
 rendered impossible for lack of the conditions essential 
 to such progress and such victory. 
 
 Ask the Czech Socialists, the Socialists of Alsace-Lor- 
 raine, ask the Socialists of Belgium where perfidious 
 Germany strives to nourish the hatred of the Fleming 
 for the Walloon. And if there be any who can be called 
 Socialists at Trieste (not at Trent nor in the other Italian 
 provinces), who dare affirm the contrary — who are among 
 the most faithful adherents of Scheidemann and his 
 policy, they represent the most | absurd and monstrous 
 contradiction. They surely deserve to be, as they in- 
 deed were in other times, friends of Prince Hohenlohe, 
 
 38 
 
governor of the Italian city of Trent in the name of the 
 Hapsburgs. They deserve to be today, as they were in 
 truth in their local newspapers, mouthpieces of the 
 Austrian General Staff. 
 
 We can even go so far as to understand that in times of 
 peace those Socialists take no part in the struggle for 
 nationality, even declare their indifference to it. A 
 grave error from our point of view, but capable of explana- 
 tion if one admits that they are so absorbed by the labor 
 of completing the organization of the proletariat that 
 they do not wi h to divert from it the least force. But 
 today when we have a glimpse of the possibility of pre- 
 paring the confederation of nations, when we hope to 
 bring forth from all our misfortunes and all our agony a 
 logical and organized international life, founded on 
 justice and peace, today — when those who call them- 
 selves Socialists follow the lead of a tradition-bound, 
 reactionary, militaristic and clerical state — that is the 
 thing we cannot understand without attributing it to a 
 fearful blindness. The empire of the Hapsburgs, of 
 which these Socialists would be the support, is absolutely 
 incapable of internal reformation. It enjoys a residue of 
 cohesion which is secured to it by the brutality of its 
 methods of government, by its blindly, summary military 
 and civil discipline, inexorable in its acts of repression, 
 and by the division and complete opposition of the ele- 
 ments which compose it, which ought to work together 
 for the common good and yet which cannot even attempt 
 it without danger of a revolution. 
 
 The spectacle which the Reichsrat furnishes is a proof 
 of this; the fact that the Emperor of Austria, after reign- 
 ing for several months, has not dared to swear to support 
 the constitution is another. 
 
 Now, that some Socialists should wish to reinforce, to 
 continue, to perpetuate all this, let me repeat it, is absurd 
 and monstrous. 
 
 One name should suffice to silence them, that of Cesare 
 Battisti, the Socialist deputy from Trent; that pure, in- 
 
 39 
 
corruptible and generous man who paid with his life- 
 blood for his devotion to his country, for love of which 
 he never forgot nor deserted the cause of Socialism. 
 
 While others did not blush to climb the ladder to favor 
 in the service of the Government which oppressed their 
 brothers, Cesare Battisti, at the Reichsrat of Vienna and 
 at the provincial Diet of Innsbruck, pronounced fiery- 
 denunciations of Austrian militarism. He did his whole 
 duty as a Socialist but he declared most emphatically 
 that "any opposition to the reconstruction of national 
 unities was an opposition to Socialism itself, because the 
 existence of the national groups was the logical and 
 necessary antecendent of the development of civilization 
 and therefore of Socialism." (Battisti, II Trentino, page 
 15.) 
 
 After having fought with tongue and with pen, he came 
 to Italy in August, 1914, so as not to serve in the Austrian 
 army in its aggression on Serbia. He volunteered in the 
 Italian army at the beginning of the war. As an officer 
 of the Alpini, he fought like a hero, wounded in action, he 
 was captured, sentenced to die, and mounted the scaffold 
 crying in the face of his executioners, "Long live Italy." 
 
 Nor was he the only one. An Istrian, a man of the 
 people, Nazario Sauro, was executed by Austria; others like 
 Filzi and Rismondo suffered the same fate, as did the first 
 of all these patriots, Guglielmo Oberdan, who was put to 
 death by Austria in 1882. 
 
 And these are only a few of the bloodiest incidents in a 
 long persecution of which I could cite numerous instances. 
 Associations were methodically broken up, newspapers 
 suppressed, prosecutions begun without foundation; on 
 every pretext and even without pretext, Austria punished 
 with prison, misery, and exile, those who were and who 
 declared themselves Italians. Let us ask ourselves again: 
 Is the progress of civilization possible; can the social 
 struggle be carried on fairly and freely, when the actions of 
 the government are inspired by such tendencies? 
 
 This, the true and unhappy condition of the Italian 
 
 40 
 
provinces which are under Austrian domination, is proven 
 by all the proclamations which these peoples have ad- 
 dressed to Italy, and even to the president of the French 
 Republic in 1910, on the occasion of his visit to Rome. 
 This is the reason why in the present circumstances we 
 should not think of resolving this problem by consulting 
 the people in a referendum or a plebiscite. 
 
 The practical and technical impossibility of this pro- 
 cedure has been demonstrated by the address to Citizen 
 Branting on the part of the Socialists of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 But we have even stronger reasons for opposing the 
 referendum. 
 
 All Italians subject to Austria, who have succeeded in 
 escaping either to Russia or to Italy, are deprived of all 
 means of communication with their fellow citizens: 
 50,000 are in Italy; many thousands enlisted in the 
 Italian army are fighting at the front; they are fighting for 
 Italy, or rather for a new and better Europe; hundreds 
 and hundreds of them have already lost their lives. 
 
 In Austria, more than 50,000 Italians from the unre- 
 deemed provinces, the flower of the Italian population (one 
 need only examine the list to convince himself), have been 
 interned. The number of dead, invalids and infirm is 
 appalling. Over 1,000 citizens are imprisoned in the 
 fortresses; all the rest of the men who can possibly bear 
 arms have been mustered into the Austrian army, which is 
 itself only a vast concentration camp and a huge fortress 
 in which the officer abuses the soldier in whom has never 
 burned the spark of a common national ideal. The 
 population consists of women, children and aged persons; 
 terror pervades everywhere; how could these people be 
 consulted? Into what trap would we lead them? Bear 
 in mind that the Austro-Hungarian premier, in open 
 Reichsrat, had declared that all these measures of oppres- 
 sion and repression are necessary, indispensable, inevitable. 
 Without these, he declares, Austrian national life would 
 be unsafe. What other country treats its citizens in such 
 a manner? Is this not a terrible confession? Does not this 
 amount to a plebiscite? 
 
 41 
 
And note that what is being done to the Italians, is also 
 perpetrated for the same reasons against the Jugo-Slavs 
 and the Czechs. 
 
 Permit me to make a final observation. You are 
 perhaps saying that since there is a racial rivalry in certain 
 places between the Italians and the Slavs, the Italian 
 subjects of Austria, seeking to unite with Italy, think only 
 of themselves and that guarantees are necessary for the 
 representatives of the other young and growing races, who 
 have themselves no less a right to live, to prosper and to 
 progress in perfect liberty. 
 
 All this is entirely just in principle and deserves an exact 
 explanation. 
 
 We ask, first of all, the annexation to Italy of cities and 
 regions where the population is solidly Italian; where the 
 Slavic and German element is as small in proportion as is 
 the foreign element in certain cities of the interior, such 
 as Florence and Rome, centers of Italian sentiment since 
 Italy first was; we will not correct the exaggerated, altered, 
 falsified census taken by Austria. But where it is a ques- 
 tion of towns with mixed population, it is just to recognize 
 and insure every right, the school above all else, to any 
 nationality living on Italian soil. 
 
 Is Italy, or is she not, better qualified than Austria to 
 give these assurances and these legitimate guarantees? 
 
 There is a triumphant response to be given. It is 
 founded on experience. Even the worst calumniators of 
 Italy have not been able to cite a single fact to prove any 
 act of oppression or persecution against the French, 
 Albanian, German and Slavic peoples who live on this 
 side of the Alps in Italian territory. 
 
 Some of these, like the Albanian population in the south 
 and in Sicily, have lived in Italy from time immemorial. 
 The French of the Val d'Aosta, the Germans of the Veneto, 
 the 30,000 Slovenes on the banks of the Natisone near 
 Cividale have never had occasion to complain of the 
 treatment they have received in Italy. Their ethno- 
 graphic individuality is fully respected, and this fact is 
 easily explained. Italy owes her existence to principles 
 
of liberty just as Austria owes hers to principles of autoc- 
 racy; all the guarantees, all th« greatest precautions are 
 taken on this account. 
 
 Therefore if it is a question of choosing between Italy 
 and Austria, our enemies have shown us the measure of 
 their tyranny and their scorn for every civil right, for in the 
 course of their long history they have always been the 
 very center of reaction in Europe. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the goal of the independence and 
 unification of all people is reached, Europe has without 
 doubt the right to demand that an adjustment be made 
 among those interested, on both sides, which is com- 
 patible with the free development of all nationalities. It 
 will only remain to have it put into execution by the most 
 scrupulously just men. To disturb this possibility of 
 harmony, which you well know is about to be realized, 
 would be to play into the hands of our common enemy. 
 
 In the great public square of Trent, the veneration of 
 the Italians of all parts of our country has caused to be 
 erected a monument to Dante. It stands there, a symbol 
 of our unity, a memorial of our greatness, an inspiration to 
 our duty for today and for the future. 
 
 I can make no better summary of my thoughts than to 
 quote the words which are carved on that pedestal. The 
 words of the inscription were uttered by Giovanni Bovio, 
 the republican in whom a tempestuous political life had 
 not disturbed the calm of his philosophic vision. It is 
 reported that our enemies have defaced and insulted this 
 monument. If this is true (I still hope that it is not) it 
 must be concluded that they were unworthy to read these 
 words — much less to understand them. 
 
 The inscription says: "To Dante, the Father, with the 
 homage of the whole nation, bow ye strangers, let us bow, 
 Italians, and let us rise again brothers once more in justice." 
 Is that day still far off? I do not know, but I know this, 
 that the ideal which Italy, cradle of our civilization, is 
 striving to realize at the price of her most precious blood 
 springs from this noble motive which honors whatever 
 nation cherishes it. Arnaldo Agnelli. 
 
 43 
 
ITALY'S EFFORT* 
 
 By Paul Deschanel 
 President of the French Chamber of Deputies 
 
 When, in May 1915, Italy took her place besides the 
 Allies she fully recognized the difficulty of her task. She 
 knew that the war would be long and arduous, that it 
 would cost enormously in men and money, that it would 
 cause an upheaval of her economic life. 
 
 The rupture of the Triple Alliance obliged Italy to seek 
 other markets for her commerce than those offered in the 
 Central Empires. But Italy knew also that she could 
 not remain neutral at the moment when a new Europe 
 was to be born. In that conviction she was faithful to 
 the tradition of the great patriots to whom she owes her 
 unity. Mazzini said: "I love my country because I love 
 the idea of country, I love Liberty because I believe in 
 Liberty, and I want our rights because I believe in Bight." 
 For two years Italy has made a strong fight. Her keen 
 diplomacy has little by little broken the bonds with which 
 the Germans sought to restrict it. The rupture with 
 Germany delivered Italy from a real servitude. The 
 proud nation of Manin, Victor Emmanuel, Cavour and 
 Garibaldi has earned her independence. Free she now 
 labours for the common cause. On the desolate plateau 
 of the Carso, at the summit of the Trentino Alps, her 
 armies have won, in spite of the enormous difficulties 
 which the nature of the ground offered. As in France, 
 all classes have participated in the struggle and even the 
 King, who has been in the midst of the campaign since 
 the beginning, prides himself on being like his grand- 
 father, "the first soldier of the Italian independence." 
 Italians of the north and of the south, Lombards, Nea- 
 
 *An article which appeared in La Renaissance, May 26, 1917. 
 
 44 
 
politans, Calabrians, Sicilians, Tuscans, Venetians, Ro- 
 mans and Emilians, have responded with the same cour- 
 age to the call of the fatherland. Young men and old 
 have bound together their strength and their hopes. 
 
 Behind the lines, life is transformed. Everywhere 
 there are manufacturing plants and work shops — I have 
 just seen those in Genoa — a world working for the de- 
 fense of the nation. Everywhere the land is cultivated, 
 and where men are lacking, children and women replace 
 them. But in spite of these efforts, life is not easy. The 
 people have submitted cheerfully to many restrictions. 
 To cover the expense of the struggle new taxes have been 
 levied and the people have subscribed largely to the 
 public loans. The immense resources thus accumulated 
 make it possible to keep pace with the heavy burden of 
 war. What Salandra in 1915 required of the nation is 
 now a fact: "All strength is united into one effort, all 
 hearts into one heart." The women of Italy, like those 
 of France, have shown themselves worthy of the utmost 
 respect. For two years they have alleviated suffering, 
 consoled the grief-striken and encouraged the weak. 
 Great in their charity, they have been great also in their 
 misfortunes. Innumerable bereavements have found 
 them resigned and ready for sacrifice. 
 
 Thus all will have a share in the victory for which all 
 have labored. The "Terza Italia" will open a new era of 
 prosperity — an era which Carducci, the poet of the epics 
 of 1859, Pales tro, Magenta, San Martino, the exploits of 
 Garibaldi (renewed by his grandsons in the Argonne 
 today), the "one thousand," the proclamation of the 
 capital of Rome, the prophet of greater Italy and the 
 achievements of Cadorna's soldiers — all have prepared 
 for Italy. 
 
 During a glorious peace, glorious not only in the realm 
 of literature, art and science, but also in agriculture, in- 
 dustry and commerce, Italy will pursue her way along 
 the path bright with immortal beauty. 
 
 45 
 
ITALY'S CLAIM TO ISTRIA* 
 
 By Prof. Charles Upson Clark 
 Of the American Academy in Rome 
 
 To the Editor of the New York Times: 
 
 On his deathbed in June, 1861, Camillo Cavour summed 
 up his life work. He had guided the little Piedmontese 
 kingdom in that marvelous career which had changed 
 Italy from Metternich's contemptuous "geographical 
 expression" to a realm powerful enough to be courted by 
 Bismarck. The Quirinal was still the palace of the Pope; 
 Venice was still Austrian; but Cavour foresaw their speedy 
 union with the House of Savoy. "As for Istria and the 
 Tyrol," said he, "that is another matter. That will be the 
 task of another generation." 
 
 And yet, only five years later, Italian armies nearly 
 realized the ambition so well put by Mazzini: "Italy's 
 eastern frontier has been drawn ever since Dante wrote 
 
 A Pola, presso del Quarnaro 
 Che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna (Inferno ix, 113.) 
 
 (At Pola, near the Quarnaro, which encloses Italy, and 
 laves her boundaries.) 
 
 On July 22, 1866, General Cialdini wrote General 
 Cadorna (father of the former Italian Commander-in-Chief, 
 who is thus Cavour's "other generation") : "If the enemy 
 has abandoned Gorizia, as I assume, and is now two or 
 three days' march away, you will have one division occupy 
 Gorizia. . . With the other two you will proceed to 
 occupy Trieste. . . But if the enemy's troops have held 
 firm at Gorizia you will go and attack them with all three 
 divisions, and, after beating them as vigorously as you can, 
 have one division follow them up, and with the other two 
 
 *A Utter published in the New York Times, December 23, 1917. 
 
 46 
 
push on toward Trieste." And even after the failure of 
 this plan the kingdom of Italy nearly secured its end by 
 diplomacy. General Govone, Victor Emmanuel's pleni- 
 potentiary in Prussia, was able to write the Italian Foreign 
 Minister from Nikolsburg on July 28 that, having asked 
 Bismarck if in the word "Venetia" he included the 
 Trentino and Istria, "he answered 'yes/ and authorized 
 me, on my requesting him, to make that official statement 
 to your Excellency." Then Italy would have realized the 
 sober judgment of Napoleon when he sanctioned the 
 statement of Prince Eugene Beauharnais — "Eugene is the 
 only one of us who never makes mistakes," Napoleon used 
 to say, and with good reason — that the only scientific and 
 satisfactory boundary of Italy is that "traced by nature 
 herself along the mountain summits which divide the 
 watersheds of the Black Sea and the Adriatic." That 
 line, added Napoleon, "would pass between Laibach and 
 the Isonzo; would include part of Carniola and Istria, and 
 would join the Adriatic at Fiume." 
 
 But, alas, in 1866, victorious Prussia decided not to 
 overhumiliate Austria — that Austria which Mazzini had 
 so justly likened to Turkey; one who wishes to break up 
 the Turkish Empire, said he, and maintain the Austrian, 
 is supporting a contradiction; the two anomalies will 
 stand or fall together. Bismarck was not ready for that 
 step; he had further use for Austria; and the Italian Army 
 and Navy in 1866 were not in themselves strong enough to 
 round out Italian unity. In vain did Ricasoli, head of the 
 Cabinet, point out that so long as Austria continued to 
 hold a foot of Italian soil there would never be a lasting 
 peace. Bismarck himself recognized the blunder in his 
 memorandum of April, 1868. ("Germany and Italy 
 Natural Allies.") "By the end of the current year," he 
 wrote, "Germany should form one single powerful State, 
 extending from the Baltic to the Alps, from the Rhine to 
 the Vistula and the Drave. Italy ought no longer to have 
 choice provinces in foreigners' possession. . . . The empire 
 of the Mediterranean belongs incontestably to Italy. 
 
 47 
 
She possesses in that sea coasts which are a dozen times 
 longer than those of France. Marseilles and Toulon 
 cannot be brought into comparison with Genoa, Leghorn, 
 Naples, Palermo, Ancona, Venice, and Trieste." 
 
 Bismarck, then, and Napoleon saw as clearly as Cavour 
 and Mazzini that the manifest destiny of Italy was to 
 reunite with herself that Istrian province which the fatal 
 Treaty of Campoformio had torn in 1797 from her Venetian 
 allegiance of centuries, and handed over to the tender 
 mercies of Austria. Istria was again Italian under 
 Napoleon, from 1806 to 1814; and all the tireless activity 
 of Vienna, her attempts to make Italians speak German 
 by refusing them any higher schools with Italian-speaking 
 instructors; her brutal policy of filling Istria with Slovenian 
 and Croatian peasants, and with public officials of other 
 Slav nationalities; her persecution of every public man or 
 every town council that ventured to stress Italian sym- 
 pathies even in literature or art — a process of the same 
 nature and longer duration than that of Prussia in Alsace- 
 Lorraine — all this had had so little success that Garibaldi 
 could write in 1867: "I am a true friend of Istria; and the 
 warmest of my desires is that I may be able to serve the 
 cause of that Italian country;" and in 1878, to Bizzoni of 
 Genoa: "Let us prepare Italy for the war to the death 
 against Austria, in which our stake is * to be or not to be ' 
 for other centuries;" and to Trieste: "If to-day I regret 
 that I am an old man, it is that I am of little use to the 
 sacred cause of Trieste and Trent; at any rate I shall be 
 proud to give it the last days of my life." 
 
 Nor was Dante the only Italian poet to remark that 
 Istria is part of Italy. Carducci, in his famous tributes of 
 December, 1882, to Guglielmo Oberdan, who had just 
 been hanged at Trieste, issued the appeal which conse- 
 crated the effort of the next generation: "On the north- 
 east, from the Central and Eastern Alps, the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire has us by the throat; on the northwest, 
 from the Western Alps, the French Republic threatens 
 us at our shoulders. On our coasts we are at every one's 
 
 48 
 
mercy. . . . Now we need social reforms, for justice; 
 economic reforms, for strength; arms, arms, arms, for 
 security. And arms, not for defense, but for offense. 
 Italy can only protect herself by attacking; otherwise she 
 will be invaded. . . . Let us raise, within ten years, on the 
 furthest crest of these Alps of ours, a monument to Gaius 
 Marius and to Giuseppe Garibaldi, with the motto: 
 * Foreigners, back ! ' " 
 
 And Italy's greatest modern poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, 
 is carrying into execution these precepts of Carducci's, not 
 only by the enthusiasm created by his patriotic verse but 
 by those airplane flights over Trieste, Pola, and Cattaro, 
 of which he has given us such rhapsodic descriptions. 
 
 I have quoted enough to show how Istria was regarded 
 by the makers of modern Italy. Why is this? What is 
 there in that rocky promontory, only about 50 miles long 
 by 40 across, that calls forth such single-hearted devotion? 
 Why is it that statesmen who hesitated about other 
 Adriatic problems were always convinced of Italy's rights 
 to Istria? 
 
 I suppose the first impelling cause is historical. Istria 
 was as thoroughly Roman a province as Venetia; she 
 fought the barbarians of past ages as bravely; she clung 
 to the Roman government of Ravenna until her own 
 free communes arose, as on the mainland opposite; 
 and in the thirteenth century she came under the 
 protection of Venice, whose soft dialect is still the 
 speech of all her seaport towns and inland cities. Not 
 till Napoleon's ambition led him to use Venice as 
 a pawn with Austria was Istria severed from Italy; 
 and even then, as we have seen, she was reunited 
 with Italy from 1806 to 1814. Austria, then, has had just 
 a century in which to win Istrian allegiance; and she has 
 made use of every device known to the Teuton. By 
 wholesale importation she has made the countryside Slav; 
 but Italians still pay five-sixths of the rent tax, three- 
 quarters of the industrial tax, four-fifths of the income 
 tax. She gives subventions to some fifty-five Croatian 
 
 49 
 
schools — those of Sts. Cyril and Methodius — but that it is 
 purely missionary work is shown by the fact that Istrians 
 contribute only about 10 per cent of the receipts; the rest 
 is supplied by the Government and private and clerical 
 contributions from Croatia. Austria has filled Istria with 
 German and Slav civil, military, and naval employes; in 
 Pola, for instance, in the 1912 elections, only 1 per cent of 
 the navy vote was for the Italian candidate. Italians, 
 then, are as justified in feeling sympathy for their Istrian 
 brethren as do the French for the Alsatians. It may be 
 said that the incorporation of a partly Slav population in 
 Italy would be unjust, and that a plebiscite would be the 
 only just solution. Happily, Italy can show many a 
 valley where she rules over people of non-Italian tongue, 
 who are as devoted as the Tuscans or the Venetians. The 
 Waldensians speak Provencal; the upper Val d'Aosta, 
 French; at Macugnaga one hears the German of South 
 Switzerland; Albanian, Greek, and Catalan are spoken in 
 various parts of Italy; and in Friuli are even several 
 thousand Slavs who have been contented Italians since 
 1866. The great Latin democracy may be trusted never 
 to apply the methods of her feudal, aristocratic opponent. 
 
 Historically, then, Istria is a segment of unredeemed 
 Italy. Geographically, she is as truly Italian. Italy is 
 bounded by the Alps and the three seas; and the Julian 
 Alps swing across the base of Istria, divide it off from the 
 Slav hinterland, and give it, by their protection, a Medi- 
 terranean climate, with the olive groves and the vine- 
 yards so characteristic of Italy. In fact, as I traveled 
 through Istria, I was struck by its resemblance to Greece 
 and Spain (especially Estremadura) as well as to Italy; 
 but there is nothing Central European about it. 
 
 But Italy has a further reason for demanding the retro- 
 cession of her lost province. Istria in foreign possession is 
 a knife poised over her breast. The Adriatic has low-lying 
 sandy shores to the west, without a single first-class harbor. 
 Istria alone has half a dozen excellent ports; and Austria 
 has made of Pola one of the world's great naval bases. 
 
 50 
 
Austria's possession of the eastern Adriatic coast has closed 
 that sea to Italy during the war; and if we are not to sow 
 the seed of future wars in our peace negotiation the Aus- 
 trian naval hierarchy must be banished; with a new South 
 Slav State — a greater Serbo-Croatia — the case would be 
 different, and a fair division of Dalmatia would secure it 
 the necessary outlets on the sea, even with Istria wholly 
 Italian. 
 
 Venice built her palaces of Istrian stone and her galleys 
 of Istrian timber; Carpaccio and Schiavone were painters 
 as Italian as their contemporaries of the peninsula. It is 
 a noble series of Italian names from Istria that is crowned 
 by that of Nazario Sauro of Capodistria, the devoted 
 mariner who gave to Italy his knowledge of Istrian coasts 
 and harbors when the war broke out, and on whom Austria 
 has wreaked vengeance, as she has on Cesare Battisti, the 
 former Deputy from Trent. From Alboin the Lombard 
 down, the Teuton has never failed to add some tragic com- 
 pelling touch to his maladroit efforts at controlling Latin 
 peoples; the scaffolds of Battisti and of Sauro are a re- 
 minder to Italy and to the world of what is in store if 
 Austria remains on Italian soil. 
 
 Charles Upson Clark. 
 
 New York, December 21, 1917. 
 
 51 
 
PUTTING ALBANIA BACK ON THE MAP* 
 
 By Amy A. Bernardy 
 
 There runs wild about the press just now such an 
 amount of incompetent talk and criticism about Albania 
 and the present Italian protectorate of it, that a few 
 facts will not come amiss for the clearer understanding 
 of the situation. To begin with, should the reader not 
 be quite familiar with the intricacies of Balkanic and 
 Adriatic geography, let him refer to a good map and 
 locate precisely the positions of which the names will 
 recur here and there in these columns. Then he must 
 imagine a rugged, picturesque, mountainous country 
 looking down from the heights of the Akrokeraunian 
 Mountains spoken of by Horace and Byron, upon the 
 Adriatic, or rather Ionian Sea, and across it to the oppo- 
 site shores of Italian Puglia, rising terraced and clear 
 out of the shining waters. 
 
 From the wide gulf of Valona, protected by the cliffs 
 of the mountains and guarded by the island of Saxseno, 
 the road winds through the alluvial plains along the 
 course of the more important Albanian waters and moun- 
 tain passes; following in the traces of the ancient civiliza- 
 tions, it leads on one side to Epirus and Macedonia, on 
 the other to the ancient Pelagonia, Sardica and Thes- 
 salonica, i. e.> to the present Monastir, Sofia and Salonica. 
 This was in fact the road through which the Roman 
 armies penetrated into the heart of the Balkans. Nor 
 are these fragments of the Via Egnatia the only survival 
 of history on Albanian ground, but several Venetian 
 castles and ruins crown the hills at Santi Quaranta, Argiro- 
 castro, and, not to speak of various others, Tepeleni, 
 which boasts also an interesting single-arched Roman 
 
 *Reprinted from the Boston Evening Transcript, August 1, 1917. 
 
 52 
 
bridge. Mosques and Mohammedan religious monu- 
 ments are frequent, since two-thirds of the Albanians 
 are good Mohammedans, though they hate the Turk and 
 his political and military domination worse, perhaps, 
 than any other of the several foreign lordships to which 
 they have been subjected or with which they have been 
 threatened in the course of centuries, and at least as 
 well as they hate the Greek. With Venice they got 
 along capitally, since Venice knew enough of history and 
 politics in a general way not to force nationalities, not 
 to abuse and oppress the land financially, and to give 
 them on the other hand all the benefit of her finished and 
 perfected civilization. To this day the olive-groves of 
 Valona testify to the civilizing influences of Venice, for 
 it was the republic that had them planted and paid a 
 silver coin as a price for every plant reaching a certain 
 height and size. Rightfully enough, then, is the Lion 
 of St. Mark to this day a symbol dear to the memory of 
 the Albanians. 
 
 THE MANY ALBANIAN TRIBES 
 
 The Albanian language, primordial, perhaps pelasgic, 
 in its formation, has no written literature, but in its 
 place boasts what we might call a noble rhapsodic tradi- 
 tion, songs, legends, historical and epic narrations, familiar 
 to the people, handed down through centuries and genera- 
 tions along with the wonderful silver, turquoise and coral 
 jewelry, with the brilliant colors and embroideries of the 
 women's attire, with the extremely picturesque accoutre- 
 ment of the men. Thus as a well-defined unit in tradi- 
 tion, language and nationality have the Albanians reached 
 the threshold of modernity through endless strife and 
 struggle — the fate of the borderlands — and never achieved 
 a well-defined political position of their own because of 
 one shortcoming and imperfection in their national unit — 
 internal discord and rivalry. The Albanian as a nation- 
 ality is one, but the tribes are several; intervengeance 
 
 53 
 
dating from past generations a law; and such discipline 
 under the stress of the superior national ideal as could 
 bring them together in self-government a myth. With 
 all their magnificent primitive forces and uncurbed 
 atavistic traditions raging among them, the Albanians 
 are today, self admittedly, immature for self-government, 
 and apt to fall prey of the most unscrupulous of their 
 various neighbors, therefore, of the least desirable, not 
 only to them, but to the whole of civilized Europe, that 
 is, as matters stand today, to the whole of the Allies. 
 
 PLANTING KULTUR IN ALBANIA 
 
 It is regrettable that space prevents us here from 
 tracing even rapidly the interesting developments of the 
 Albanian idea from the time of their great leader and 
 national hero, Scanderbeg, down to the end of the nine- 
 teenth century. But we must recall at least, from more 
 recent political events, the "Statement of the League of 
 Prizrend" to the Berlin convention of 1878, which was 
 written at Scutari and submitted to the British repre- 
 sentative, Lord Beaconsfield; and the important discus- 
 sions of the "Convention of Monastir" held by the 
 Albanians during the Turkish revolution to uphold their 
 rights and state their wishes once more in the face of the 
 crumbling Ottoman domination. This led up to the 
 proclamation of Albanian independence, the twenty- 
 eighth day of November, 1912, on the part of a number of 
 delegates of the various Albanian tribes, and the conse- 
 quent constitution of a provisional government, with 
 Ismail Kemal Bey for its chief. This proclamation dis- 
 gusted Greece, who had her own views on at least a part 
 of Albania, and proceeded to answer it by bombarding 
 Valona on December third of that same year. The im- 
 plied menace hastened European diplomatic action on 
 the subject, and on December 17 the neutralization of 
 the autonomous principality of Albania under the pro- 
 tectorate of the great powers became a fact; the begin- 
 
 54 
 
ning, it was hoped, of a new history. Unfortunately, 
 instead, the Kultur succeeded in planting a German 
 princeling, Wied, into the new-born principality, and 
 disaster was inevitable, even if the great war had not 
 broken out in 1914. As it was, Wied ran, and Italy was 
 good enough to let him out on one of her ships; but it is 
 not probable that "Wied," or king "Tino," by the way, 
 who was allowed a similar privilege, feel adequately 
 grateful. It may be added, incidentally, that, if these 
 two weren't worth saving, the Italian navy took across 
 the Adriatic some hundred thousand who were; namely, 
 the defeated and heroic remains of the Servian army, 
 with the old king and General Putnik, thus doing for 
 Servia what France and England did for Belgium. But 
 this is another story. 
 
 Albania's tragic problems 
 
 Then came a very sad time for Albania, with the 
 terrors of war and of advancing hostile armies, with 
 Austrian menace and Greek intrigue clashing with each 
 other, but both bent on circumventing the allied influ- 
 ence and inevitable advance. Famine and epidemics 
 were all over the land, and the danger of disease spread- 
 ing across the Adriatic and over western Europe was not 
 the least among the problems that confronted the Allies. 
 
 Meanwhile, moral problems equally tragic and severe 
 had been con e ronting Albania all along. One of the 
 most interesting and pathetic things that have been 
 happening for years in Albania is that every foreign 
 Power could go there and open a school and teach in it 
 anything from Manchoo to Siamese, so to speak, but not 
 Albanian. Austria and Greece were most anxious to in- 
 vade the land respectively from north and south, and 
 finally swallow the two halves up. With Greece the thing 
 was comparatively easy. Most southern Albanians 
 speak Greek fluently (polyglotism is a necessity in the 
 congested Balkans and all around them), and besides 
 about one-third of the Albanians belong to the Greek 
 
 55 
 
Church; so the Greek linguistic invasion ran smoothly 
 enough. Not so with Austria; the German language, 
 even softened by Austrian accents, didn't make such 
 easy learning for the people. Then did Austria hit upon 
 a clever scheme. She remembered the Venetian ruins 
 all over the hills, the welcome shade of the Venetian 
 olive groves around Valona, the traditions of the Lion 
 of St. Mark; and just as on the Adriatic she had appro- 
 priated the Venetian symbol and authority for the trade 
 of her "Lloyd Austriaco" steamers, and the Venetian 
 mariners for her fleet, just so did she take advantage of 
 the familiarity of most of the Albanians, especially of 
 the coast, with the Italian language, and proceeded to 
 teach Italian in Austrian schools for the Albanian children. 
 Whereupon one could hear them sing, innocently enough, 
 poor little things, in Italian: "Serbi Dio l'Austriaco." 
 (May God keep the Austrian Kingdom), and "Viva il 
 nostro Imperator!" (long live our emperor) which was 
 rather striking, when one remembered that Italians in 
 Dalmatia were suffering gaol and death for wanting to 
 speak in their schools the language that Austria put 
 herself out to teach to foreign children in foreign soil — 
 for her own purposes. 
 
 GREEK WIT OUTWITTED 
 
 And, since we relate anecdotes, let's have one about 
 the Greeks too; anecdote is often the soul of history. 
 When the international commission was trying to define 
 the boundaries of Albania, Greece had resorted to all 
 Ulysses' wiles to impress the Commissioners with the 
 Hellenism of the disputed soil; even children were trained 
 and used for the purpose. At Erseka one child, upon 
 being questioned, duly answered in Greek that he was 
 Greek and they all spoke Greek and even the family cat 
 was Greek, or words to the same effect. The honest 
 Britisher in the commission was ready to believe truth 
 out of the mouth of a babe, indeed almost a suckling, 
 and the rest were about to agree, when the Italian who 
 
 56 
 
knew the country, and knew that it was Albanian soil 
 and not Greek, sharply ordered the Albanian cavas to 
 lightly cuff the child's ears; and out of the child's primi- 
 tive instincts thus aroused came the unmistakable cry: 
 "Nene!" (mother!) in Albanian. Thus was, for once, 
 Greek wit outwitted by a descendant of ^Eneas, and 
 Erseka was assigned to that part of Albania that also 
 contains Santi Quaranta, Delvino, Argirocastro, Les- 
 koviki, and so on; that is, the territory presently occupied 
 by Italy, and from which (actually from Argirocastro) 
 Italy has but recently issued her proclamation of united 
 and independent Albania and of the Italian protectorate 
 thereupon. And now comes the interesting question: 
 What has Italy done with or to Albania? 
 
 ALBANIA MUST BE PROTECTED 
 
 Italy stands by the London Conference of 1913, and 
 consequently desires Albania to be an independent unit 
 and desires also to prevent her being dismembered by 
 her various neighbors or swallowed up as a whole by the 
 Austro-Germanic coalition. It is moreover self-evident 
 that Italy and the Allies under the present war conditions 
 cannot afford to leave Albania alone, which would simply 
 mean allowing Austria to settle in a land manifestly in- 
 capable of self-defence at the present time and not strong 
 enough to bar the gates of the Adriatic at Valona, to the 
 enemies of the Allies. Military occupation of certain 
 territories, principally the naval base of Valona, and 
 political protectorate have therefore been resorted to as 
 a measure of safety in the vital interest not only of Italy 
 but of all the Allies; and it is equally evident to anyone 
 in the least familiar with the political game and not com- 
 pletely blind to ordinary human psychology, that who- 
 ever starts and keeps up confusing talk upon alleged 
 discord of the Allies in this line has an interest in the 
 continuance of misinformation and mystification and fur- 
 thers the interests of the enemy through the perplexity 
 of the public mind. It is the common desire of the 
 
 57 
 
Allies that Albania shall extend along the coast as far 
 as Cape Stylos, thus preventing Greece from holding to 
 the disadvantage of Valona both sides of the Corfu Canal. 
 And although this is not the ideal realization of all the 
 Albanians 5 national aspirations (which include the former 
 Turkish vilayets of Scutari, lanina, Kossovo and Mon- 
 astic), still it comes within satisfactory range of them, 
 and allows hopes for improvement, or, as diplomatic 
 Europe calls it, rectification of the situation. With the 
 occupation of Valona, Italy has practically barred the 
 Adriatic and guaranteed the safety of her unprotected 
 coast; more and better, she has prevented Austria from 
 settling there, and one may easily imagine what the fate 
 of the Allies in the Mediterranean would have been with 
 the Austrians at Valona. About as bad, or rather worse, 
 than it might have been with the Germans at Salonika. 
 
 Italy's reconstruction work 
 
 Now Valona and Southern Albania may with pardon- 
 able pride on the part of Italy be pointed out as an ex- 
 ample of what "civilized warfare" can do for a land; in 
 other words, how a region can be organized and disciplined 
 under military regime, without Prussianism. When the 
 first detachment of Italian soldiers and sailors landed at 
 Valona there was literally nothing doing in the line of 
 modern equipment or sanitation; in fact, epidemics were 
 raging through the country, with what danger of diffusion 
 the Italian sanitary departments know, who were kept 
 busy safeguarding Europe from the invasion of horrors 
 greater than those of war itself. iVnd there were thous- 
 ands of huddled refugees, destitute and famished, all 
 over. Italy went to work, and built four landing stages 
 for the unloading of ships on the bare sand. And the 
 ships began to unload things. The harbor of Valona is 
 surrounded by mountainous cliffs and by marshy bog 
 land; and the town is somewhat distant from the shore. 
 Roads had to be hewn out of the rock or knocked out of 
 the p^'d, and this was done by the Italian soldiers, who 
 
 .58 
 
found again in service of Italy and civilization those 
 Roman capacities for road-building, bridge-throwing, 
 tunnelling and so forth, of which America has had so 
 many examples in the work of the Italian immigrant. 
 Southern Albania possesses now four hundred and fifty kilo- 
 metres of wide, solid, permanent roads, besides seventy 
 kilometres of Decauville railroads. These railroads and 
 bridges had to be built out of nothing, as nothing was 
 there, apparently. Quarries were hammered out of the 
 mountain-flanks and furnaces built for bricks and mortar 
 as the land had nothing available. As for the city itself, 
 it has been provided with new streets, a complete system 
 of modern drainage and sewerage, gardens and trees. 
 In the country around every military post is an agricul- 
 tural station, with a supply of agricultural implements 
 and teams of oxen for distribution to the native farmers, 
 who are taught intensive agricultural work. One hundred 
 and twenty schools have been opened and others will be 
 by and by, where an Albanian teacher teaches to read 
 and write the long-exiled Albanian letters; arid instruc- 
 tion in Italian is also on hand, with which language most 
 of the inhabitants are familiar, on account of the proxim- 
 ity of the Italian coast. It is foreseen that the hospitals 
 and other buildings which have been erected by Italy 
 will be turned into schools, farms or to industrial pur- 
 poses after the war. The national Albanian flag (the 
 eagle of Scanderbeg on the red field) flies freely from the 
 municipal buildings, and all the customs and religious 
 beliefs of the people have been carefully considered and 
 respected. 
 
 The same fight for sanitation and civilization is going 
 on with characteristic simplicity and absence of advertis- 
 ing all over the ground held by the Italian troops, at 
 Del vino, at Premeti, at Selenitsa, or, to make it brief, 
 everywhere south of the Vojussa River, which is generally 
 held to be the ground covered by Italy; precise informa- 
 tion beyond these limits being subordinate to military 
 censorship. This district at least does not suffer ill- 
 
 §9 
 
health, nor moral nor material hunger; food-stores, 
 schools, hospitals are there; a native police corps under 
 the guidance of Italian officials is preparing itself for 
 future efficiency; motor-car services connect towns and 
 villages and bring the mails; and all the municipal offices 
 are in the hands of prominent native citizens. 
 
 And one may reasonably wonder whether conditions 
 are in any way to be compared to these, north of the 
 Vojussa, and especially where the x\ustrians camp. But, 
 then, comparisons will be possible to outsiders when the 
 whole of Albania will be freed from the fighting armies 
 that now stand on her mangled soil. Meanwhile, Italy 
 evidently believes in leaving a trace of civilization and a 
 good record for herself where she happens to be. 
 
 (JO 
 
DALMATIA, FIUME AND THE OTHER 
 UNREDEEMED LANDS OF THE ADRIATIC 1 
 
 All the " unredeemed " lands of the Adriatic coast have 
 century-old Italian traditions dating back to their earliest 
 Latin inhabitants. Even at Fiume, where until recent 
 years, the Latin tradition seemed least certain, recent 
 excavations have shown that the original seed, which later 
 on had such a vigorous fruition, was sown by Rome. 
 
 Geographically not only eastern Friuli and Istria as far 
 as the old classic frontier of Arsa, but also Fiume and 
 Dalmatia are Italian, for they are situated on this side of 
 the watershed which divides the affluents of the Danube 
 from those rivers which flow into the Adriatic. 
 
 We shall briefly indicate further on how Italian is the 
 civilization of these lands. Culture, geography, and his- 
 tory are the factors which detract from the purely numeri- 
 cal importance of statistics in those parts where they seem 
 unfavorable to the Italians. But even statistics support 
 Italian claims in a large portion of these " unredeemed " 
 lands despite the systematic bad faith of the Government 
 which compiled them. 
 
 FRIULI, TRIESTE AND ISTRIA 
 
 Geography. — The fact that these lands belong geo- 
 graphically to the Appenine Peninsula is not seriously 
 disputed even by German geographers. The fact has 
 been universally admitted for thousands of years. 
 
 The mountains and hills which rise on the further side 
 of the Isonzo cannot be said to constitute the geographical 
 frontier of a region because the Isonzo, which in its upper 
 stretches might seem to form such a boundary, flows 
 
 *A Historical and Statistical Study. Reprinted from the Idea 
 Demoeratica, November 11, 1916. 
 
 61 
 
further down through a plain, and because the great Alpine 
 chains stretch much further east, where they take the 
 name of the Julian Alps. 
 
 The Julian Alps clearly divide eastern Friuli and the 
 territory of Gorizia from the Carniola. The division is 
 distinct even as regards the character of the landscape 
 which, on this side of the Alps, is thoroughly Italian. 
 
 Starting from Monte Nero the Julian Alps "follow, 
 above Idria, the administrative boundary line between the 
 coast and the province of Carniola, through the pass of 
 Planina-Circhina. From Idria they run, mainly m a 
 south-easterly direction, along the heights which command 
 the road from Idria to Planina, near the river Uncia, 
 dividing Italy from the Slav lands at the central pass of 
 Longatico (Unterloitsch) and including, to the west, the 
 forests of Tarnova and Piro. From Longatico skirting 
 the western heights, they follow the Trieste-Laibach 
 railway line as far as Postumia (which they leave to the 
 west) following the administrative boundary line along 
 the ridge of the Albi Mountains, whence they descend, 
 embracing Fiume and some square miles of Croatia, and 
 join the sea at about the level of Buccari, opposite the 
 head-land of San Marco, which is part of the Italian 
 territory." 2 
 
 History. — As stated above the Italian traditions of 
 eastern Friuli, of Trieste and Istria as of all other parts of 
 Italy, are handed down from Latin civilisation. 
 
 The Roman town of Aquileia destroyed by Attila and 
 rebuilt by its patriarchs under the reign of the Lombard 
 kings, long held sway over all Friuli (Forum Juli) often 
 extending its supremacy not only over the neighboring 
 lands of Istria, but even over the province of Trent. 
 
 The temporal power first conferred on the Patriarchs 
 of Aquileia, with a donation of lands by Charlemagne, and 
 confirmed in 1077 and in 1093 by Henry IV, was abrogated 
 by Venice in 1420 but the parliament of the Meliores 
 
 2 Scipio Slataper: "I confini necessari all'Italia." Turin, 1915. 
 
 62 
 
Patriae terrae Forumjuli continued in existence although 
 with limited functions. 
 
 The ecclesiastical patriarchate was abolished in 1753, 
 and its lands and revenues were divided between the 
 diocese of Venitian Udine and Gorizia, which, two and a 
 half centuries before, had been illegally bequeathed to the 
 Hapsburgs by the counts of Gorizia, vassals of the patriar- 
 chate. 
 
 Trieste, the Tergestes of the Romans, which since the 
 fall of the Empire had been a Latin municipality, subject 
 later on to the Patriarchs of Aquileia, afterwards to other 
 Bishop Barons, to whom it was given as a feud by the 
 kings of Italy, at last became a free Italian commune. 
 And such it remained until after 1382 when, by fraud and 
 violence, this town also was subjected to the dominion of 
 the Hapsburgs. 
 
 At the end of the tenth century the maritime towns of 
 Istria met with the same fate as Trieste, until they were 
 conquered by Venice which held them until her downfall 
 in 1797. 
 
 The inland territory of Istria remained under the suzer- 
 ainty of the Patriarchate until the thirteenth century, 
 when it passed into the hands of the counts of Gorizia 
 and was bequeathed by them (illegally, for it belonged 
 to the Patriarchate) to the Hapsburgs. 
 
 In portions of this territory the Slav ethnic element 
 succeeded in establishing itself as far back as the second 
 half of the seventh century; but almost everywhere it 
 underwent that inevitable transformation which has at 
 all times befallen the barbarians who have descended into 
 Italy. A considerable part of the Slavs now settled in 
 Istria were imported by the Venetians to repeople terri- 
 tories devastated by epidemics, or came there as the 
 result of asylum granted to the Bosnian and Morlacchian 
 refugees who fled before the Turks. 
 
 But neither the natural migratory movement of the 
 Slav populations toward the sea, nor the immigrants 
 called thither by Venice — whose indifference to nationality, 
 
 63 
 
natural in those times, in regard to Istria and Dalmatia 
 is well known — would have sufficed to form in the inland 
 districts of Istria and in eastern Friuli, a numerical 
 majority of Slavs, had it not been for the assistance of the 
 Austrian Government, which, impotent to Germanise the 
 coast, did its best to Slavify it. Here and there it has 
 succeeded in its intent, but the numerical preponderance 
 acquired by the Slavs in some parts of eastern Istria, the 
 Carso, and the mountainous district of eastern Friuli, is 
 but recent and restricted to the rural districts only, 
 leaving the culture of these regions what it always has been, 
 i.e.y purely Italian. A Slav culture in eastern Friuli and 
 in Istria does not exist, and the Slavs themselves can point 
 to nothing to the contrary. From Aquileia, glorious wit- 
 ness to Roman civilization, to Pol a with its temples to 
 Rome and the Caesars, there is not on the coast or in the 
 inland districts one single monument which is not either 
 Roman, or Venetian, or modern Italian. 
 
 Inhabitants 3 . — The official Austrian statistics for 1910 
 return 90,119 Italian speaking inhabitants in eastern 
 Friuli. The Slovacs, according to these same statistics, 
 number 154,564. A calculation which may be con- 
 sidered reliable because it is based on electoral returns, 
 gives, on the other hand, the following figures : 
 
 3 In speaking of figures and numerical comparisons of populations 
 we should remember to note the great importance of the fact that 
 we can only refer to statistics compiled before the war. We are 
 therefore discussing a situation which has since been profoundly 
 modified, and which owing to these modifications, cannot be used as 
 the basis for Italian claims. The Slav population immigrated, 
 largely at the instigation of the Viennese government, into Italian 
 lands and very probably it will follow this same government in its 
 retreat. Thus the Carso today is deserted. How many Slovacs will 
 wish to return to this corner of Italy become once more politically 
 Italian? At Gorizia there were some thousands of Slavs (Slovacs, 
 Croats, Serbs, Poles, Ruthenians, and Bohemians) whom Austria 
 had forcibly placed in the government bureaus. Will any of these 
 return? It is thus evident that under these conditions figures are 
 poor arguments devoid of meaning. 
 
 64 
 
Italians subject to Austria 112,000 
 
 Italians subject to Italy 8,000 
 
 Slavs 130,000 
 
 Germans 3,500 
 
 According to these figures the number of Italians is 
 almost equal to that of the Slavs. But the Italians almost 
 all belong to the urban population, they are the more 
 highly educated and have therefore a distinctly higher 
 national value. So notable is this superiority that even if 
 they only numbered 90,000, as the Austrian statistics 
 try to make out, the national character of these lands 
 would not be changed, for it is and continues to be Italian. 
 
 The very name of Eastern or Austrian Friuli used in the 
 official acts of the Vienna government, is proof that 
 Goritian Friuli is an integral part of that Friuli already 
 united to the mother-country. 
 
 At Trieste in 1910 the Austrian statistics show that out 
 of 229,000 inhabitants, 118,959 are Italian, 56,916 Slovacs, 
 and 1 1,856 Germans. To convince us that these like all the 
 other figures of the Austrian census, are falsified, we need 
 only look up the official returns of the 1900 census which 
 gave 116,825 Italians, and 24,679 Slovacs. Nor is this 
 all : the K. K. Central Kommission filr statistik (of Vienna) 
 in 1913 declared that the returns of the Austrian census at 
 Trieste exaggerated the number of the Slav inhabitants. 
 
 The truth is that in 1910 the Italians of Trieste, inclu- 
 sive of those who could claim Italian citizenship (almost 
 all of whom were natives of Trieste) numbered 182,113, 
 and the Slovacs who mostly dwell in the hilly section of the 
 town, numbered 37,063, of whom over 45 per cent are 
 immigrants of recent date. 
 
 In Istria the Austrian statistics place the number of 
 Italians at 147,417, Slovacs 55,134, Croatians 168,184. 
 It is evident that these figures also need correcting. In 
 Istria, as in eastern Friuli, the number of Italians is nearly 
 equal to that of the Slavs; but here again the former 
 account for the educated section of the population and 
 form one national unit, whereas the Slavs are partly Croats 
 
 65 
 
and partly Slovacs, that is to say they belong to peoples 
 speaking different languages. Moreover, almost all the 
 Slavs speak Italian and many of them speak dialects so 
 full of Italian words that more than one glotologist has 
 been in doubt whether to classify them among Italian or 
 Slav dialects. 
 
 Considered as a whole, Friuli (Provinces of Gorizia and 
 Gradisca), Trieste, and Istria, which are divided by no 
 natural barrier and which should, therefore, be con- 
 sidered as forming one region, that of Julian Venetia, 
 were inhabited in 1910 by over half a million Italians as 
 against not more than 350,000 Croats and Slovacs. Nor 
 does this take into account Fiume, which likewise forms 
 part of Istria and, therefore, of Julian Venetia and where 
 the Italians form 65 per cent of the population. 
 
 FIUME 
 
 Geography. — Fiume, situated at the eastern base of the 
 Istrian peninsula, belongs geographically to Istria to which 
 it belonged politically until 1776. 
 
 The eastern frontier of Istria, which some place at the 
 Arsa, the original frontier of the tenth Augustean Region, 
 is really formed by the watershed of the Julian Alps which 
 descend to the sea at the Canale della Montagna, opposite 
 the head-land of St. Mark, near the island of Veglia. 
 
 The boundary line formed by the Arsa had a purely 
 administrative value in the time of Augustus; had it been 
 the military frontier the Romans would not have built 
 further east, for the defence of Italy, the two great Valli 
 of the Julian Alps. The majestic ruins of one of these 
 works can still be seen, following for some distance the 
 course of the Fiumara, a stream which forms the political 
 boundary line between Fiume and Croatia. 
 
 But, as stated above, the real geographical frontier 
 lies further to the southeast, on the crest of the Julian 
 Alps, and includes besides Fiume, the sea towns of Buccari 
 and Portore. 
 
 History. — Until February 1914, the origin of Fiume 
 
 66 
 
was unknown. An arch between two houses in the old 
 part of the town, traditionally known as the "Roman 
 arch," and the junction on its present location of many 
 Roman roads, as shown by the Itinerari and the geo- 
 graphy of Claudius Ptolomy, afforded grounds for sup- 
 posing it to be of Latin origin. The Italian dialect spoken 
 by the native population could only have been a develop- 
 ment of Latin, nor could its origin be ascribed to Venice, 
 for Venice only governed Fiume for one year, from 1508 
 to 1509. 
 
 Nevertheless, many students of local history threw 
 doubts on these suppositions, for none of the written 
 documents relating to Fiume date back further than the 
 thirteenth century. The old chronicles only speak of 
 Tarsatica, destroyed in the year 800 by Charlemagne. 
 
 The discovery in 1914 of Roman remains under a house 
 which was pulled down on the Corso removed all doubts. 
 The majority now incline to identify Fiume with Tarsa- 
 tica, rebuilt after its destruction, clear traces of which 
 were found in the Roman foundations on which the mediae- 
 val city was built. 
 
 The ancient Roman Oppidum, for such Tarsatica had 
 been, reappears in the middle ages under the name of 
 San Vito al Fiume, known later on as Fiume, a name which 
 the Slavs translated by the word Ricka a Croatian word 
 for water-course. San Vito is still the patron saint of the 
 town to whom the principal church is dedicated. 
 
 Fiume, which was from it foundation a free munici- 
 pality, was for some time under the dominion of the Franks, 
 after which it became successively a fief of the archbishop 
 of Pedana, of the bishop of Pola, of the lords of Duino, of 
 the Hapsburgs, of the Lords of Walsee, and then again of 
 the Hapsburgs. 
 
 All known documents relating to the city of Fiume bear 
 witness to its uninterruptedly Italian character, which 
 victoriously survived the Slav invasion in the seventh 
 century which, for a time, seemed to have submerged 
 everything. 
 
 In 1776 Maria Theresa made over Fiume to Hungary 
 
 67 
 
and — as a result of the protests of the inhabitants — a 
 royal decree of April 23, 1779, proclaimed it to be a 
 "separate body annexed to the crown of the kingdom of 
 Hungary." 
 
 In 1848 it was taken from Hungary by the Croatians 
 of the Bano Jelacic, who held on to it for nineteen years 
 without succeeding, spite of tenacious endeavors, in 
 undermining its Italian character, and in 1867, on the 
 dualistic settlement between Austria and Hungary, it was 
 restored to this latter. 
 
 At present Fiume is governed on the basis of a "pro- 
 visional arrangement." 
 
 In 1863 the so-called "deputations of the kingdom of 
 Hungary, Croatia and Fiume" met at Budapest and 
 decided that "the free city of Fiume and its territory" 
 should remain, in accordance with the charter of 1779, a 
 separate body provisionally annexed to Hungary "corpus 
 separatum adnexum sacrae Regni coronae." 
 
 In the first years after 1868 the autonomy and the 
 Italian character of Fiume were respected. But for 
 nearly twenty years the Italians of Fiume, harassed on all 
 sides, struggling against the Croatians and the Magyars 
 who have done everything in their power to denationalize 
 them, have been engaged in a desperate but so far victor- 
 ious fight in defence of their threatened Italian nationality. 
 
 Inhabitants. — The Italian character of Fiume is irre- 
 futably proven, even by the government census returns. 
 
 These figures show that in 1910 there were 24,000 
 Italians in Fiume (exclusive of some 6,000 Italian citizens 
 most of them natives of Fiume), 12,000 Slavs (Croats, 
 Serbs, and some Slovacs) and 6,400 Magyars. 
 
 The fact is that before the war at least 35,000 of the 
 54,000 inhabitants of Fiume were Italians, that is to say 
 65 per cent as compared to 28 per cent of Slavs and 6 per 
 cent of Magyars. 
 
 Economically speaking Fiume is of the greatest im- 
 portance to any nation which wishes to command the 
 Adriatic. Only some 50 kilometers from Trieste as the 
 crow flies, and connected up with the railway system of St. 
 
 6$ 
 
Pietro along which run the express trains from Fiume to 
 Vienna and from Trieste to Vienna, this Adriatic town 
 could easily gain command of all the commerce of the 
 Trieste hinterland. It is therefore necessary that the 
 country which is to possess Trieste, i.e., Italy, should also 
 hold Fiume. From this point of view Fiume may be con- 
 sidered the economic fulcrum of the Adriatic. Without 
 Fiume the economic supremacy of Italy on the Adriatic 
 would always be unreal. 
 
 Strategically Fiume is of great importance, not so much 
 for the command of the seas — for the country which holds 
 the Quarnero Islands holds the keys to the Adriatic — but 
 because without Fiume Italy would be deprived of the 
 natural barrier of the Julian Alps, the only valid obstacle 
 to future possible invasions, and the geographic unity of 
 Julian Venetia would be disrupted. 
 
 Besides this, it is certain that a hostile fleet assembled by 
 some means or other at Fiume (the case of the Goeben 
 and the Breslau is instructive) would threaten the rear of 
 the Italian fleet and by detaining a portion of it in the 
 Northern Adriatic or in the Quarnero, would prevent the 
 free and complete movement of the whole. 
 
 Let us add that in time the ship-building yards of Fiume, 
 if in hands other than Italian, might build either war ships 
 or ships convertible into armed cruisers. In short Fiume 
 would contain the germs for the development of a mari- 
 time activity which would aim first at rivalling, then at 
 injuring, the Italian navy. 
 
 Nationally speaking Fiume may be considered, as 
 Rome formerly considered Tarsatica, as an advanced 
 sentinel of our race. Fiume is a Latin fortress which has 
 withstood for centuries the attacks of diverse peoples; it is 
 a centre radiating Italian culture on the borders of Italy; 
 it is the eastern vertex of the "fated triangle" (Trieste, 
 Pola, Fiume) ; it is one of the three hinges of Italianism in 
 Istria. Should Fiume be abandoned to Croatia or to 
 Hungary the national character of Istria would be endan- 
 gered in the whole of its eastern section. 
 
 And this would be all the more shameful to our nation 
 
inasmuch as Fiume, when Italy either did not exist 
 or could not act, struggled on alone for its national and 
 political autonomy. Ever since 1776 when a decree 
 annexing the city to Hungary seemed to base this annexa- 
 tion on the supposition that the town belonged to Croatia, 
 until 1914, Fiume has always asserted its complete 
 independence from all connection with Croatia. Until 
 the end of the eighteenth century the Croats themselves 
 recognized that Fiume did not belong to Croatia. In 
 1779 the Chancellery at Vienna recognized indirectly that 
 Fiume belonged to Italy. In 1882 that same Chancellery 
 denied that Fiume was Croatian. Until the outbreak 
 of the European war the inhabitants of Fiume themselves 
 continued, amidst struggles and sacrifices of all kinds, to 
 repeat this negation. 
 
 The National Committee for Fiume and Quarnero formed 
 by exiles, and the many Fiume volunteers now fighting on 
 the Carso and on the Alps, afford the latest and most 
 solemn evidence of the Italian character of this city. 
 
 THE COAST FROM FIUME TO DALMATIA 
 
 The watershed between the Danube and the Adriatic 
 divides the Croatian coast between Fiume and Dalmatia 
 from the hinterland. But so inconsiderable is the distance 
 which separates this drainage area from the coast that it 
 could only be held with difficulty by a state which had not 
 possession of the hinterland. 
 
 The coast line between Fiume and Dalmatia extends for 
 a length of some 130 kilometers and boasts some good 
 harbors which would be more than sufficient for the needs 
 of an independent Croatia. 
 
 Segna, for instance (the Senia of the Romans), which, 
 like Buccari and Portore, has not yet quite lost its ancient 
 Italian character, 4 is not more than 40 kilometers distance 
 
 4 The free commune of Segna had its Podesta as early as the year 
 1200, and only thirty years ago Buccari, which is now considered a 
 thoroughly Croatian town, according to the census made by the 
 Croatians, had 80 per cent of Italian natives. What has become of 
 them? It is a fact that all the peasants at Buccari speak Italian. 
 
 70 
 
as the crow flies from the railway system of Ogulia, as com- 
 pared to the 65 kilometers which separate that railway 
 from Fiurae. 
 
 This is stated to show that the Croatians — if they have 
 possession of their own coast — have not even a pretext for 
 claiming Fiume in the name of their economic needs, just 
 as Hungary, cut off from the sea by at least 300 kilometers 
 of Croatian territory, cannot justly lay claim to that city. 
 It should be noted that Croatia's share in the traffic of the 
 port of Fiume only amounts to 4 per cent of the annual 
 movement and that to reach the port of Fiume the 
 Croatian railway has to make a detour which it could avoid 
 were it to run to its own sea coast. 
 
 DALMATIA 
 
 Geography. — Dalmatia is an Adriatic territory and as 
 such belongs to the orohydrographic system of Italy. 
 
 Throughout the innumerable islands of its archipelago 
 it displays the same geological and morphological features 
 as Istria. It is clearly divided from the Balkan peninsula 
 by a high chain of mountains almost everywhere rising 
 above 1500 meters. 
 
 The studies made by Prof. Danielli of Florence on the 
 flora and fauna of Dalmatia show that the Dinaric Alps 
 divide two very different regions, one of which, Dalmatia, 
 preserves all the characteristics of the Italian lands. 
 
 Dalmatia, cut off from the Balkans by the mountains, 
 is joined to Italy by the sea, and some particulars, studied 
 with great interest by geologists, lead to the supposition 
 that the Adriatic, before it became a sea, was a continua- 
 tion of the Paduan plain. Even now the Adriatic seems 
 less like a sea than a great lake within the territory which 
 is bounded to the east by the Julian and the Dinaric 
 x\lps and to the west by the Apennines. 
 
 There is only one gate open in this mountain barrier, 
 that of the Narenta. But this does not mean that the 
 Narenta is necessarily a frontier. South of this river, 
 Hertzegovina stretches in two points to the sea, at the 
 
 71 
 
bay of Neum-Klek, north of Ragusa, and at Suttorino at 
 the Bocche di Cattaro. The country which shall possess 
 Hertzegovina will therefore have two natural outlets in 
 the southern Adriatic. 
 
 History. — Peopled by Tllyrians, with some Greek 
 colonies on the sea coast, Dalmatia was Roman from the 
 second century B.C. until the fall of the Western Empire. 
 Four Roman Emperors were Dalmatian, amongst whom 
 was Diocletian, founder of Spalato. 
 
 On the fall of Rome it was in Dalmatia that the Western 
 Empire still survived for some decades. 
 
 The Dalmatian cities, prosperous Latin communities, 
 governed themselves freely even after the fall of Rome, 
 obeying their own laws and statutes which were purely 
 Italo-Roman in character, untainted by German barbaric 
 feudalism. At first they were under the protection of the 
 Roman Empire of the East, and subsequently they became 
 independent republics, following the example of the free 
 Italian communes. In 1409 they passed definitely under 
 Venetian rule, which retained suzerainty over them until 
 1797, though they always retained their municipal auto- 
 nomy. Like Rome, Venice conquered Dalmatia, deter- 
 mined thereto by the absolute necessity of commanding 
 the Adriatic, a command essential to t ie life of Italy. 
 
 Ragusa alone remained an independent republic until 
 1808. The history of this small republic is truly glorious 
 for the prosperity of its maritime trade and the splendor 
 of its arts and letters; but here again its history is purely 
 Italian, although a characteristic Slavo-Italian dialect, 
 the "raguseo" gradually spread among the people. The 
 public life of Ragusa was, until 1908, always Italian. 
 
 Toward the year 1000 small Slav principalities arose in 
 the inland part of Dalmatia; their rule however never 
 extended to the coast towns, which always remained free 
 and Italian. Indeed these insignificant Slavonic lord- 
 ships soon became Italian, so that Venice was able to 
 assume undisputed rule over the whole of Dalmatia. 
 
 In 1855 Dalmatia came under Austrian rule as having 
 formed part of the Kingdom of Italy of Napoleon I. 
 
 72 
 
The French treated Dalmatia as Italian territory even 
 when they united it to the brief -lived Illyrian provinces. 
 
 Austria respected the Italian character of Dalmatia 
 until 1866; but after the loss of Lombardy and \ enetia a 
 policy was adopted which aimed at fostering the Crotian 
 element in this region. Little by little, by means of 
 unheard of violence and fraud, the municipalities of the 
 Dalmatian cities, which had been Italian for centuries, 
 passed into the hands of the Slavs; in 1870 Sebenico, in 
 1883 Spalato (the last podesta of Spalato, Dr. Antonio 
 Balamonti, was a distinguished writer and patriot), in 
 1897 Cattaro (podesta Pezzi), in 1899 Ragusa (podesta 
 Baron Gondola), and so forth and so on. Courageous 
 Zara alone managed to hold out, and preserved intact its 
 Italian patrimony and Italian municipality until Austria, 
 taking advantage of the present war, dissolved the town 
 council. 
 
 But ever since the Croatian invasion of Dalmatia was 
 begun, as the several centres of resistence gradually passed 
 into the hands of the loyalist Slavs, the government at 
 Vienna, and with its consent, and sometimes without it, 
 the Slavs themselves, closed the Italian schools so as to 
 deprive the Italian populations even of this essential 
 spiritual nutriment. Zara alone, proudly withstanding 
 all assaults, was able to keep her schools. In all the rest 
 of Dalmatia no Italian schools remained except those pri- 
 vately supported by citizens at their own expense by 
 means of the National Leagues. 
 
 Religion. — Dalmatia, like Fiume, has been Catholic 
 ever since the days of the Apostles. The members of the 
 Orthodox Church in Dalmatia are about 90,000, almost 
 all descendents of fugitives who settled at Cattaro or on 
 the Bosnian frontier, driven there by the Ottoman armies. 
 
 Civilization. — Dalmatian civilization is solely and exclu- 
 sively Latin and Italian. The eastern Balcanic civiliza- 
 tion begins on the further side of the Dinaric watershed, 
 which forms the natural frontier between the Balkans and 
 Dalmatia. 
 
 73 
 
The contribution which Dalmatia has in all times given 
 to the Italian motherland in sciences, letters, civil and 
 military arts, is indeed notable. 
 
 St. Jerome, author of the Vulgate, was a Dalmatian; 
 the first Italian grammarian (XVI century was I ortunio 
 of Sebenico; the bishop of Trail, De Dominis, a precursor 
 of Newton in his solar studies, whose body was burnt in 
 Rome in the Campo de' Fiori, was a native of Arbe; Trau 
 was the birthplace of distinguished humanists of the 
 sixteenth century and the historian Giovanni Lucio was 
 born there in 1663. He proclaimed in his works the Latin 
 antecedents of Dalmatia and was perhaps the first Italian 
 historian who based his studies on purely scientific lines. 
 Before his time a powerful Latin mind, the archdeacon 
 Tomaso of Spalato, affirmed in the thirteenth century the 
 Latin character of the Dalmatian cities, as opposed to the 
 Slavs. At the close of the f fteenth century the Latinity of 
 Dalmatia found another powerful advocate in Elia 
 Lampridio Cerva of Ragusa, a Latin poet who was 
 ciowned on the Capitol. Elio Saraca, the friend of 
 Ariosto, was from Ragusa; Giorgio Benigno, the friend of 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent, was a Dalmatian; the celebrated 
 Italian astronomer Boscovitch, is from Ragusa. The 
 same town boasts Marino Ghetaldi, the Italian innovator 
 in mathematics of the sixteenth century; Baglivi, the great 
 Italian medical innovator of the seventeenth century; Seis- 
 mit Doda, the Italian economist and minister who resigned 
 in 1889 on account of his irredentist opinions when the Triple 
 Alliance was in its zenith. Zara gave birth to the natural- 
 ists Visiani and Paravia; Adolf o Mussafia, one of the 
 founders of Romance philology, was born at Spalato, and 
 one of the best known Dante scholars, Lubin, is from 
 Trau, while many Dalmatians are well-known literary men 
 even at the present time. 
 
 But for the literary glory of Dalmatia it would suffice to 
 mention Ugo Foscolo, who received all his early education 
 at Spalato, and Niceolo Tommaseo of Sebenico. 
 
 The literature of Ragusa is also nine-tenths Italian, 
 
 74 
 
although for some years past Serbians and Croatian: — 
 exaggerating the importance of some minor poets who 
 besides writing in Italian and in Latin also used the Italo- 
 Slavic dialect of the town — strive to spread the belief that 
 the Ragusa republic is a cradle of Serbian literaure. 
 
 This exaggeration has been carried so far as to proclaim 
 these poets and writers as the founders of Serbo-Croatian 
 literature. 
 
 As a matter of fact they are only simple and modest 
 translators or imitators of their Italian contemporaries. 
 Their poetry which grew up and died in Ragusa between the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is a mere Slavic paren- 
 thesis in the record of Dalmatian-Italian civilization and 
 never had any influence on Serbian and Croatian literature, 
 which does not date further back than 1800. The chief 
 productions of this over-lauded Slavic literary era are the 
 Osmanide, and the Dubravka of Gondola, which are tame 
 imitations of Tasso's Gerusalemme and Aminta. And be 
 it noted that Gondola, whose name has recently been con- 
 verted by the Serbs into Gundalio, was an Italian; all 
 the original documents at Ragusa give his name only as 
 follows: "Giovanni, son of Francesco Gondola." Equally 
 Italian are the names of the other poets (Mauro Vitrani, 
 Sigismondo Menze, Giorgio Dersa, Giulio Palmotta, 
 Pietro Canavelli, etc.) who, as a historian of Ragusa says, 
 made a study of the languages of the bordering peoples. 
 
 Fine Arts. — All the Dalmatian cities, even the small 
 towns of the archipelago, are real gems of Latin and 
 Italian art. One of the most beautiful is Ragusa, situated 
 in a picturesque and highly fertile district. The palace of 
 Diocletian at Spalato, and the two cathedrals of Trau and 
 Sebenico, the cathedral of Zara, and the palace of the 
 Rectors at Ragusa, are undoubtedly real masterpieces in 
 the national art treasury of Italy. 
 
 Nor are these specimens of an imported art, but the 
 spontaneous productions of Italian artists born and bred 
 in the country. The cathedral of Sebenico, the portico 
 of the Palace of the Rectors at Ragusa, the chapel of St. 
 
 75 
 
Anastasia at Spalato, are the masterpieces of Giorgio 
 Orsini, known as Giorgio da Sebenico although born at 
 Zara; the most beautiful statues and the finest carving in 
 the doors of Spalato are pure Romanic work of the Dal- 
 matian Guvina; the monumental entrance to the cathedral 
 of Trau is by the Dalmatian Radovano, one of the greatest 
 Romanic sculptors, a purely Latin genius. 
 
 Orsini, the greatest of Dalmatian artificers, a powerful 
 architect and sculptor, is a forerunner of the best forms of 
 Renaissance art; the brothers Laurana, one a sculptor, the 
 other an architect, pupils of Orsini, and the painter Andrea 
 Mendolla of Sebenico, are among the most notable artists 
 of our Renaissance. 
 
 Few things offer such vivid proof of the historic Italian 
 character of Dalmatia as the innovating and brilliantly 
 personal contribution which the two Dalmatian artists 
 above mentioned, Giorgio, son of Matteo Orsini, and 
 Luciano Laurana his pupil, the architect of the town hall 
 at Urbino, and in his turn master of Bramante, made to 
 the Renaissance. 
 
 Economy. — The economic life of Dalmatia is almost 
 entirely in the hands of the Italian bourgeoisie, and conse- 
 quently is part of the national wealth of Italy. 
 
 Landed property in the north and the center as far as 
 the Narenta, is two-thirds Italian, and in the islands is 
 entirely so. The Slavs are peasants, either renters or 
 metayers. And even south of the Narenta there are 
 large Italian estates. 
 
 The three leading industries in Dalmatia, the cement 
 trade (Spalato), hydraulic power works (Falls of the Kerka 
 and of the Cetina at Sebenico and Spalato), and the liqueur 
 trade {maraschino of Zara and of Spalato) are almost 
 exclusively in Italian hands, representing an investment of 
 hundreds of millions of Italian capital. The same holds 
 good of the minor industries such as the wax trade, the 
 maccheroni factories, the manufacture of insecticides, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 In commerce also the more important business houses 
 
 76 
 
are Italian, and all the ravigation companies have been 
 founded by Italians. 
 
 Inhabitants. — As stated above the Italians of Dal- 
 matia are autochtonous, the descend nts of Roman settlers 
 and of Illyrian (not Slavonic) natives Latinised by the 
 Roman conquest. In the fourth century of our era all Dala- 
 matia was Latin. The Tchech professor, Jirecek, in his 
 " Denkschriften" of the Vienna academy (No. 48-49a, 1901), 
 the German Mayer Lubke, and the Istrian Matteo Bartoli 
 in the proceedings of the Academy, spite of the wishes and 
 requests of the Austrian government, have shown the unin- 
 terrupted continuity in the evolution of the Latin language 
 and nationality in Dalmatia from the times of the Romans 
 to our day. In the middle-ages Dalmatia had a neo-Latin 
 dialect of its own, designated by these writers as "neo- 
 Dalmatic," later on absorbed and transformed by the 
 Venetian dialect which spread all along the eastern coast 
 of the Adriatic. 
 
 Until 1898, that is to say not more than eighteen years 
 ago, an old man, Antonio Udina, was living at Veglia, who 
 still spoke "neo-Dalmatic." 
 
 Thus in the fourth century Dalmatia was still entirely 
 Latin, only in the seventh and eig th centuries did Slav 
 populations begin to filter in, devastating the country by 
 their incursions. 
 
 The Slav immigration was more considerable in the 
 fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the 
 pressure of the Turks. 
 
 According to calculations of that period, the population 
 of Dalmatia, including the islands, amounted toward the 
 close of the fifteenth century, as shown by the reports of 
 the Venetian Provisors to their government, to 60,000 souls. 
 As the towns and villages were inhabited by Italians it is 
 evident that the number of Slavs then in Dalmatia was 
 inconsiderable, and that it was only increased by subse- 
 quent immigrations, due to Turkish invasions and to the 
 colonizing activity of Venice. 
 
 Undoubtedly Turkey was the prime cause of the increase 
 
 77 
 
of the Slav population in Dalmatia, driving crowds of 
 fugitives to seek refuge from Bosnia; the second cause was 
 Austria. Under Austrian rule the number of Slavs in 
 Dalmatia has increased three-fold. 
 
 Before the Slav invasion caused by the Turks the Latin 
 character of Dalmatia had been strengthened by many 
 thousands of Rumanians (Mauro-Walachians, Morla- 
 chians) who have now disappeared. It is, moreover, 
 evident that all the Rumanian districts in the mountains* 
 and the Italian centers in the Dalmatian cities nearest to 
 the Dinaric Alps, were first devastated by the Turks 
 and then settled by them exclusively with Slavo-Turkish 
 people from whom at least two-thirds of the Dalmatian 
 Slavs descend. 
 
 At the time of the early Slav immigrations the Italians 
 remained in the towns and villages, w ere they formed the 
 middle and upper classes. Later on their number was 
 increased by Italians who settled there after the Venetian 
 conquest and by Slavs Italianized by city life. Only the 
 peasantry, out of touch with the middle classes, preserved 
 its language. 
 
 And this is still the case; the bourgeoisie speaks Italian 
 in home and public life; the peasants speak a Slav dialect 
 which they call "our language" and which, with some local 
 variations, is a Serbo-Croatian jargon full of Italian 
 idioms. 
 
 As a result of the political struggles between Italians 
 and Slavs, fomented by Austria since 1886, many middle 
 class Italians were induced by economic considerations to 
 pass over to the Slav camp. When we are told that side 
 by side with the Croats who bear Italian names there are 
 Italians whose names were originally Slav, it is necessary 
 to draw a careful distinction; the Italians belong to families 
 which became Italian during the period of Venetian rule or 
 later, but always as the result of a natural process due to 
 the Italian environment. But the Croats with Italian 
 names are nearly all renegades of the last hour, turncoats 
 who went over to the Croatians after 1866, frequently for 
 sordid reasons. 
 
 T8 
 
But in speaking of Dalmatian Slavs we should never 
 forget that almost all are Catholics and anti-Serbian, and 
 do not wish to be anything but Dalmatian. With the 
 exception of a few hundred "intellectual" Dalmatian Slavs 
 who are Serbophils, and who are set off by the thousands 
 and thousands of "intellectual" Dalmatian Italians, the 
 rural masses of Dalmatia are devoid of national conscience, 
 and are blindly loyal to Austria for which they have fought 
 fiercely during the present war against the orthodox Serbs, 
 whom they consider as "pagans." The Dalmatian 
 peasants, who were among the best defenders of Venice a 
 hundred years ago, will become — when the unnatural 
 hatred of everything Italian fomented by the Austrians 
 will have subsided — excellent Italian citizens, whereas 
 they would never adapt themselves to be governed by a 
 people whose civilization is inferior to their o n. 
 
 Thus not even the argument of numbers can be ad- 
 duced in favor of the Serbian claims to Dalmatia, claims 
 which have been brought forward during the last two or 
 three years, whereas the Italian aspirations to Dalmatia 
 date back to the year in which that province was definitely 
 lost, that is to say to 1815, since when they have never 
 subsided. 
 
 How recent are the unjustifiable claims brought for- 
 ward by the Serbians to Dalmatia is proved moreover by 
 an important and irrefutable historical document. 
 
 The ex-president of the Bulgarian council, Ivan E. 
 Ghescioff (Guechoff) published a few months ago a volume 
 of papers illustrating the Balkan alliance against Turkey 
 in 1912-13 (IS Alliance Balkanique, Hachette, Paris, 1915). 
 
 Needless to say there can be no doubt as to the authen- 
 ticity of the documents; the name of Ghescioff (a Russophil 
 and friend of the Entente) is sufficient guarantee; nor have 
 any denials been published, although the book aroused 
 much attention when it appeared. 
 
 Ghescioff, then, with the consent of his King, had a 
 conference with the then President of the Serbian cabinet, 
 who was also Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milovanovic, 
 
 79 
 
to lay the foundation for the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance. 
 The conference, prepared by the Minister Plenipotentiary 
 Rizoff, was held during the night of October 11, 1911, 
 on the train between Belgrade and Lapovo. GhesciofT 
 now publishes the report of this conference which he 
 transmitted to the Bulgarian King and Ministry. On 
 page 27 of this report we read these precise words, spoken 
 in tete a iete by Milovanovic, formerly Minister Pleni- 
 potentiary at Rome, to his Bulgarian colleague (a Jugo- 
 slav like himself!): "If, simultaneously with the settle- 
 ment of Turkey the disintegration of Austria-Hungary 
 were to occur, Serbia would obtain Bosnia and Hertze- 
 govina and Rumania would obtain Transylvania." 
 
 Not one word about Serbian claims to Dalmatia! They 
 have only just arisen, and they have been fostered . . . 
 against Italy! 
 
 And here it is well to remember that Milovanovic him- 
 self (then Minister of Foreign Affairs) in October, 1909, 
 when interviewed at Belgrade by Dr. Alexander Dudan, 
 correspondent of the Tribuna, in the presence of the 
 Serbian poet Ducic, now secretary to the Serbian legation 
 at Athens, made the following declaration: "The Croa- 
 tians of Dalmatia in their anti-Italian agitation, are the 
 mere agents and tools of the Austrian police, to make 
 mischief between Italy and the Slav world, more especially 
 between Italy and Serbia." 
 
 The "Jugoslav" claims to Dalmatia are as recent as 
 they are unfounded. " Jugoslavism " is the latest Austrian 
 find, which aims at drawing the Serbians within its orbit, 
 absorbing them in a triplicist movement (Austria-Hun- 
 gary-Jugoslavia). There is no such thing as a Jugoslav 
 nation, and there is no history, nor language, nor literature 
 which bears that name. The newly-coined word (jug = 
 south; Jugoslavi = southern Slavs) is a mere longitudinal 
 indication. The people neither knows nor understands 
 it. It includes Bulgarians, Serbians, Croatians, Monte- 
 negrans, and Slovacs, that is to say five histories, three 
 languages (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovac), two re- 
 
 80 
 
ligions (Orthodox for the Bulgarians, Serbians, and 
 Montenegrans; Catholic for the others), five separate 
 national consciences. Dalmatia cannot be included in 
 any way in this artificial conception of a Jugoslav nation. 
 
 It should be noted that Austria-Hungary founded the 
 first and only Royal (King Franz Joseph) Jugoslav Aca- 
 demy of science and art at Zagrab (the Croatian capital) 
 and that the first Jugoslav press agency was, and still is, 
 that founded in Vienna and paid for by the Austrian 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known as the " Siidslavische 
 Corrispondenz" an agency for the propaganda of the 
 Austrian Jugoslav idea, and that the group of Slovac 
 and Croatian deputies in the Vienna Reichsrat (parlia- 
 ment), presided over by the Austrophil clerical deputy 
 Sustersic, the trusted henchman of the Archduke Francis 
 Ferdinand assassinated at Sarajevo, was and is known as 
 the "Jugo Slav Club" (Sudslaven Club). These were the 
 three propagandist agencies of the Jugoslav idea which is 
 Austrophil, anti-Italian, and anti-Serbian. These are the 
 scientific and artistic, political, and press organs which 
 represent all the political and intellectual activities of the 
 Southern Slavs. 
 
 In short, the few Croatian and Slovac agitators who, 
 under the retext of Jugo-Slavism tour the capitals of the 
 allied countries, carrying on a propaganda directed more 
 especially against Italian aspirations on the Adriatic, and 
 decrying our country, our army, our navy, and our institu- 
 tions cannot — spite of the high sounding titles of deputy 
 and ex-podesta which they make so much of, be said to 
 represent either the Croatians or the Slovacs of Austria- 
 Hungary, and still less can they be said to represent the 
 friends or the allies of the Entente. This is so because, in 
 the first place, until the European war broke out these 
 very agitators were the instruments of Austrian policy 
 directed against Italy and against Serbia. 
 
 In the second place, because the very Croatian and 
 Slovac political parties to which they belonged until the 
 outbreak of the war, and their political colleagues (presi- 
 
 81 
 
dents of provinces, and of provincial parliaments, deputies 
 and podestas) still continue, after two years of war, to be 
 the agents and servants of the Austrian and Hungarian 
 governments; they still continue to support Vienna and 
 Budapest, and consequently Berlin, in the war against 
 Italy, Russia, Serbia and all the Allies. We will here 
 mention as samples of the Croatian parties which still 
 support the Austrian government, the Hrvatska stranka 
 (the Croatian party in Dalmatia, presided over until the 
 beginning of the war by M. Trumbic, now president of the 
 Jugoslav Committee of London and Paris) the Srpsko- 
 hrvdtska Koalicija (the Serbo-Croatian coalition in Croatia, 
 founded, amongst others, by Messrs. Supilo and Hinkovic, 
 who together with M. Trumbic are now the leaders of the 
 Jugoslav Committee). 5 
 
 All these Croatian and Slovac parties are in full accord 
 with the Croatian and Slavonian troo s who fight for 
 Austria-Hungary against the armies of the allies. And 
 here we must remind the reader that Croatia enjoys a 
 large measure of autonomy und r the Austro-Hungarian 
 monarchy and has its own territorial militia, or Landwehr, 
 entirely Croatian from the private to the commander, and 
 the bulletin of September 26, 1916, of the Austrian General 
 Staff stated that this Croatian Landwehr was fighting 
 heroically in the Transylvanian Alps against the Ruma- 
 nians, whereas it is well known t' at t e Italian and 
 Tchech soldiers, incorporated in mixed regiments of the 
 Austro-Hungarian armies, have always deserted when 
 they could from those hated ranks. 
 
 In view of these facts it should be remembered that the 
 Italians of the "unredeemed" provinces have always con- 
 
 6 In the Journal des Debats of November 25, 1916, Mr. Trumbic 
 signs a manifesto of the Jugoslav Committee as "President of the 
 Serbo-Croatian parliamentary commission in the Dalmatian Diet." 
 This is another lie, and an international one! . . . There never has 
 been a "Serbo-Croatian coalition" either in the Diet or in the coun- 
 try. Mr. Trumbic was only the President of the Croatian clerical 
 party "of the right" and, later on, of the Croatian governmental 
 party in Dalmatia, known as Havatska atranka. 
 
 m 
 
sistently followed an anti-Austrian policy, and even that 
 section which, like the clerical party in the Trentino, 
 seemed more tepid nationalists, as soon as the Italians 
 declared war on Austria proclaimed their nationalism in 
 no uncertain terms. Not one of the political organs of the 
 Italians has been respected by Austria; all have been dis- 
 solved, all the leaders have been interned as enemies of 
 the State; even the Hon. Coaci, the leader of the clerical 
 party in the Trentino, and ex- vice-president of the 
 Austrian Chamber, and the Prince-Bishop of Trent, 
 Mons. Endrici, have shared this fate. 
 
 During the war Dalmatia has given Italy a number of 
 volunteers, and the first martyr of the irredenti, Francesco 
 Rismondo of Spalato, on the outbreak of hostilities, gave 
 up his family — wealthy shipowners, who had joined the 
 Austro-Croatian party — enrolled himself at once in our 
 army, and fell seriously wounded on the Carso. He was 
 taken prisoner by the Austrians and executed by the 
 hangman of Franz- Joseph. 
 
 Assuredly none of us would consent to sacrifice these 
 heroic brothers of ours to the tricks of a few Croatian and 
 Slovac political agitators. 
 
 The Austrian census, drawn up by Austro-Croatian 
 agents, only returns 20,000 Italians out of a popula- 
 tion of 6*20, )00 inhabitants. But there are at least 
 60, >r M) Italians in Dalmatia exclusive of those who are 
 Italian subjects. This figure is obtained from the elec- 
 toral returns for 1911 in which the Italian candidates 
 obtained 10 per cent of the total poll. And, be it remem- 
 bered, the Italians only voted as a matter of principle but 
 without hope of success; which would lead us to suppose 
 that the number of Italians is yet more considerable. The 
 Italian speaking inhabitants amount to 200,000, and it may 
 be said that the only Dalmatians who do not understand 
 Italian are the illiterates who can neither read nor write. 6 
 
 6 Those who raise conscientious objections with regard to the Slav- 
 speaking populations who would be embodied in greater Italy, 
 would do well to remember the two million German speaking 
 inhabitants of Alsace Lorraine who will return to France, the three 
 
 83 
 
Strategical Considerations. — Dalmatia is essential to the 
 safety of Italy on the Adriatic. And, be it noted, we say 
 Dalmatia and not only the islands, which it would be 
 impossible to defend economically and strategically if 
 they were divided from the mainland. Such a division 
 would be a national injustice to the Dalmatians, and a 
 source of constant unrest. 
 
 The Catholic Dalmatians are confirmed adversaries of 
 the Serbs. All who are acquainted with the real condi- 
 tions of this province know that the dread of a Serbian 
 nationalist movement in Italian Dalmatia is absurd. The 
 vast majority of the Slavo-Dalmatian population has 
 always been opposed to the Serbians, and, as is shown by 
 innumerable facts, to all union with Croatia. 
 
 But if Dalmatia were to remain separated from Italy, 
 the Italian nationalist movement, which has always 
 existed, would continue to subsist, and would become all 
 the more vigorous, passionate and turbulent as the growing 
 importance of Italy would render its ideal ever more vivid, 
 intense, and fascinating. 
 
 It must be remembered that from a military standpoint 
 the coast is the key to power on the Adriatic. Pola is of 
 importance only for the protection of Trieste and Fiume, 
 and its value is defensive. 
 
 The ports which are valuable for an offensive against 
 the Italian coast are the two formidable harbors of 
 Sebenico and Cattaro. The islands are only the outlying 
 works of those ports. 
 
 The present war has clearly demonstrated this fact. 
 All the attacks against our shores have been made from 
 those two ports. The numberless traps and snares which 
 those two ports can lay among the islands and the channels 
 which divide them, paralyze the activity of the allied 
 fleets in the Adriatic. So true is it that the islands are of 
 no avail against the power which holds Sebenico that the 
 
 to four million Germans who will form part of the future kingdom 
 of Bohemia, the Germans of Poland, the Bulgarians in Serbian 
 Macedonia, the Turks and Greeks in Constantinople and Asia Minor, 
 to mention only the transformations of the near future. 
 
 84 
 
allies have not taken the trouble to occupy even one of 
 them. 
 
 In conclusion, the purpose of Italy is not to defend her- 
 self against a danger which threatens her in the Eastern 
 Adriatic but to do away once and for all with that danger. 
 Her purpose is to secure for herself absolute freedom in 
 her own sea. 
 
 Like Rome and Venice, Italy needs Dalmatia to ensure 
 her peace and safety. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 Italy, after defeating Austria-Hungary must claim all 
 the lands embraced between tie Adriatic and the Julian 
 and Dinaric Alps, i.e., eastern Friuli, Istria with Trieste 
 and Fiume, and all Dalmatia; whils 4 leaving to the Croa- 
 tians and to the Serbians commercial ports of their own on 
 the Adriatic. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAFHICAL NOTE 
 
 G. Lucio. — De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae, Amsterdam, 1666. 
 
 D. Farlati. — Illyricum Sacrum, Venice, 1751-1811. 
 Dalmatien, lectures by Professors of the Vienna University, 1911. 
 G. Kobler. — Memorials of the Lyburnian city of Fiume, Fiume, 
 
 1896. 
 Virginio Gayda. — Italy beyond the Frontier, Athenaeum, Rome, 
 
 1915. 
 A. Tamaro. — Italians and Slavs on the Adriatic, Bocca, Rome, 
 
 1914. 
 Id. — Spalato, Bemporad, Florence, 1916. 
 A. Orefici. — Dalmatia, id. id. 
 
 E. Burich. — Fiume, Rava, Milan, 1915. 
 A. Dud an. — Dalmatia and Italy, id. id. 
 
 Id. — The Monarchy of the Hapsburgs: Its Origin, Greatness and 
 
 Decline. 2 Vols. Bontempelli, Rome, 1915. 
 Dalmatia by several writers; Formfggini, Genoa, 1915. 
 A. Bernardt. — Istria and Dalmatia, with illustrations, Arti 
 
 grafiche italiane, Bergamo, 1915. 
 A. Tamaro. — The Adriatic, an Italian Gulf, Milan, Treves, 1915. 
 Id. — The condition of the Italian subjects of Austria in Julian 
 
 Venetia and in Dalmatia, Rome, 1915. 
 T. Sillani. — Ports of the Motherland, illustrated edition, Alfieri 
 
 e Lacroix, Milan, 1915. 
 Italicus Senator. — La question de VAdriatique (2 edition)— 
 
 Rome, 1916. 
 
 85 
 
ITALY AT THE PIAVE 
 
 By Diana Watts 
 
 January 2, 1918 
 
 Official communications are practically powerless to 
 convey any true understanding of a national disaster. 
 This is the case in connection with the recent tragic 
 events on the Italian front — and it occasionally happens 
 that an unimportant unofficial person who has lived 
 through such events, is able to change entirely a point of 
 view resulting from preconceived notions. 
 
 That there exists already a generous desire on the part 
 of America to help her lly cannot be doubted. The 
 proofs exist in the shape of immense hospital supplies, 
 trainloads of which left the Paris branch of the American 
 Red Cross immediately after the dis ster on the Italian 
 front — and in many other ways which daily augment in 
 importance. 
 
 But only with actual contact is it possible to realize 
 the spirit of a people or appreciate the changes wrought 
 by disaster and grief — it thus happens that accounts 
 written by private persons who have actually lived 
 through moments of national disaster are able to transmit 
 a far truer impression than any number of official dis- 
 patches controlled and restrained for political reasons. 
 
 This is the object of the present article, which endeavors 
 to make clear a few essential facts which appear to be 
 unknown in America. It is still not uncommon to hear 
 Italy blamed for her delay in entering the war, and for 
 her selfishness in choosing the moment most convenient 
 to herself. 
 
 The facts prove that these accusations are absolutely 
 groundless. Italy's situation at the outbreak of hos- 
 tilities was an extremely complex one, which probably 
 
 86 
 
accounts for its having been little known and less under- 
 stood. The treaty binding her as an ally of Austria and 
 Germany, was a purely defensive one — it precluded en- 
 tirely any act of aggression on the part of any one of the 
 three countries concerned, and at the moment of extreme 
 tension which followed the declaration of war by Austria 
 upon Serbia, Italy and England, by their special positions 
 were the balancing powers of each party. France and 
 Russia were definitely bound by treaty to uphold each 
 other. England, though tied by no treaty, was morally 
 bound to side with France. 
 
 Germany and Austria had secretly agreed upon a 
 definitely aggressive policy, and in the initial stages of 
 the conflict, when there seemed to be some faint chance 
 of averting general hostilities, England on her side con- 
 ferred with France and Russia, as a friend counselling 
 reflection and caution, while Italy made representations 
 to her two allies emphasizing the illegality of any aggres- 
 sive action under the existing treaty of the Triple Alliance. 
 
 When Germany actually declared war against Fr nee, 
 Italy was as completely ignorant of, and unprepared for 
 such a move, as the rest of the world, and although the 
 tre ty which bound her to Austria and Germany had only 
 recently been renewed the first important step she took 
 was one of withdrawal from any share in the action, and 
 a denunciation of her Hies. 
 
 This withdrawal was a tacit proof of sympathy with 
 the Entente powers, but she did more than this — she in- 
 timated to France her willingness to withdraw all troops 
 from the Franco-Italian frontier, and passed her word of 
 honor, allowing the French to liberate a number of their 
 troops and cannon which contributed largely to the 
 allied success at Verdun. 
 
 Had Italy made no protest, and had she allowed the 
 weight of her help to go against the Allies, by attacking 
 the French in the rear, she would have assured a victory 
 to the Central Powers in a very short time. 
 
 This was Italy's first help to the Allies, not only an 
 
 87 
 
unselfish act, but one of great courage and daring, which 
 earned for her the bitterest hate from the two countries 
 she had denounced. 
 
 As to the moment chosen for openly declaring her alle- 
 giance to the Hied cause, it must be remembered that 
 Italy had only recently emerged from a long and exhaust- 
 ing war, which had left her depleted in every department 
 of her army, yet, notwithstanding this, she managed to 
 reorganize and replenish her forces in the incredibly short 
 time of a few months, and in spite of the fact that she 
 was even then not ready, she declared war against Austria 
 at a moment when Russia was suffering a succession of 
 defeats, thereby creating a diversion of troops which 
 greatly relieved a strain growing in intensity. Her de- 
 claration of war upon Germany, which followed later, 
 had the same beneficial result on the French front. 
 
 These are simple incontrovertible facts, and recapitula- 
 tion brings out two salient points — Italy, by refusing to 
 take part in the unprincipled acts of aggression of Ger- 
 many and Austria, made her first stand in favor of the 
 Allies. By her open denunciation of these acts, and her 
 entry into the war at the moment chosen, she created 
 diversions which contributed very largely to allied 
 successes. 
 
 These facts have been overlooked — or never under- 
 stood — but they constitute the strongest claim for sym- 
 pathy and help from those whose cause she was fearless 
 enough to espouse, and for which act she had paid in a 
 disa ter directly conceived and planned as vindictive 
 revenge by her former allies. 
 
 But there are always two sides to a medal — that which 
 bears the imprint of the tragic disaster of October 23 is 
 graven in lower relief than that which depicts the upris- 
 ing of an awakened spirit which followed almost immedi- 
 ately after the first effect of the blow. Until this disaster 
 came, Italy was not united in her interpretation of the 
 words "National Honor." The majority of the people 
 were satisfied with the successful efforts of their army 
 
 88 
 
to reclaim the long lost territory of the Trentino. The 
 army, valiant as it was, had not been thoroughly tested. 
 The record was practically one continuous advance 
 against an enemy hard pushed — Austria was fast approach- 
 ing the moment when she would be powerless to offer 
 any serious resistance to the oncoming wave of Italians 
 across the Bainsizza plains. It was almost in Italy's 
 power to force a peace with Austria. Trieste was in 
 sight with all that its conquest meant for the allied 
 fleets, and the destruction of the enemy's largest sub- 
 marine base — when the Russian defection from the '< Hied 
 cause made possible the help that Austria had been en- 
 trea+ias: f r m G rma^y. 
 
 The result of that help we all know. The magnitude 
 of it, and the price exacted by Germany from her ally 
 are known only to a few even in Italy. The maximum has 
 been quoted here as nine divisions. There were seventy- 
 two German divisions, roughly speaking about a million 
 men, without counting the Austrians, Turks and Bul- 
 garians — a concentration of force far exceeding that which 
 has hitherto been employed on any one front. Even this 
 force would have been powerless to overcome the defenses 
 all along the mountain crests, had it not been for the 
 treachery of the few, who, coerced by smooth promises of a 
 speedy peace if they would lay down their arms and 
 refuse to fight, enabled the Germans to enter one of the 
 narrow passes, cut the telephone communications, and 
 ta 1 e 200,000 t ris ners in hree hours. This peace prop- 
 a r anda was disseminated largely by the clericals and 
 the unruly section of the socialists, who dwelt upon the 
 certainty of obtaining peace if only the soldiers would 
 refuse to fight, keeping carefully clear of the fact that the 
 reward for this inaction would be a bullet in the back., or 
 starvation in a prisoners' camp behind the German lines. 
 
 Many of the men who had succumbed to the pernic ous 
 influence of the insidious propaganda, fought to the death 
 when they realized tfce awful disaster, sacrificing them- 
 selves in the vain effort to check the inrushing hordes — 
 
 89 
 
hut it was too late — a dark night — heavy mists — a new 
 and more deadly type of poison gas — no telephone com- 
 munications — and the open door of the pass — these com- 
 bined to create a panic, and many Italians were shot by 
 their own men. 
 
 After the first ghastly shock had subsided, the super- 
 human courage and determination with which the rem- 
 nants of the poor second army sacrificed themselves 
 almost to a man to allow the retreat from the Bainsizza 
 plains of the whole of the third and fourth army, stands 
 out as a brilliant page in the history of the war. The 
 Bersaglieri and the Alpini are immortalized. 
 
 It was known from the first moment of the retreat that 
 the line of the Tagliamento could not be held as permanent 
 defense — but a temporary stand there acted as a check to 
 the onrush of the hordes who had never, never expected 
 the success which fate had allowed them. Even luck was 
 with them, for when the Italians reached the Tagliamento 
 it was in flood; when the Germans arrived it was dry, and 
 they were able to walk across! It was the same with the 
 Piave, with this difference, that although almost dry when 
 the Germans arrived, they did not get across. The line 
 was held, and will be held — even in those early days they 
 said, "If we can hold the Piave for a week we can hold it 
 for a year." 
 
 What depended on the holding of that line was realized 
 by only a few. The Germans, drunk with the success of 
 their intrigues, were loudly proclaiming that they would 
 be in Milan in a week. The faint-hearted and the pessi- 
 mists took up the refrain, and the first week was fr ught 
 with terror. Only two days before the disaster, Cadorna 
 had cabled to Rome: "Our defenses are impregnable; we 
 are ready for the attack." On the actual day of the 
 tragedy no bulletin came through, but private telegrams 
 had spread the news; and the day after, a short bulletin 
 came from Cadorna announcing that the line had been 
 broken; that it was the fault of his soldiers who had not 
 held firm. Many, who up till this moment had been his 
 
 90 
 
strong upholders, judged him for the fatal mistake of 
 putting the blame on his soldiers for what he, as general- 
 in-chief, should have foreseen and forestalled. 
 
 It was also part of the disaster that General Cadorna 
 had made a bitter enemy of General Capello, commander 
 of the second army, and unfortunately only one of the 
 many antagonistic leaders who had suffered from his 
 overbearing authority. The fact also of his being ex- 
 tremely bigoted in his religious views was unfortunate, 
 considering the vigilance needed to counteract the peace 
 propaganda emanating from the Vatican. 
 
 Two, three, four days passed with laconic telegrams 
 from Cadorna, supplemented by the arrival of trainloads 
 of refugees from Udine in pitiable condition, rich and 
 poor alike having been forced to fly at a moment's notice, 
 bringing tales of horror and suffering. A fund was 
 started in Rome which in five days reached 900,000 
 lire. This from Rome alone! Other funds in Milan and 
 Genoa reached much higher figures, and all this with 
 literally no outside help — just from the Italians them- 
 selves. All houses opened their doors freely to the 
 refugees many of whom refused to accept money, saying 
 they were able and willing to work immediately. There 
 were many cases where the coachmen of the public cabs 
 who conveyed the refugees from the station to the houses 
 ready to receive them, refused to take any fare, offering it 
 as their contribution to the general fund for relief. 
 
 After the first shoe of the news had passed, a reaction 
 of determined resist nee set in, led by a group of old 
 GaHbaldfcns far b yond -h r mo st are lim't w o 
 demanded permission to go to the front, which was 
 accorded. Companies of mutilated soldiers insisted on 
 returning, and were accompanied to the different stations 
 by cheering crowds. All officers away on leave came back 
 without a moment's delay. Italy, though torn with 
 anguish and shame, was rising to the call of her real spirit — 
 waking to the dawn of a clearer understanding of the 
 sacrifices demanded of her. At first, despair was the 
 
 91 
 
keynote — many said that never again could an Italian 
 hold up his head before the world. To have spent two 
 years in regaining the long lost Trentino — to have spilt 
 the blood of her finest sons only, to lose it all in a week! 
 In that moment of despair it seemed impossible to them 
 ever again to vindicate the national honor. 
 
 It seemed no comfort to be reminded of the stupendous 
 blunders of Italy's more powerful i Hies. Yet did anyone 
 now regard the disaster of the Dardanelles as anything 
 but a foolish mistake? Did anyone now speak of the acts 
 of treachery which had been by no means infrequent both 
 on the English and French fronts? 
 
 And was this misguided act of a comparatively small 
 number of soldiers to be compared to the wholesale 
 treachery and intrigue recently exposed by the fearless 
 determination of the present French government, and 
 which existed under the Caillaux regime? 
 
 Tragic as tlese things have been at the time, they 
 were but incidents in the great struggle, incidents that 
 have been dimmed by many an heroic deed of individual 
 and national expiation. 
 
 The first interminable week of the Italian retreat ended 
 to find them making a determined stand at the Piave, 
 although in those early days it was thought not improbable 
 that it might have to be withdrawn to the Adige, even 
 to the Mincio. Germany had counted on that and 
 expected to be in Milan in a week. The Italian Chamber 
 was to open on November 10, and quite regardless of the 
 feelings of her dly, Austria, Germany had planned a 
 master stroke. 
 
 Reckoning on her arrival in Milan before the opening of 
 the Italian Chamber, she was preparing the most subtle 
 bait for the Italian people. It was to take the form of a 
 proclamation notifying her readiness to cede to Jtaly the 
 whole of the Trentino with Trieste — in return for a separate 
 peace — and had this dream ever been realized, Italy would 
 have faced the danger of a revolution had she refused to 
 accept terms which to the ignorant majority would have 
 seemed the logical conclusion of the war. 
 
 92 
 
But as usual, Germany miscalculated — she did not 
 reach Milan; she was held at the Piave — met by Italians 
 with an awakened understanding of their true enemy — 
 met by the fusion of individual resistance and determina- 
 tion into a throbbing national solidarity. 
 
 The conditions which Germany intended to offer to 
 Italy at the expense of her ; lly can never be exacted, for 
 they presupposed conquest and non-resistance as usual, 
 but the line of the Piave held — and will hold. The 
 morale of the troops has returned. The spirit of the best 
 impregnated the whole, and was expressed in the words of 
 one of the officers, who said: "They may drive us back 
 to Rome and from Rome to Sicily and from there to 
 Tripoli, but we will never make a separate peace" — 
 almost these same words were repeated by the Hon. 
 Orlando in the Chamber on December 26. 
 
 The sublety of the means employed to sow the seeds of 
 defection among the troops was proved by the discovery 
 that facsimile copies of three leading journals — the 
 Corriere delta Sera, the Giornale a 1 ' Italia, and the 
 Maiiino of Naples — had been secretly printed, apparently 
 exactly the same as the real journals, but small para- 
 graphs had been inserted telling of revolutionary out- 
 breaks in Milan, Alessandria, Naples, and Palermo, in the 
 hope of encouraging discontent among the troops. Still 
 more typical was the discovery that owing to the generous 
 freedom allowed to Austrian prisoners in Sardinia, t ley 
 had been able to find out an immense number of names of 
 the men at the front to whom they sent anonymous post- 
 cards with the poisonous news that their wives had been 
 unfaithful — sure means of breaking a soldier's spirit. 
 But the days passed — it is now eight weeks that the 
 Piave has held held by spirit alone — for from a military 
 point of view it was thought untenable. 
 
 The Italian soldiers have awakened once more to a 
 belief in themselves, have risen to the heights of divine 
 sacrifice, lifted by the spirit of unity which has been 
 born of the tragic disaster. A wave of returning con- 
 
 93 
 
fidenee passed over the whole country like wind before 
 the dawn. 
 
 No one who was not in Italy during those first three 
 weeks after the events of October 23 can realize how 
 strong was this wave which came from the depths of the 
 national spirit shaken with grief and shame. 
 
 Italy is young as a nation, disaster came like a thunder- 
 bolt from the clear sky of successful achievement — the 
 most dangerous moment — but it has enabled her to prove 
 her true spirit, heroic and undaunted, it is the "quarto 
 risorgimento." 
 
 94 
 
ITALY AND THEjWAR* 
 By General Emilio Guglielmotti 
 Military Attache to the Italian Embassy 
 
 Ever since the outbreak of the European war, Italy, 
 mother of civilization and law, classic land of all liberty, 
 has felt that her place could not be on the side of autocracy 
 and barbarism. Bound to the Central Powers by reasons 
 vital to her existence and security, and particularly by an 
 unjust and dangerous boundary line imposed upon her 
 in 1866 by her ancient enemy , Austria, Italy had concluded 
 a purely defensive treaty of alliance, which she at once 
 perceived should, ipso jure et facto, be considered null and 
 void on the day in which the two major allies, without 
 even consulting her, provoked a war of aggression, of 
 conquest and of oppression. Italy felt that she should 
 not, for the sake of material advantages offered to her by 
 the Central Powers, join them in crushing France and 
 England to whom she was bound by common ideals. 
 Italy could not, therefore, be content with a pure and 
 simple declaration of neutrality, but was moved by 
 fraternal duty to reassure France, her Latin sister, so that 
 she would have no reason for hesitating to strip her 
 Italian frontier and transfer to the point then menaced 
 by the Huns, the troops removed from the Alps; troops 
 which made possible the glorious victory of the Marne. 
 
 When the rapid march of events forced Italy to take up 
 arms for her liberty, for her very existence, for the great 
 common cause of justice and law, it was already established 
 beyond question with which side she should cast her lot. 
 Her traditions, her sentiments, her history designated her 
 course in no uncertain manner. Even though not com- 
 pletely prepared, in May, 1915, with the immediate pur- 
 
 *Written for the Yale Review on November 20, 1917, and published in the issue 
 of January 16, 1918. 
 
 95 
 
pose of relieving the pressure on the Eastern front, at a 
 moment in which the Central Empires were elated by their 
 ■uccesses against the demoralized Russian armies, Italy 
 declared war on Austria; and, in August, 1916, as if to 
 demonstrate to the world her unity of purpose to the 
 Allies, she declared war on Germany. 
 
 For two years the Italian armies struggled against the 
 most formidable natural difficulties that the whole theatre 
 of the war presented disposed along a front longer than the 
 Belgian, English and French fronts combined. Yet, in 
 spite of a frontier which exposed them to every peril and 
 gave the enemy every advantage, the Italians won victory 
 after victory against the largest and best part of the 
 Austrian army, advancing slowly but steadily into enemy 
 territory, menacing the very existence of the Dual Mon- 
 archy. 
 
 This constant cind wearing pressure which she found 
 herself unable to resist induced Austria to turn for help to 
 her more powerful accomplice, Geimany. The latter, 
 after the Italian offensive of last summer, saw the peril 
 approaching her own threshold across Austria, and 
 realized that, if Austria were defeated, it would be a 
 serious blow at her own existence. She, therefore, 
 granted the humble but insistent demand of her vassal, 
 and, gathering a great part of the contingents which the 
 internal situation of Russia allowed her to take from that 
 front, she launched a strong offensive against Italy with 
 combined German and Austrian troops reinforced by 
 Bulgarians and Turks, making an army of at least sixty 
 divisions. 
 
 The Austro-German offensive had a double purpose, 
 political and military. 
 
 From the political aspect, Germany was conscious of the 
 great difficulty against which the Italian nation struggled : 
 unprovided with money and insufficiently stocked with 
 coal. Germany counted upon the unrest and exhaustion 
 following a long war, upon the political strife which self 
 interest made her exaggerate and foment, and especially 
 upon the pacifist propaganda which she conducted with 
 
 1*6 
 
such ability, according to her insidious and treacherous 
 custom, both among the people and in the army, to 
 provoke a revolution in Italy and force the nation to 
 submit to a German peace. 
 
 From a military point of view, Germany expected to 
 crush Italy quickly and, made more formidable by such 
 victory, she hoped to concentrate the united strength of 
 Germany and Austria for a blow against France and 
 England. She expected to penetrate to the heart of 
 France by a new route across the plains of the Po and the 
 Maritime Alps and to put France beneath her barbarous 
 yoke before the United States could intervene. 
 
 The actual result of this double offensive is already a 
 matter of history. 
 
 Politically, the profanation of Italian soil has rallied 
 to one standard all the energies of the nation against the 
 invading Huns. Never as in this moment, in the face of 
 the perilfrom without, have Italians of every political faith 
 of every class, of every region, felt their brotherhood so 
 intimately, so indissolubly. Gathered around their king, 
 their flag and their government, they have indeed proven 
 to the barbarians that they are first and last Italians. A 
 single cry, the ancient cry expressive of the great passion 
 for national entity, of a high desire for life, for inde- 
 pendence, for liberty, has resounded from shore to shore 
 of the peninsula: "Fuori i Barbari." 
 
 Speaking from the military standpoint, Italy can today 
 affirm with a good conscience that she has for the third 
 time and with her own blood saved not only her cause, but 
 also the cause of the Entente. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss the reasons for the first 
 Italian reverses. We cannot now judge how much was 
 due to the powerful pressure of the enemy forces, the 
 crushing superiority of their artillery, the insidious prop- 
 aganda of the enemy, the shameful ruse >of enemy 
 officers who wore Italian uniforms and used the language 
 learned from us when they were guests at our universities 
 in time of peace, to throw our ranks into confusion. But 
 everything indicates that the oft-lamented disadvantages 
 
 m 
 
ot frontier imposed on Italy forced the hasty retreat of 
 troops not actually engaged to prevent their being flanked 
 and cut off. The retreat thus courageously and quickly 
 determined upon by the supreme command, in spite of 
 regret at abandoning in an instant lands so laboriously 
 conquered in thirty months of sacrifice, suffering and blood- 
 shed, might have been checked at the Tagliamento or 
 Livenza, along the rear lines already prudently prepared 
 for defense. But these lines were stripped of artillery, 
 because the scarcity of guns had forced Italy to bring 
 them all forward to support the first line, and today it is 
 absolutely impossible to hold a defensive position without 
 strong artillery support. The only hope of safety and 
 ultimate recovery was to place between the invading 
 army and the Italian forces the greatest distance with the 
 greatest possible speed. And the Italian soldiers retired 
 to the Piave. Putting aside every consideration of art 
 and sentiment the cold military critic might find that the 
 line chosen which did not even eliminate the handicap of 
 the double front on the North and East had fewer of the 
 requisites for defense and counter-attack than other lines 
 farther in the rear. But Italy felt the high duty which her 
 traditions placed upon her, and a clear vision of the fact 
 that she could not assume before the world the responsi- 
 bility of abandoning a priori without an effort to arrest the 
 barbarian hordes, cities of such historic and artistic 
 value as Verona, Vicenza, Padua and above all, Venice, 
 which would have been victims without doubt of the 
 destructive fury of the invaders. And at the Piave Italy 
 halted the Huns. 
 
 The glorious episodes of this retreat are already known, 
 how units without guns left behind to cover the retreat of 
 the main bodies and retard the enemies' progress generously 
 sacrificed themselves to the last man to fulfill their duty 
 to their country; how other units completely surrounded 
 fought to the death, refusing to surrender even in hopeless 
 struggles. 
 
 The real index of the morale of the army, the valor of the 
 Italian soldier, the soundness of organization and disci- 
 pline in the great mass of the troops, is the long, magnifi- 
 
 98 
 
cent, efficient resistance which they made immediately 
 following an unexpected and tragic retreat, rapidly 
 executed under the crushing impetus of the hostile armies. 
 Fighting on the mountain and river fronts, outnumbered 
 perhaps five to one, confronting fresh troops constantly 
 relieved, the Italians unaided for more than a month 
 repulsed every attack. 
 
 At first the enemy assaults were launched impetuously 
 and continually in the attempt to break the Italian lines 
 which were not yet consolidated, lines held by units which 
 in the rapid development of events had not time to halt 
 and reorganize. Then, calling reinforcements from the 
 three other fronts, and bringing up the heavy artillery 
 which Italy almost entirely lacked, the Huns tried with 
 new and fierce blows from the North to break through into 
 the plain. But once more the Italian soldiers, suffering 
 heavy losses, but inflicting a terrible toll on the invaders, 
 fighting without cessation night and day, attacking with 
 bayonets and rocks when ammunition was exhausted, 
 repulsed every attack and prevented the enemy penetrat- 
 ing our lines, flinging in their faces the ancient cry of the 
 Alpine warriors, adopted afterward by the French soldiers 
 at Verdun, "Di qui non si passa!" 
 
 Soon France and England, realizing the stupendous 
 enemy plan, sent their brave troops to Italy where they 
 were joyously acclaimed by the Italians as the concrete 
 evidence of their brotherhood in arms and the unity of 
 their cau se. The Italian troops consented to be relieved by 
 the Allies in some places along the first lines of defense and 
 to take a well-earned rest after having halted alone the 
 Austro-German advance. 
 
 Meanwhile the great American republic, which had 
 promptly sent Italy aid in supplies and money, likewise 
 declared war on Austria, thus giving to Italy new proof of 
 her sympathy and to the world new evidence of her desire 
 to defeat the enemies of liberty in every time and place. 
 The common ideals, the just cause, the proven valor of 
 their soldiers will bring sure victory to the nations of the 
 Entente. God is with them! 
 
 99 
 
THE BATTLE FOR VENICE* 
 By Walter Littlefield 
 
 I have been asked to say a few words on the Battle for 
 Venice. By all the laws of logic and strategy I should be 
 talking about the battle for Laibach, possibly for Vienna. 
 For by September 1, Cadorna had shown the way to 
 those battles, just as Napoleon 120 years ago had shown it. 
 But questions of tactics and of politics have, meanwhile, 
 intervened, and so I am constrained to speak about the 
 Battle for Venice. 
 
 With Germany's well known propensity for holding her 
 nearest and strongest foes and attacking her most remote 
 and weakest — with Serbia overwhelmed, Rumania crushed, 
 and Russia forced into neutrality with the aid of the Bol- 
 sheviki — it was natural that she should turn her attention 
 to Italy, and, taking advantage of the lack of complete 
 cooperation which still prevailed among the Allies — of 
 the insidious conspiracies which were going on among 
 their people for a dishonorable peace — attempt to render 
 hors de combat Austria's most redoubtable foe and pos- 
 sibly attain thereby an entrance to the back door of 
 France. 
 
 Austria herself had already tried to do this in May and 
 June, 1916, when she made a drive from the Trentino into 
 the Regione di Veneto and reached Asiago on the Sette 
 Comuni. Then, however, flanked from the Val Sugana 
 in the northeast and from the Astico in the southwest, 
 she was hurled back with the loss of between 80,000 and 
 100,000 men. 
 
 But the German attack was different. Austria struck 
 at Italy's weakest front, at her strongest point, hoping 
 thereby to reach Vicenza and the railway system which, 
 
 *Address delivered under the auspices of the British War Relief Committee, at 
 "Hero Land," on Italian Day, December 1, 1917. 
 
 106 
 
through Udine, fed the Italian Second and Third Armies 
 on the Isonzo and the Fourth Army guarding the passes 
 through the Carnic Alps. She also hoped to reach 
 Brescia, the industrial and metallurgic center of Italy to 
 the southwest, and force a peace at Rome, having, mean- 
 while, thrown wide open the back door to France. 
 
 What Germany did was this: She struck at the weakest 
 point on Italy's strongest front and then waited to apply 
 the Austrian strategy of the year before. 
 
 In his operations last August east of the Isonzo, Cadorna 
 had almost severed the Austrian line along the Ciapovano 
 Valley and had come within 35 miles of Laibach. In the 
 north his line lay across the slopes of Monte Nero, from 
 Plezzo to Tolmino, a distance of 103^ miles, like a string 
 to the bow of the Isonzo which, between these two points, 
 bends westward. In the middle ground his line curved 
 over the Bainsizza Santo Spirito, on a 10-mile front with 
 a penetration of l}/2 miles. In the south only the volcanic 
 pile of Hermada blocked the way to Trieste across the 
 Carso. 
 
 Obviously, the front was exposed at Plezzo and Tolmino, 
 and on the Bainsizza, from the Idrio on the north and 
 from Monte San Gabriele and Monte San Daniele on the 
 south. Besides, at Tolmino the Italians had never 
 crossed the Isonzo, being prevented by the bridgehead 
 formed just south of the city by Monte Santa Maria and 
 Monte Santa Lucia on the right or western bank. 
 
 At these weak points, therefore, Germany struck. Her 
 preparation was, as usual, characteristic. The Italians 
 on the sector across Monte Nero had not been relieved for 
 over a year. These had begun to fraternize with the 
 Austrians. The Pope's peace note of August 1 was made 
 use of. There were forged copies of Italian papers telling 
 of starving women and children in Naples and Genoa who 
 had been fired on by British mercenaries. The Socialist 
 Camorra of Ferri and the Pacificist Camorra of Giolitti 
 also got in their fine work, and, when all was ready, Italian- 
 speaking Bulgarians surprised the telephone stations at the 
 
 101 
 
outposts and said that orders had been received from 
 Udine for a retreat. 
 
 The trap was sprung on Sunday, October 21. I do not 
 think that at first the Germans had any expectations of 
 performing the invasion which ultimately resulted. But 
 having secured an initial advantage they pressed it for all 
 it was worth. The Russian situation had permitted the 
 release of forty-seven Teutonic divisions from the Eastern 
 Front. At first six of these were used, then thirteen, then 
 forty in all. At first Germany used the bogey of Mackenzen 
 to frighten the Italians, but von Below was really in 
 command. 
 
 Now the Regione di Veneto, north and east, has five 
 natural lines of defense — the right banks of the Taglia- 
 mento, of the Livenza, of the Piave, of the Brenta, and 
 of the Adige. The Brenta flows through the Val Sugana 
 in the Trentino; the Adige flows directly through the 
 Trentino. Both the Brenta and the Adige enter the 
 Adriatic south of Venice. A retreat to these lines would 
 mean the loss of the Pearl of the Adriatic. 
 
 Well, Germany struck — at Plezzo, at Tolmino, and on 
 the north of the Bainsizza. From Plezzo she entered the 
 valley of the Natizone; behind the Santa Maria and Santa 
 Lucia she crossed the Isonzo and entered the valley of 
 the Judrio; this maneuver practically enveloped the 
 Italian line lying across the slopes of Monte Nero and 
 thousands of Italian prisoners were taken and hundreds of 
 guns captured. Worst of all, however, it exposed the 
 rear of the armies stretching across the Bainsizza and 
 the Carso, and a general retreat was begun — a retreat 
 magnified by daring acts on the part of the Italians who 
 were made to realize the truth of Virgil's line: "Una salus 
 victis, nullam sperare salutem." 
 
 Of the Veneto lines of defense, that of the Tagliamento 
 had been fortified in the spring of 1915, just before Italy 
 entered the war; that of the Piave had been later utilized 
 for a terrain of practice trenches. It will be seen that the 
 Second and Third Armies retreating from the Isonzo 
 
 102 
 
could not proceed very far westward before exposing the 
 rear of the Fourth Army in the north. 
 
 So the Fourth Army also began to retreat. When it was 
 out of the Val Sugana, Germany revealed the full scope of 
 her strategy. She struck south from the Trentino and 
 occupied Asiago, on the Sette Comuni. But now, unlike 
 the situation in the summer of 1916, Asiago could not be 
 flanked from the Val Sugana. Thus Asiago was on the 
 rear-left of the retreating Fourth, Second, and Third 
 Armies, and on the rear-right of the First Army lying 
 along the Val Terragnola before Rovereto. Similar to the 
 Asiago advance another descended between the Piave 
 and the Brenta as far as the slopes of Monte Grappa. In 
 the east the Germans reached the Piave. 
 
 But no further. Here the Italians have raised the cry 
 of the French at Verdun: "On ne passera pas — Da qui 
 non si passa!" 
 
 And now, whatever may have been the causes which 
 allowed Von Below to effect an entering wedge and however 
 the retreat of the Italian armies to the Piave may be 
 criticised, one luminous fact stands out as bright as day. 
 It is this: By September 1, Cadorna had demonstrated 
 to the world, as Napoleon had done 120 years before, that 
 the way to defeat Austria was across the Isonzo and 
 through the Julian Alps. And it is a matter of political 
 knowledge that, with Austria defeated and placed in the 
 inevitable chaos of a social revolution, the military power 
 of Germany would collapse. 
 
 Why, therefore, was this unequalled condition not taken 
 advantage of by the Allies? Here we are brought face to 
 face with considerations which have never obstructed the 
 German High Command — political considerations. What 
 are these political considerations? I really do not know. 
 Yet I am informed that they exist and that they are very 
 formidable when any attempt is made to have unity and 
 concentration of forces on the part of the Allies. They 
 kept Greece from attacking Turkey when the approaches 
 to Constantinople were defended by a handful of soldiers. 
 
 103 
 
f hey were responsible for the Gallipoli fiasco, for the 
 Serbian disaster, for the chaos in Russia. They have 
 closed the eyes of military experts and have so far rendered 
 immune the Lorraine sector and the Heligoland naval 
 base. They occasionally permit cooperation, but never 
 unity of strategy, of tactics on the part of the Allies, and 
 that concentration of forces, that coordination of supplies, 
 that one supreme executive which are so necessary to 
 victory, and which have been Germany's from the first. 
 
 A better day se°med dawning a fortnight ago when a 
 Triune General Staff was established for the conduct of the 
 war in Italy — with Foch, Wilson, and Cadorna. But 
 nothing came of it. Political considerations intervened. 
 And so today we find the forces of England and of France 
 which have entered Italy busily engaged in fortifying the 
 Adige and the Po so as to protect the back door of France, 
 when they should be on the Piave bearing victory for the 
 Allies through the front door of Italy! 
 
 And political considerations will probably keep up 
 until the end of the ineffective battles of attrition in 
 Flanders — the mere gaining of territory which could much 
 better be recovered from a beaten Germany at the end of 
 the war than on the battlefield. And all oblivious are 
 these political considerations to the glaring fact that the 
 battle line from the North Sea to the Adriatic, with vast 
 salients in Lorraine and Veneto, is the interior of a curve; 
 that while it takes Germany more than a week to move 
 troops from Flanders to Veneto the same thing can be 
 accomplished by the Allies within forty-eight hours. 
 
 This is a tactical, a topographical truth which needs no 
 demonstration. The corollary needed to make it yield 
 victory for the Allies is very simple. It is this : One 
 front, one army, one supreme command. 
 
 m 
 
THE PROBLEMS OF VICTORY* 
 
 By Hon. Medill McCoemick 
 
 Representative from Illinois 
 
 *********** 
 
 Then the Imperial Staff struck their adversaries again, 
 this time on the right flank, in Italy. There is no mystery 
 about that blow. In order to understand it we have only 
 accurately to estimate the weakness and the strength of 
 Italy, her achievement, and her failure, and the respon- 
 sibility which we share with her European allies for her 
 recent defeat. Italy, strong in man power but weak in all 
 other resources, had done well. Some of her troops had 
 been proved the equal of any in the French and British 
 Armies. She had driven the Austro-Hungarian forces 
 slowly eastward in the face of the great natural obstacles. 
 All observers praised the organization with which she 
 maintained her front in an incomparably difficult country. 
 You must bear in mind that Italy labored under great 
 handicaps. 
 
 In a war which is primarily industrial, Italy producing 
 no iron and no coal, received from abroad even less than 
 her normal imports. Her shell factories, which should 
 have been working night and day, were working but part 
 time. In spite of her lack of war material she pushed the 
 enemy to the north in the Trentino and forced him east- 
 ward on the road which runs past Trieste to Laibach. 
 She was seeking the old Napoleonic route to the heart of 
 the Hapsburg monarchy. Ah! If she had been supplied 
 with the resources to have driven through it! When 
 I was on that front, Trieste was before our eyes. There 
 were but two barriers between us and the highway to the 
 
 ♦Extract from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives. Monday. 
 January 7, 1918. 
 
 105 
 
plains beyond. The sons of the Roman road builders had 
 woven over the rocky and precipitous desert a network of 
 splendid highways the like of which are not to be seen on 
 this continent. Along those highways, for miles, in iron 
 pipes, they carried water for the parched armies and com- 
 pressed air for the tools to drive galleries, to drill out 
 tunnels, to cut roads across the faces of sheer cliffs. But 
 for lack of ammunition her advance was stopped. 
 
 The Austrians were weakening. Italian officers told 
 me of the capture of Turks among the prisoners, Turks 
 summoned by the Imperial German staff to the help of 
 faltering Austria. As Italy pushed painfully toward the 
 eastern edge of the desert country her difficulties increased. 
 Her advance had been stopped because she lacked shells. 
 For want of shells and guns her long flank on the north was 
 weak. When I was there Hungarian divisions of real 
 worth, together with German guns and German divisions 
 from the Russian front, were being assembled for the 
 drive which the Italians even then anticipated. They 
 knew that they were in danger. 
 
 Sir, people were troubled by our course. They asked 
 why we had joined hands with France and Britain and 
 not with them, whose ideals and purposes were the same 
 as those of the other western democracies. They asked 
 why we had differentiated between the modern Hohen- 
 zollern autocracy and the more ancient, more obscurantist, 
 more reactionary, and more tyrannical Hapsburg. 
 
 Italy expected the attack, but she did not look for the 
 cowardice and treason of some of her divisions, which had 
 been corrupted by the imperial spy system developed — in 
 Italy as in America — while Italy stood by and watched 
 the other democracies fight. They threw down their guns, 
 those divisions, and Italy with her line broken had to fall 
 back to the Piave. 
 
 There is a little satisfaction to be gained from the know- 
 ledge that the imperial staff achieved no great strategic 
 success in Italy when they drove their enemies back to the 
 line of the Piave. They made a political foray primarily 
 
 106 
 
for its moral effect and to relieve the pressure in the main 
 theater of the war. Both these results they accomplished. 
 They cured Austria-Hungary of despair. They marched 
 Italian prisoners through the streets of Berlin and restored 
 the faltering faith of the German people in the invincibility 
 of the Hohenzollern. They compelled the British and 
 French to detach divisions and guns from the western line, 
 where they were gaining, to assist the Italians in the plain 
 of the Po. 
 
 If America and the Allies can profit by the lesson, we 
 may yet count the German drive into Italy as a disguised 
 blessing. Every thinking creature can now see, what too 
 few saw before, that the front from the Adriatic to the 
 channel is a common front. [Applause.] It is 700 miles 
 long. Three hundred miles of it lie between the Alps and 
 the Adriatic; 400 miles between the channel and the Alps. 
 
 There are about seven Italians under arms for every ten 
 men in the combined French and British armies in France 
 and Flanders, so that the number of men is about equally 
 proportioned to the lengths of the two great sections of the 
 western line, but there is a great disparity in the distribu- 
 tion of guns. Even before the Italians lost a third or so 
 of their cannon, the enemy on the Italian front faced less 
 than one-quarter as many guns as he faced in the hands 
 of the British and the French. 
 
 If America and the Allies can learn anything from the 
 past, if America awakens and does her full duty in the 
 manufacture of vast numbers of cannon, Italy with her 
 millions of infantry can be armed by us with the great 
 weapons necessary to repeat on the Piave what transpired 
 on the Marne. [Applause.] 
 
 When the drive into Italy was checked, for simple and 
 cogent reasons, the Imperial Staff turned from Italy to 
 France. 
 
 107 
 
ITALY AND THE REAL VILLAIN* 
 By Will Irwin 
 
 I begin this on a day when the Italians are fighting 
 along the line of the Piave River, trying to hold back the 
 Austrians from the immortal stones of Venice, when the 
 western passes into the imperiled land are filled with 
 French and British troops hurrying to what may be a 
 decisive battle in Armageddon. The disaster that fell on 
 the fine, able Italian Army is now more than three weeks 
 old. Entente Europe has recovered from its first shock 
 and is beginning already to see a way out. At first, to 
 us who watched the preliminary stages of the great Aus- 
 trian drive, who saw the fugitives begin to stream down 
 the Venetian Plain, and who witnessed for a fortnight the 
 sorrow of Rome, it seemed an irrevocable tragedy. It 
 was a tragedy, at best; though now we know it was not 
 irrevocable. A right understanding of that tragedy is a 
 lesson, a most pertinent and useful lesson, to us Amer- 
 icans in our present relation toward this war. For that 
 reason I set about telling as much as I know and can 
 publish with honor about the events of the past few 
 months in Italy. 
 
 I cannot, however, give true point to the story with- 
 out going back and dragging the reader through a few 
 paragraphs of history and social philosophy; for Italy, 
 like all the other European countries, finds her present 
 linked irrevocably with her past. Young and fluid as 
 we are, we can often, in crises like this, divorce ourselves 
 in a day from our past with all its customs and traditions. 
 They on the other side of the water cannot do that; and 
 the link with their past is sometimes a great strength 
 with them, and sometimes, also, a great weakness. 
 
 ♦Reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post. Copyright, 1918, by The Curtis 
 Publishing Company. 
 
 108 
 
Italy, then, of all the powers engaged in this war, is the 
 oldest people but the youngest nation. Her tradition of 
 high civilization runs back through twenty-five centuries. 
 Her corporate existence as a nation was broken, between 
 the dying years of the Roman Eastern Empire and the 
 movement for United Italy, by a thousand years of dis- 
 ruption. The race, during that period, remained intact 
 in blood and virtually in speech. But politically the 
 nation was broken up into a series of cities; some, like 
 Venice and Florence, carving out for a time little princi- 
 palities of their own in the surrounding territory; some 
 never pretending to any domain outside the city walls 
 and the surrounding fields. Her history during those 
 thousand years is written in terms not of a people but of 
 municipalities. One thing alone survived — the uncon- 
 querable spirit of a race that breaks more commonly into 
 genius than any other we know. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF UNITED ITALY 
 
 The forlorn hope of a United Italy, of a strong people 
 welded and self-governing, took form in the middle of 
 the nineteenth century; and action began when Garibaldi, 
 with his band of wild revolutionaries, captured and lost 
 Rome in 1848. That was a noble failure — the Bunker 
 Hill of United Italy. For ten years more the north was 
 divided between the loyalist Italian House of Savoy and 
 Austrian tyranny, the center was held by the Papal 
 States, and the south festered under King Bomba's King- 
 dom of the Two Sicilies — probably the most incompetent 
 government of modern times. Garibaldi, the Liberator, 
 came back in 1859, with his thousand, and performed the 
 miracle of taking Sicily — a thousand troops, armed with 
 condemned muskets, against thirty thousand regulars! 
 Miracle followed miracle, so that historians are still 
 puzzled to account for subsequent events. Most of 
 them, indeed, beg the question, and lay it to luck, for- 
 getting the unbeatable combination of four men with 
 genius — Garibaldi, the wild Liberator; Cavour, the subtle 
 
 109 
 
statesman; Mazzini, the persuasive agitator; and Victor 
 Emmanuel, the strong king. At any rate, within the 
 year United Italy was formed — after a fashion. 
 
 The Papal States, however, still held much of the 
 center, and Austria much of the north, including Venice. 
 In 1866 Germany fought Austria; and Italy, with the hope 
 of getting her own, combined with Germany against her 
 hereditary foe. Garibaldi almost had his hands on 
 Trento, last Italian outpost city in the mountains, and 
 Cadorna, the elder, was about to take Trieste, when 
 Germany, having quickly beaten Austria, withdrew her 
 support and left Italy stranded. As a sop, Bismarck 
 gave her part of the northern provinces held by Austria; 
 and in the subsequent settlement she took over Venice. 
 
 United Italy waited four years more. In 1870 Ger- 
 many and France went to war. Taking advantage of 
 the situation, Italy seized the Papal States, which had 
 been protected by Napoleon III of France. Her bound- 
 aries came to be as we know them in the school geogra- 
 phies and United Italy was a reality. Not until then 
 could she be considered a nation; for the period between 
 1860 and 1870 was so full of wars, rumors of wars, diplo- 
 macies and perils that no time was left for the real work 
 of welding and organizing. She had, then, when Arma- 
 geddon broke, only forty-four years of true national 
 existence. 
 
 Now, she had begun with nothing — no armies or 
 navies or finances or developed resources — nothing but 
 the will to be a free and united people. In her vicinity, 
 and vitally interested in her affairs, as the rattlesnake is 
 interested in the gambols of a bird, were three reactionary 
 nations who had all these necessities of empire — the 
 monarchial France of Napoleon III, Austria, and the 
 Prussia that was becoming greater Germany. In her 
 foreign policy, conducted by a series of most able and 
 subtle ministers, she could afford only one steady objec- 
 tive — to hold herself together and keep her own, without 
 war if possible; for she could not afford another war. 
 
 110 
 
She had special problems, unknown to the youth of such 
 a nation as ours. One was what the Italians call cam- 
 panalism — the town spirit as opposed to the national 
 spirit. "In the beginning," an acute observer of Italian 
 life said to me, "we were not like a piece of welded metal, 
 as a nation should be. We were like marbles in a box." 
 
 HAPSBURG TYRANNY 
 
 Again, there was the problem of the Clerical Party — a 
 large body of voters, including a most able element, 
 refusing, for conscience's sake, to participate in the 
 affairs of the nation. With her one ideal of national 
 unity and national existence before her, she must take 
 from the international situation simply what she could 
 get, while she welded and built toward internal strength. 
 
 All this explains why Italy found herself, in the course 
 of a few years, bound in an alliance with a nation against 
 which a great part of her people held an old grudge, a 
 nation whose scheme of government she despised, whose 
 rule she had hated — Austria. 
 
 We Americans have been so busy with the crimes and 
 shortcomings of Germany that we have paid little atten- 
 tion to Austria. As a matter of fact, if Germany is now 
 the main villian of the European tragedy it is because of 
 superior ability, not of worse intentions. The patch- 
 work kingdom has just emerged from the barbaric stage 
 of open and professed absolutism. Under the German 
 leadership, established since 1866, the Austrians have be- 
 come good administrators, as they were not when they 
 held dominion over Northern Italy; but they are and 
 always have been political tyrants toward the stranger 
 peoples whom they are warping into their system. 
 
 Old imperial Russia herself has no such record of polit- 
 ical executions — "The Hangman" was the Italian nick- 
 name for Francis Joseph. One governor of an Italian 
 district in the Irredenta had on his record two thousand 
 hangings on charges of political conspiracy. In the early 
 part of the nineteenth century, when they were trying to 
 
 111 
 
reconcile the Venetian province to their system, they 
 supplemented the rope with the scourge. Whipping to 
 death was very common. Half a century is a short time 
 in the European memory; and all Northern Italy re- 
 members those days with intense hatred. 
 
 The Hapsburg dynasty is, if anything, more reaction- 
 ary than the Hohenzollern — hard, narrow, sure of its 
 belief in the divine right of kings and of all other things 
 reactionary. The parliament is regarded by the throne 
 and its supporters as a mere concession to keep the people 
 quiet. And at one side sits the army, a force sinister and 
 powerful. The Austrian corps of officers is a kind of 
 Pretorian Guard in organization and feeling — loyal only 
 to itself and the emperor's person; wholly out of sym- 
 pathy with the life of the people. 
 
 Discipline in the Austrian Army was always brutal and 
 barbaric; the officers justified it on the ground that they 
 had many races to control and must stamp out the faintest 
 sparks of disloyalty. This whole army outlook on life, 
 politics and war is summed up in a conversation re- 
 ported to me by an Italian friend, who was once a teacher 
 in an Austrian university. He and an officer fell to de- 
 bating on politics and the future of the Eastern European 
 world. 
 
 "We'll have to fight you some day," said the Austrian; 
 "there's no one else to fight! We can't fight Germany — 
 the alliance is too close. We can't fight Russia — alone. 
 There's no one left but you." 
 
 "Why fight at all?" asked the Italian, quite naturally. 
 "Oh, but we must fight now and then!" replied the 
 Austrian. "You see, in peace parliaments and democ- 
 racy and all that hog foolishness get a foothold. We have 
 to allow the people their sport. When that goes far 
 enough we have a war and get our grip again, and things 
 go as they should ! " 
 
 Such was and such is the troublesome and hated north- 
 ern neighbor of Italy. More than a border, and the re- 
 sentments engendered by a border, divided them — the 
 
 112 
 
whole, irreconcilable difference between the autocratic 
 spirit in which Austria still gloried, and the democratic 
 spirit in which United Italy was born and nurtured. 
 
 Bismarck it was who, in the final settlement of 1870, 
 set the boundary between Austria and Italy. He was 
 the evil genius of the nineteenth century — this Bismarck; 
 the world, including his own Germany, is paying now for 
 his wickedness. But he thought far, far ahead. In the 
 defeat of Austria he saw a chance not only for a united 
 German Empire but also for a powerful, permanent and 
 always subservient ally. 
 
 To that end he did not, as he might have done, add all 
 the German districts of Austria to the new empire. He 
 left in Austria a strong nucleus of German-speaking 
 people, in the expectation that they would come to govern 
 the patchwork empire, and govern it in harmony with 
 German plans. In that expectation he was not disap- 
 pointed. Though Hungary has proved rebellious and 
 dangerous in later years, Germanic Austria has retained 
 its grip; in the pinch of Armageddon it has bent the whole 
 empire to the dominant will of Imperial Germany. 
 
 THE CRAFT OF BISMARCK 
 
 Such being his policy, Bismarck did all he could to 
 strengthen Austria against foes from without, and especi- 
 ally against the new, rising Italy. With that end in view 
 he drew the frontier of 1866-70; and drew it in such a 
 manner, we know now, as to insure future trouble. 
 
 Between the hereditary home of the Italian people and 
 that of the Austrian peoples runs the barrier of the Alps — 
 all the way, virtually, from Switzerland to the Adriatic. 
 For five-sixths of the distance these great mountains form 
 a tangle of peaks, range parallel to range, like that bulge 
 in the Rockies which one notes on the maps of Colorado. 
 For the rest of the distance the Alps run down into foot- 
 hills, ending with the stony, bald and broad hill desert 
 of the Carso — a position almost as valuable, for defensive 
 purposes, as any mountain range. 
 
 113 
 
Now a really just boundary, insuring military protec- 
 tion to both sides of the frontier, would have run through 
 the middle of the Alpine mountain tangle and the Carso 
 desert. It happened, also, that this was in still another 
 way the just boundary; the natural flux and reflux of 
 races had arranged that matter long before. For north- 
 ward, up to that imaginary boundary, ran a population 
 exactly as Italian, in blood, speech, tradition — every- 
 thing — as the peoples of Lombardy or the Venetian plain. 
 Trento, in the mountains, held herself as Latin, in every 
 sentiment and feeling, as Verona, on the other side of the 
 mountains; no less than Venice herself did Gorizia, in 
 the oasis of the Carso, feel herself a part of the old Vene- 
 tian Republic. 
 
 But Italy, in the scheme of Bismarck, must have no 
 military parity with the future vassal state of Austria. 
 He drew the boundary across the southern edge of the 
 mountain tangle. Here and there, as the crazy line 
 wriggled along the Alps, it granted the Italians the favor 
 of one thin screen of peaks — faced always on the north 
 with rank after rank of superior heights. 
 
 The valuable passes all went to Austria. As the line 
 emerged into the lower country, toward the Adriatic, it 
 deviated from the mountain line onto the plain. The 
 foothills of the Alps, the desert of the Carso, the deep and 
 easily defensible Isonzo, were all Austrian. 
 
 "There are many doors to Italy," said an Italian 
 officer to me last year, "and Austria holds the key to 
 them all. If we wish to enter we must use a battering- 
 ram." 
 
 So this situation remained for forty-four years, during 
 which Italy passed from resentment to a kind of forced 
 toleration. The problem of Italia Irredenta — Unre- 
 deemed Italy — troubled the Italians less, perhaps, than 
 the question of Alsace-Lorraine troubled France. For 
 Alsace and Lorraine were kidnaped from the motherland 
 within the memory of man, while these lost provinces of 
 Italy, though hers by right, had not been hers in deed for 
 
 114 
 
a thousand years. She had performed such miracles of 
 recovery in her glorious burst of the nineteenth century. 
 She had so much to do internally that this problem could 
 afford to wait. 
 
 Also, it seemed for a time that the Irredenta problem 
 had reached a half solution. A dawn of liberalism had 
 begun, it appeared, in Austria. Nominal parliamentary 
 government had been granted; freedom to use their own 
 tongue, to live without discrimination in their own way, 
 had been accorded the Italians of Southern Austria. An 
 Irredentist party, pressing the claims of their enslaved 
 brethren, still existed in Italy; but it formed a small 
 minority. 
 
 So, following her policy of playing any and every game 
 that would grant her security for internal development, 
 Italy, within fifteen years after her birth as a nation, had 
 formed an alliance with Austria. As Count Neri said, 
 Italy and Austria had to be either enemies or allies. And 
 this measure, it was felt, afforded still more security to 
 Italia Irredenta. Surely Austria, who valued this alli- 
 ance for her own ends, would not persecute the blood 
 brothers of her allies as she was persecuting the Czechs 
 and other subject races who had none to take their part ! 
 Austria nursed this illusion by granting still more freedom 
 to her Italian subjects. Just as lightly did Italy enter 
 the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. Indeed, 
 this move had at the time the general approval of Europe. 
 It created and maintained the balance of power, that 
 impermanent foundation on which the armed camp of 
 Europe managed to keep the peace for thirty years or 
 more. 
 
 GERMAN MONEY IN ITALY 
 
 And Germany, bound to Italy by the Triple Alliance, 
 proved for a long time of real value to the rising little 
 kingdom with her great internal tasks. German methods 
 and German machinery helped in the great industrial 
 renaissance at the north, which has placed Milan, Turin 
 
 115 
 
and Brescia among the most efficient manufacturing com- 
 munities in Europe. 
 
 Early in the game Germany introduced, through the 
 Banca Commerciale and other houses, her advanced sys- 
 tem of banking, whereby the bank becomes a partner with 
 the man who needs money to develop his business. In 
 a thousand branches of business she made Italy a profit- 
 able customer. Hotel keeping is a mightily important 
 asset to Italy, whose old monuments and works of art 
 form a great commercial asset. 
 
 Everywhere the Germans wormed themselves into the 
 hotel business, introducing modern methods that drew 
 wealth into the country. 
 
 There was no historic quarrel between Germany and 
 Italy, as there was between Austria and Italy — even if 
 Bismarck did juggle that frontier. Since United Italy 
 became a dream, the two nations had never been at war. 
 Toward Austria there had always been hatred of the bit- 
 terest variety, especially in the north. France had been 
 an open enemy many times. Napoleon I rent the coun- 
 try apart and divided it between his relatives and his 
 marshals. 
 
 Napoleon III, even though he was their friend for a 
 few months in 1859-60, had taken Rome from Garibaldi 
 in 1848; his armed protection kept the new kingdom from 
 occupying the Roman provinces between 1860 and 1870. 
 
 The average Italian perhaps failed to understand that 
 France was a different Power since she founded the Third 
 Republic in 1870; Armageddon had been going for a 
 year before most Europeans separated the sheep from the 
 goats, realizing which nations had gone over the demo- 
 cratic ridge and which lingered in the shadows on the 
 wrong side of the hill. But Germany had always seemed 
 a friend. Hardly anyone in Italy, outside the well-in- 
 formed diplomatic circles, perceived that she was the 
 real villain of the drama, the prologue of which was 
 being played even then; that Austria was to figure as the 
 cat's-paw. 
 
 116 
 
Then Armageddon broke. The Triple Alliance pro- 
 vided that every member of the agreement should sup- 
 port the others in case they were attacked. Now the 
 Germans have slapped much camouflage over the causes 
 of this war. But everyone in every European chancel- 
 lery knew that Germany had been waiting and working, 
 during several years, for a general assault on the liberties 
 of this world, and that this was the moment. The 
 Italians, who, under the Triple Alliance, had been watch- 
 ing their neighbor's game from the inside, knew it best 
 of all. The German cry "We are attacked!" simply 
 brought grim laughter from the Quirinal. 
 
 An anxious week passed, however, before the govern- 
 ment, responsible, as in all democracies, to the people, 
 felt sure that it might be allowed to act on its own in- 
 stincts and its own plans. The people spoke decisively. 
 Liege had not fallen before the Socialists passed resolu- 
 tions declaring that they would never consent to an at- 
 tack on France. Privately or publicly, nearly every 
 other organized force of public opinion spoke to the same 
 effect. 
 
 The government conveyed assurances to Paris that 
 Italy would remain neutral. This enabled France to 
 draw a whole army away from the Italian border and to 
 win the battle of the Marne with it. Really the Ger- 
 mans, who knew exactly what they were doing and knew 
 that Italy knew, never expected support from the junior 
 member of the Alliance; but this prompt reassurance to 
 France, with its decisive effect, was a disagreeable sur- 
 prise. Then Italy sat still — and thought. 
 
 Long before Armageddon, friction had been growing 
 with that enemy ally, Austria. Whether by policy or 
 by virtue of a passion for political tyranny impossible of 
 long suppression, she was breaking her tacit pledges 
 toward the Italians of the Irredenta. The noose and the 
 whip had been brought out of the museums and were at 
 work again. 
 
 The really decisive moment, the true occasion, in the 
 
 117 
 
opinion of many minds for the present war, occurred in 
 1905. As a concession to her ally, Austria had consented 
 to the creation of an Italian-language university in the 
 Irredenta. Suddenly she suppressed it utterly ; and grad u- 
 ally she began a process of forced Germanization. The 
 sparks of nationality had been burning low in the Trentino 
 and Trieste. This blew them up into a sullen, smolder- 
 ing flame. The Italians of the north said among them- 
 selves that, at the first opportunity, they must have a 
 third war of liberation to get back their own. 
 
 SYMPATHY WITH FRANCE 
 
 Still, I think, Italy would never have gone to war for 
 the Irredenta alone, any more than France would have 
 gone to war for Alsace-Lorraine alone. An old, old 
 people, the Italians are very complex; they do nothing 
 for simple causes. First, there was the Belgian outrage 
 and the gradual perception that this was a war of democ- 
 racy. Then there was a feeling for England, whose 
 diplomacy and whose volunteers had helped so much in 
 the creation of United Italy. Finally, there was France. 
 "And," says one of my Italian friends, "no one on this 
 peninsula is indifferent to France. Some may dislike 
 her and some like her; but none is indifferent." 
 
 One element especially liked France — the intellectuals. 
 Between French thought and Italian thought, in art, 
 science, philosophy and government, there has always 
 existed a burning sympathy. True, in the Germaniza- 
 tion of parts of Italy, German thought had taken a hold 
 on some of the universities. The Italian intellectual re- 
 sented that. "Teaching Dante by rule of thumb, per 
 Bacco! " said one of this class to me before the war began. 
 "Four years spent in reconstructing texts and not five 
 minutes in contemplating his beauties!" So most of the 
 Italians felt; the diamond-hard, diamond-bright thought 
 of France was their birthright as Latins, not the preten- 
 tious, posing and unilluminated thought of Germany. 
 
 It was these intellectuals who made United Italy in 
 
 US 
 
the beginning. In Garibaldi's immortal thousand, who 
 took Sicily and lighted the torch, there was scarcely one 
 peasant; there were few men of affairs or of business. 
 They were poets, painters, village attorneys, school- 
 masters, university students — even clergymen. The in- 
 tellectuals rose again. D'Annunzio, with that enormous 
 prestige a poet has in Latin countries, took the stump. 
 Caesare Battisti — afterward caught and hanged for 
 treason by the Austrians — came down from Trieste and 
 urged the claims of Unredeemed Italy. The Garibaldis, 
 grandsons of the great Liberator, heritors of a name like 
 that of Washington with us, threw in their powerful 
 sentimental influence on the side of intervention. 
 
 These intellectuals, the true cause of Italy's war, 
 joined hands with a small party against which, in other 
 times, they might have fought most ardently. This was 
 the Nationalist, founded at the time of the Tripolitan 
 War, with the idea of a Greater Italy. The aristocracy, 
 generally held back; all aristocracies in neutral Europe 
 incline a little to the Central Powers. But, except in 
 minor centers, the aristocracy is aside from the current of 
 Italian life. 
 
 GIOLITTI AND HIS PARTY 
 
 The main opposition, indeed — and an honorable one 
 enough — lay in the political powers that were. For a 
 long, long time, Giolitti had been the strong politician of 
 Italy. Three times premier by general election of the 
 people, he remained between terms the quiet power — a 
 kind of Latin Mark Hanna. We shall never understand 
 the affairs of the purely Latin countries if we imagine that 
 their legislative bodies, like ours, are divided into a real 
 party system. Parties there are, but usually imper- 
 manent ones. The true line-up is a matter of personal 
 following. 
 
 Giolitti had the strongest following in Italy. In all 
 fairness it is no discredit to Giolitti that his connections 
 were strongly German. After all, Germany was the 
 
 119 
 
head of the Alliance by which Italy had kept peace for 
 thirty years; to many Italians who hated Austria she 
 seemed a benevolent big sister, her hands full of gifts. 
 Giolitti was against intervention. He pointed out, in a 
 pronouncement which maddened the interventionists, 
 that Italy could get nearly as much by trading with 
 Austria on her neutrality as she could by entering the war. 
 
 All over Italy the interventionists rose and began to 
 riot. Salandra, the premier, who occupied office in the 
 beginning by suffer nee of Giolitti, and Sonnino, the able 
 minister for foreign affairs, had already gone over to the 
 war party. The time for the decision in the Chamber of 
 Deputies approached, and the students raged through 
 Rome calling for the new war of liberation. To the last 
 moment, I am told, the German ambassador sat back 
 happy and contented, sure of a favorable vote. But the 
 popular enthusiasm swept the deputies into the war 
 party, and Italy solemnly ranged herself with the forces 
 of democracy. Out of affairs for the time, Giolitti re- 
 turned to Turin. 
 
 It was a complex affair, even more complex than I 
 have here conveyed; but the mainspring of the Italian 
 uprising was the burning desire for freedom, the sym- 
 pathy with democracy, inherited by Italy from Garibaldi, 
 from Mazzini, from Cavour, from all her giants of the 
 fighting sixties. Only secondary was the desire to rescue 
 her brothers of the Irredenta and, in rescuing them, to 
 close the doors that menaced Italy. 
 
 We think of the Latin nature as suspicious; and in so 
 thinking we only half-judge it. Suspicious on one side 
 of his mind the real Latin is; on another he is as trusting 
 as a child. For he is, above all, human, and has human 
 tolerances and allowances for the failings or misfortunes 
 of other people. So, with their eyes on their old major 
 enemy, Austria, they went on neglecting to watch the 
 real villain of the piece. Though they broke diplomatic 
 relations with Germany, it was a year before they de- 
 clared war. In that period most of the transplanted 
 
 120 
 
Germans went about their affairs, only carelessly watched. 
 Even after the declaration of war with Germany, the 
 measures of repression were neither stern enough nor 
 thorough enough. 
 
 Further, small elements — if not actually disloyal, at 
 least hostile to the war — continued to flourish. On one 
 side were certain members of the Clerical parties, always 
 at outs — owing to the old seizure of the Papal States — 
 with United Italy. On the other extreme — and here 
 extremes met — were the majority Socialists — the official 
 party. The dissenting Socialist groups had indorsed the 
 war. These majority Socialists have only a block of 
 forty or fifty votes in a chamber of five hundred members. 
 They are, however, able parliamentarians, and cohesive 
 — the only group, really, in the Italian Parliament that 
 holds caucuses and can be depended upon to vote en bloc. 
 
 As the war goes on and Socialism fails as a party, 
 though it succeeds as a principle, one begins to perceive 
 two main currents of Socialist thought, which I may call 
 the doctrinaire and the liberal. Socialism, in the begin- 
 ning, was a great democratic movement toward human 
 freedom, in thorough sympathy with such uprisings for 
 political liberty as the successful American, French and 
 Italian revolutions, and the abortive German revolution 
 of 1848. 
 
 In Germany, its birthplace, the gradual corruption of a 
 once admirable race has largely turned it into a machine 
 doctrine of economics; the original object, which was 
 wider human liberty and the greatest good to the greatest 
 number, has become lost in the machinery. The system 
 — whatever its results — is the end of the majority German 
 Socialist. From the beginning of the war we have seen 
 German Socialism used by the oppressors of Germany as 
 a tool against the corresponding class in enemy and 
 neutral countries. It is being so used at this moment in 
 our own country. I, who say this, profess myself a Social- 
 ist in theory. On the other hand, the liberal Socialism of 
 France and Germany looks beyond the machine to its 
 great object of wider human happiness. 
 
 121 
 
Unfortunately the Socialism of Italy, at least in the 
 majority party, had risen and flourished under German 
 tutelage, and held the machine more dear than the prod- 
 uct. Especially these Italian majority Socialists adhered 
 to the narrower tenet of internationalism with peace — 
 the doctrine their German tutors had rejected on the first 
 day of the great war. 
 
 The German Socialist majority has made its admirers 
 and associates in enemy countries dance to the time of a 
 very tragic comedy during the past two years. Re- 
 pudiating, themselves, any idea of peace save a trium- 
 phant German peace, they have at the same time cajoled 
 their dupes into struggling for peace in the abstract at 
 the very moments when peace would most advantage 
 autocratic Germany. 
 
 THE ADVANCE ON THE CARSO 
 
 Let me merely sketch the events of the next two years : 
 The Italian Army proved so good as to astonish even its 
 admirers. One by one it got the keys of the main doors 
 to Italy. In a series of movements, notable alike for 
 valor and for clever strategy, the Italians forced their 
 way to the Carso and the lower Alps, and, in eleven des- 
 perate and ever-victorious battles, battered across them. 
 The fine attack of last August gave them the Bainsizza 
 Plateau and the important height of Monto Santo. Only 
 one great barrier remained — Monte San Gabriele. Take 
 that and the Italians would have an open road to Laibach 
 and eventually to Vienna. 
 
 In spite of a few cabinet changes, the country behind 
 the army held with all necessary firmness. Through the 
 energy and capacity of her able northern engineers Italy 
 made up for her shortage of coal and turned out the 
 munitions. Like all the other Western Allies, she bungled 
 the food problem in the beginning. In 1916, owing to a 
 too-low maximum price, the acreage planted in winter 
 wheat was comparatively small. On top of that came a 
 bad, dry year. She found herself in food difficulties, 
 
 122 
 
though not insuperable ones. On the whole, prospects 
 last summer seemed rosy. There were those who be- 
 lieved that we should have Our decision on the Austrian- 
 Italian Front. 
 
 Now let us turn to Germany: Her diplomats, last sum- 
 mer, spent half of their energy in getting a firm grip on the 
 Austrians, who, weary of the war, were trying their best 
 to wriggle out. From the beginning of the war the Ger- 
 mans recognized, as the prouder and less practical Allied 
 nations did not, the value of propaganda for persuading 
 the neutrals and for weakening enemies. That propa- 
 ganda, as we all know, was very awkward in the begin- 
 ning; it tried to attack the Anglo-Saxon and Latin mind 
 by the methods effective with the peculiar German mind. 
 
 In the first three or four months of the war every time 
 he opened his mouth the servile German savant, mobil- 
 ized to persuade the inferior peoples, gave something 
 away or merely raised a laugh. But the Germans, with 
 their cool adaptation of the means to the end, changed 
 their tune. I imagine that, just as they mobilized their 
 expert chemists to make poison gases to destroy the body, 
 they mobilized, also, their advertising experts, their 
 psychologists, their best journalists, perhaps even their 
 novelists and dramatists, to make noxious vapors against 
 the mind. For their propaganda, as time went on, grew 
 amazingly clever in its adaptation to circumstances and 
 to the various kinds of minds at which it was directed. 
 
 There is one propaganda for Spain; in America such a 
 campaign would fall flat, but it exactly suits the peculiar 
 Spanish psychology; there is another for Switzerland; and 
 there is still another for America. But various as the 
 methods are, I have felt all this year, as I studied the 
 German camouflage in the European countries, a sense 
 of general strategic plan under one clever head or group 
 of heads. Everywhere, for example, they have been 
 trying to instill the idea of peace: "It is coming; it is 
 inevitable; to fight longer is foolish for all sides; the 
 Germans desire it as much as anyone else." 
 
 123 
 
THE J»AN-GERMANIST*S COO 
 
 I thought, last summer, that this was because Ger- 
 many wanted to settle up the war before she found her- 
 self in a deeper hole. I am not so sure now but that it 
 was part of a general plan to weaken the Allies by im- 
 planting so strongly the hope of peace as to relax the spirit 
 and resistance of peoples. 
 
 Germany's generation of steady preparation for her 
 burst toward empire had given her exceptional machinery 
 to get at the minds of her enemies. She had an increas- 
 ing people. It was a cardinal principle of the autocrats 
 who were steering her destinies to make the German 
 people breed like rabbits, so some day the heads of the 
 empire would make an excuse for world conquest by 
 saying: "We are overpopulated; it is just that we should 
 ask for room." 
 
 Also they were able, through their tight grip over their 
 docile subjects, to plant their immigrants at the strategic 
 points where the empire needed them. When imperial 
 policy felt that there were enough Germans in the United 
 States the sluice gates somehow marvelously closed and 
 the stream flowed elsewhere. Under this policy Ger- 
 mans, so long resident that they escaped the notice of the 
 resident populations, were dropped in every corner of 
 France, Belgium, Italy and England. 
 
 German character, as formed under the perverted 
 system of moral education founded by Bismarck and 
 her other empire builders, adapted itself wonderfully to 
 the deeper purposes of this planting process. The aver- 
 age Englishman, Frenchman or American would not like 
 to go among a foreign people with the long set purpose of 
 betraying his neighbors. No reluctance of this kind 
 handicaps the German. The school of ethics in which 
 he was educated — the devil religion of modern Germany 
 — holds that the supreme duty of man is toward the state. 
 And this god of blood and iron requires only one morality 
 of its worshiper — to serve the glory of the state, though 
 
 124 
 
every person therein be poorer, more degraded, less 
 happy because of that service. 
 
 And no moral command of Christianity, or any other 
 religion, must stand between the pan-Germanist and his 
 god. For if men must give their souls, if need be, women 
 must give their bodies. That policy of implantation, 
 that education in the sanctity of duplicity, accounts for 
 the success of the German spy system, both before this 
 war began and since; and it also accounts for the ma- 
 chinery of propaganda, by which the psychological board 
 in Berlin gets at the mind of the enemy. 
 
 So, in the autumn, the time came when the Germans 
 decided to take charge of the Austrians and eliminate the 
 danger from Italy. The job must have looked like a 
 hard one; the Italian Army occupied an exceptionally 
 good terrain for defense, and it was excellent in organiza- 
 tion, in human material, in intelligent direction. The 
 Germans, therefore, tried on it a new method. As an 
 American politician who watched the events of October 
 in Italy expressed it to me: "They didn't shoot bullets; 
 they shot psychology." 
 
 When, ten days before the disaster, I visited the Italian 
 Front, I noted a tendency of thought that puzzled me at 
 the time, though it is all plain to me now. Officers and 
 privates would say to me: "Well, I'll see you in Paris at 
 Christmas;" or, "I'll be back to my job in America next 
 winter." "How?" I would ask. "The war will be 
 over in December," they would say; "it's all arranged." 
 Many added: "The peace conference is meeting secretly 
 in Switzerland." 
 
 In certain parts of the army this seemed a fixed idea. 
 Of course, I believe now, this insidious idea came from 
 Germanic sources. It was demoniacally clever. An 
 army which believes that the war is settled, over, all 
 arranged, is not going to put the best it has into a fight. 
 
 This was general propaganda, a gas cloud. But, as in 
 any intelligent preliminary bombardment, the enemy 
 concentrated on the point where it intended to break 
 
 125 
 
through. This point was not one of the great natural 
 gateways to Italy. Its situation and the lay of the land 
 made it easily defensible; and behind it were reserve 
 positions even more secure. It was not the kind of sector 
 that gives much concern to a general who expects a great 
 attack. Doubtless it was picked for that reason. There, 
 quietly, subtly, the enemy began its psychological drive. 
 The full particulars I do not know — only scattered details. 
 
 The Pope's peace note appeared last August. Agents 
 of the enemy, reading into it meanings the Vatican 
 doubtless never intended, talked to the faithful Italian 
 peasants, with their religious feeling and their narrow 
 mental horizon. "Why do you fight?" they said. "Don't 
 you know the Holy Father wills peace?" The Socialist 
 or pretended Socialist agents approached their own kind, 
 telling them that the workingmen of Austria and Ger- 
 many wanted peace; that all were ready to lay down their 
 arms together. 
 
 They harped on the illusion that England and France — 
 especially England — were keeping up this war in order to 
 get a grip on Italy. Austrian deserters, loaded with instruc- 
 tions before they deserted, assisted in the plot. They 
 came over declaring that the comrades on the other side 
 of the trench line wanted peace; that at the first move- 
 ment of an attack they would throw down their arms and 
 greet the Italians as brothers. Aeroplanes dropped 
 pamphlets emphasizing all these points. 
 
 BY TRICK AND STRATEGY 
 
 Newspapers came very irregularly to these mountain 
 passes. Suddenly, all along the Front, someone distri- 
 buted copes of fake Roman and provincial newspapers, so 
 made up and printed that they looked like the real thing, 
 even to the advertisements and the local items. They 
 carried on their front pages the news of a starving Italy, 
 and of bread riots in their own home towns, which had 
 been put down, with heavy slaughter of women and 
 children, by French and British troops! I need not say 
 that all this was false. 
 
 126 
 
By now an attack, for some time expected by the 
 Italians, was on — or, rather, the preliminary bombard- 
 ments and shifting curtain fires of such an attack. It 
 seemed to be strongest near Tolmino, one of the dangerous 
 gateways to Italy; and the picked troops there were 
 standing beautifully. It was known, also, that several 
 German divisions were stiffening the Austrians. The 
 battle grew to a semblance of a real attack by October 23, 
 on which day, as I myself can witness, the shelling of back 
 lines was violent, even so far as Monfalcone, on the sea. 
 
 Then, on October 24, picked German troops, the best 
 she had, hurled themselves against the bodies of Italians 
 on whom Germany had turned the preliminary bombard- 
 ment of propaganda. 
 
 What happened we shall not know until the story of this 
 war is painstakingly pieced together from reports and 
 memoirs. In substance this body of troops opened up and 
 let the enemy through. Confused details have pierced 
 the mists that lie over a disaster of the kind. Whole 
 companies rose from the trenches and, in spite of their 
 frantic officers, rushed, with outstretched hands, to greet 
 their advancing " brothers," who passed them without a 
 word and charged on toward the reserve lines. 
 
 The thing seems to have been wonderfully stage- 
 managed. Before the advancing troops, I understand, 
 scurried Austrians from the Irredentia who spoke 
 perfect Italian, and who were costumed as Italian staff 
 officers. Rushing into the gun emplacements and reserve 
 trenches, they shouted orders for an instant retirement: 
 Sauve qui pent! The reserves, in turn, opened up and 
 let the Germans through. Almost unopposed, they poured 
 into the valley of the Upper Isonzo; with rifles, with 
 machine guns, with field artillery they took in the rear 
 the left wing of that valiant Second Army which had, in 
 August, taken so heroically the Bainsizza Plateau and 
 Monte Santo. 
 
 Tangled up in mountains higher and more precipitous 
 than the Catskills, to which they had hauled their guns by 
 
 127 
 
days and weeks of painful labor, what could they do? 
 The left wing of the Second Army was virtually lost. The 
 right wing was saved by the bersaglieri, those valiant 
 marching troops who wear the broad sombrero and the 
 burst of cock's plumes. Charging again and again into 
 annihilation, but never ceasing to charge while they lived, 
 they held back the tide until the right wing could roll 
 back on Cividale and the plain. All that Italy had bat- 
 tered out of Austria in two years became untenable. 
 
 PROPAGANDA IN AMERICA 
 
 The Third Army, holding along the Carso from Gorizia 
 to the sea, was saved, with most of its guns, by an action 
 of cavalry as heroic as the charge of the bersaglieri. Before 
 an orderly battle line could be restored, much more, 
 including the Venetian Plain to the Tagliamento, became 
 untenable, in its turn. And all this was not because of 
 better or bigger forces or superior military strategy, but 
 because of a subtle propaganda, applied to just one little 
 sector of one of the best armies in this whole desperate 
 game! 
 
 Well, it pulled Italy together; it had that minor advan- 
 tage. And the German propaganda failed, I think, of its 
 final objective. The Germans never intended that it 
 should stop where it did. They expected, rather, to 
 undermine the moral force of the whole nation — to make 
 Italy a Russia. They showed that by their procedure in 
 the days following the victory. Some of the first pris- 
 oners they took were filled up and turned loose. "We 
 don't want you," they said to these men; "the war is 
 over. Go home and tell your people that if they don't 
 fight us any more they may have their country back, just 
 as it was! We have come to rescue you from England 
 and France." 
 
 No sooner had the enemy cavalry occupied Udine, for- 
 merly the Italian headquarters city, and hoisted its 
 standard on the citadel, than the newly established 
 German governor issued a proclamation to the same effect. 
 
 128 
 
It was the Italian version of the peace-without-annexa- 
 tions-and-indemnities lie used with such effect against 
 Russia. 
 
 But the board of psychology failed, as Germans usually 
 fail, to read the alien mind to the bottom. It did not 
 know — for it had fooled itself — that the true heart of 
 Italy was in this war. It did not count on pride, that 
 governing motive with the Latin. It did not understand 
 that free men, on their own invaded soil, will fight like 
 tigers. 
 
 The board of propaganda is shooting psychology at us 
 also; I know that, though I am in touch with my own 
 country now only by means of the newspapers. And the 
 ammunition, I perceive, is the same. Indeed, some of 
 that brand was fired at me last summer by camouflaged 
 German propagandists in Switzerland: Why fight? Let 
 us have peace! England, the villain, is keeping up this 
 war in order to strangle us! The war is almost over, 
 anyway — why fight? 
 
 As in Italy, the Germans need only light the torch and 
 hand it on. Well-intentioned people, quite honest, quite 
 untreasonable, will carry it for them. In the newspapers 
 appear now and then the names of some of my own 
 friends, above suspicion of dishonesty — financial or intel- 
 lectual — who are helping, with all the sincerity of high 
 purpose, in this German game. 
 
 Besides which, German propagandists are probably 
 walking our streets by thousands, keeping within the 
 letter of the law, but spreading, without hindrance, the 
 ideas engendered in Berlin. 
 
 129 
 
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