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_BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL_
THE NEW FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
THE LAST FRONTIER
GENTLEMEN ROVERS
THE END OF THE TRAIL
FIGHTING IN FLANDERS
THE ROAD TO GLORY
VIVE LA FRANCE!
ITALY AT WAR
_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_
[Illustration: THE QUEEN OF RUMANIA TELLS MAJOR POWELL THAT SHE ENJOYS
BEING A QUEEN]
THE NEW FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
_FROM THE ALPS TO THE ÆGEAN_
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_Published April, 1920_
TO A REAL AND LIFELONG FRIEND
MAJOR J. STANLEY MOORE
OF THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Owing to the disturbed conditions which prevailed throughout most of
southeastern Europe during the summer and autumn of 1919, the journey
recorded in the following pages could not have been taken had it not
been for the active cooperation of the Governments through whose
territories we traveled and the assistance afforded by their officials
and by the officers of their armies and navies, to say nothing of the
hospitality shown us by American diplomatic and consular
representatives, relief-workers and others. From the Alps to the Ægean,
in Italy, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Turkey, Rumania,
Hungary and Serbia we met with universal courtesy and kindness.
For the innumerable courtesies which we were shown in Italy and the
regions under Italian occupation I am indebted to His Excellency
Francisco Nitti, Prime Minister of Italy, and to former Premier
Orlando, to General Armando Diaz, Commander-in-Chief of the Italian
Armies; to Lieutenant-General Albricci, Minister of War; to Admiral
Thaon di Revel, Minister of Marine; to Vice-Admiral Count Enrice Mulo,
Governor-General of Dalmatia; to Lieutenant-General Piacentini,
Governor-General of Albania, to Lieutenant-General Montanari, commanding
the Italian troops in Dalmatia; to Rear-Admiral Wenceslao Piazza,
commanding the Italian forces in the Curzolane Islands; to
Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Chiesa, commanding the Italian troops in
Montenegro; to Colonel Aldo Aymonino, Captain Marchese Piero Ricci and
Captain Ernesto Tron of the _Comando Supremo_, the last-named being our
companion and cicerone on a motor-journey of nearly three thousand
miles; to Captain Roggieri of the Royal Italian Navy, Chief of Staff to
the Governor-General of Dalmatia; to Captain Amedeo Acton, commanding
the "_Filiberto_"; to Captain Fausto M. Leva, commanding the
"_Dandolo_"; to Captain Giulio Menin, commanding the "_Puglia_," and to
Captain Filipopo, commanding the "_Ardente_," all of whom entertained us
with the hospitality so characteristic of the Italian Navy; to
Lieutenant Giuseppe Castruccio, our cicerone in Rome and my companion on
dirigible and airplane flights; to Lieutenant Bartolomeo Poggi and
Engineer-Captain Alexander Ceccarelli, respectively commander and chief
engineer of the destroyer "_Sirio_," both of whom, by their unfailing
thoughtfulness and courtesy added immeasurably to the interest and
enjoyment of our voyage down the Adriatic from Fiume to Valona; to
Lieutenant Pellegrini di Tondo, our companion on the long journey by
motor across Albania and Macedonia; to Lieutenant Morpurgo, who showed
us many kindnesses during our stay in Salonika; to Baron San Martino of
the Italian Peace Delegation; to Lieutenant Stroppa-Quaglia, attaché of
the Italian Peace Delegation, and, above all else, to those valued
friends, Cavaliere Giuseppe Brambilla, Counselor of the Italian Embassy
in Washington; Major-General Gugliemotti, Military Attaché, and
Professor Vittorio Falorsi, formerly Secretary of the Embassy at
Washington, to each of whom I am indebted for countless kindnesses. No
list of those to whom I am indebted would be complete, however, unless
it included the name of my valued and lamented friend, the late Count
V. Macchi di Cellere, Italian Ambassador to the United States, whose
memory I shall never forget.
I welcome this opportunity of expressing our appreciation of the
hospitality shown us by their Majesties King Ferdinand and Queen Marie
of Rumania, who entertained us at their Castle of Pelesch, and of
acknowledging my indebtedness to His Excellency M. Bratianu, Prime
Minister of Rumania, and to M. Constantinescu, Rumanian Minister of
Commerce.
I am profoundly appreciative of the honor shown me by His Majesty King
Nicholas of Montenegro, and my grateful thanks are also due to His
Excellency General A. Gvosdenovitch, Aide-de-Camp to the King and former
Minister of Montenegro to the United States.
For the trouble to which they put themselves in facilitating my visit to
Jugoslavia I am deeply grateful to His Excellency M. Grouitch, Minister
from the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the United States,
and to His Excellency M. Vesnitch, the Jugoslav Minister to France.
From the long list of our own country-people abroad to whom we are
indebted for hospitality and kindness, I wish particularly to thank the
Honorable Thomas Nelson Page, formerly American Ambassador to Italy; the
Honorable Percival Dodge, American Minister to the Kingdom of the Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes; the Honorable Gabriel Bie Ravndal, American
Commissioner and Consul-General in Constantinople; the Honorable Francis
B. Keene, American Consul-General in Rome; Colonel Halsey Yates, U.S.A.,
American Military Attaché at Bucharest; Lieutenant-Colonel L.G. Ament,
U.S.A., Director of the American Relief Administration in Rumania, who
was our host during our stay in Bucharest, as was Major Carey of the
American Red Cross during our visit in Salonika; Dr. Frances Flood,
Director of the American Red Cross Hospital in Monastir, and Mrs. Mary
Halsey Moran, in charge of American relief work in Constantza, in whose
hospitable homes we found a warm welcome during our stays in those
cities; Reverend and Mrs. Phineas Kennedy of Koritza, Albania; Dr. Henry
King, President of Oberlin College, and Charles R. Crane, Esquire, of
the Commission on Mandates in the Near East; Dr. Fisher, Professor of
Modern History at Robert College, Constantinople; and finally of three
friends in Rome, Mr. Cortese, representative in Italy of the Associated
Press; Dr. Webb, founder and director of the hospital for facial wounds
at Udine; and Nelson Gay, Esquire, the celebrated historian, all three
of whom shamefully neglected their personal affairs in order to give me
suggestions and assistance.
To all of those named above, and to many others who are not named, I am
deeply grateful.
E. Alexander Powell.
Yokohama, Japan,
February, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii
I ACROSS THE REDEEMED LANDS 1
II THE BORDERLAND OF SLAV AND LATIN 56
III THE CEMETERY OF FOUR EMPIRES 110
IV UNDER THE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT 155
V WILL THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE RECOVER? 176
VI WHAT THE PEACE-MAKERS HAVE DONE ON THE DANUBE 206
VII MAKING A NATION TO ORDER 243
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Queen of Rumania tells Major Powell that she
enjoys being a Queen _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
His first sight of the Terra Irridenta 12
The end of the day 20
A little mother of the Tyrol 20
Italy's new frontier 28
This is not Venice, as you might suppose, but Trieste 46
At the gates of Fiume 60
The inhabitants of Fiume cheering d'Annunzio and his raiders 78
His Majesty Nicholas I, King of Montenegro 124
Two conspirators of Antivari 130
The head men of Ljaskoviki, Albania, waiting to bid Major and
Mrs. Powell farewell 142
The ancient walls of Salonika 158
Yildiz Kiosk, the favorite palace of Abdul-Hamid and his
successors on the throne of Osman 194
The Red Badge of Mercy in the Balkans 208
The gypsy who demanded five lei for the privilege of taking
her picture 234
A peasant of Old Serbia 234
King Ferdinand tells Mrs. Powell his opinion of the fashion in
which the Peace Conference treated Rumania 240
The wine-shop which is pointed out to visitors as "the Cradle
of the War" 252
THE NEW FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
CHAPTER I
ACROSS THE REDEEMED LANDS
It is unwise, generally speaking, to write about countries and peoples
when they are in a state of political flux, for what is true at the
moment of writing may be misleading the next. But the conditions which
prevailed in the lands beyond the Adriatic during the year succeeding
the signing of the Armistice were so extraordinary, so picturesque, so
wholly without parallel in European history, that they form a sort of
epilogue, as it were, to the story of the great conflict. To have
witnessed the dismemberment of an empire which was hoary with antiquity
when the Republic in which we live was yet unborn; to have seen
insignificant states expand almost overnight into powerful nations; to
have seen and talked with peoples who did not know from day to day the
form of government under which they were living, or the name of their
ruler, or the color of their flag; to have seen millions of human
beings transferred from sovereignty to sovereignty like cattle which
have been sold--these are sights the like of which will probably not be
seen again in our times or in those of our children, and, because they
serve to illustrate a chapter of History which is of immense importance,
I have tried to sketch them, in brief, sharp outline, in this book.
Because I was curious to see for myself how the countrymen of Andreas
Hofer in South Tyrol would accept their enforced Italianization; whether
the Italians of Fiume would obey the dictum of President Wilson that
their city must be Slav; how the Turks of Smyrna and the Bulgarians of
Thrace would welcome Hellenic rule; whether the Croats and Slovenes and
Bosnians and Montenegrins were content to remain pasted in the Jugoslav
stamp-album; and because I wished to travel through these disputed
regions while the conditions and problems thus created were still new,
we set out, my wife and I, at about the time the Peace Conference was
drawing to a close, on a journey, made largely by motor-car and
destroyer, which took us from the Adige to the Vardar and from the
Vardar to the Pruth, along more than five thousand miles of those new
national boundaries--drawn in Paris by a lawyer, a doctor and a college
professor--which have been termed, with undue optimism perhaps, the
frontiers of freedom.
Some of the things which I shall say in these pages will probably give
offense to those governments which showed us many courtesies. Those who
are privileged to speak for governments are fond of asserting that
_their_ governments have nothing to conceal and that they welcome honest
criticism, but long experience has taught me that when they are told
unpalatable truths governments are usually as sensitive and resentful as
friends. Now it has always seemed to me that a writer owes his first
allegiance to his readers. To misinform them by writing only half-truths
for the sake of retaining the good-will of those written about is as
unethical, to my way of thinking, as it is for a newspaper to suppress
facts which the public is entitled to know in order not to offend its
advertisers. Were I to show my appreciation of the many kindnesses which
we received from governments, sovereigns and officials by refraining
from unfavorable comment on their actions and their policies, this book
would possess about as much intrinsic value as those sumptuous volumes
which are written to the order of certain Latin-American republics, in
which the authors studiously avoid touching on such embarrassing
subjects as revolutions, assassinations, earthquakes, finances, or
fevers for fear of scaring away foreign investors or depreciating the
government securities.
It is entirely possible that in forming some of my conclusions I was
unconsciously biased by the hospitality and kindness we were shown, for
it is human nature to have a more friendly feeling for the man who
invites you to dinner or sends you a card to his club than for the man
who ignores your existence; it is probable that I not infrequently
placed the wrong interpretation on what I saw and heard, especially in
the Balkans; and, in those cases where I have rashly ventured to indulge
in prophecy, it is more than likely that future events will show that as
a prophet I am not an unqualified success. In spite of these
shortcomings, however, I would like my readers to believe that I have
made a conscientious effort to place before them, in the following
pages, a plain and unprejudiced account of how the essays in map-making
of the lawyer, the doctor and the college professor in Paris have
affected the peoples, problems and politics of that vast region which
stretches from the Alps to the Ægean.
The Queen of the Adriatic never looked more radiantly beautiful than on
the July morning when, from the landing-stage in front of the Danieli,
we boarded the _vapore_ which, after an hour's steaming up the teeming
Guidecca and across the outlying lagoons, set us down at the road-head,
on the mainland, where young Captain Tron, of the Comando Supremo, was
awaiting us with a big gray staff-car. Captain Tron, who had been born
on the Riviera and spoke English like an Oxonian, had been aide-de-camp
to the Prince of Wales during that young gentleman's prolonged stay on
the Italian front. He was selected by the Italian High Command to
accompany us, I imagine, because of his ability to give intelligent
answers to every conceivable sort of question, his tact, and his
unfailing discretion. His chief weakness was his proclivity for
road-burning, in which he was enthusiastically abetted by our Sicilian
chauffeur, who, before attaining to the dignity of driving a staff-car,
had spent an apprenticeship of two years in piloting ammunition-laden
_camions_ over the narrow and perilous roads which led to the positions
held by the Alpini amid the higher peaks, during which he learned to
save his tires and his brake-linings by taking on two wheels instead of
four the hairpin mountain turns. Now I am perfectly willing to travel as
fast as any one, if necessity demands it, but to tear through a region
as beautiful as Venetia at sixty miles an hour, with the incomparable
landscape whirling past in a confused blur, like a motion-picture film
which is being run too fast because the operator is in a hurry to get
home, seems to me as unintelligent as it is unnecessary. Like all
Italian drivers, moreover, our chauffeur insisted on keeping his cut-out
wide open, thereby producing a racket like a machine-gun, which, though
it gave warning of our approach when we were still a mile away, made any
attempt at conversation, save by shouting, out of the question.
Because I wished to follow Italy's new frontiers from their very
beginning, at that point where the boundaries of Italy, Austria and
Switzerland meet near the Stelvio Pass, our course from Venice lay
northwestward, across the dusty plains of Venetia, shimmering in the
summer heat, the low, pleasant-looking villas of white or pink or
sometimes pale blue stucco, set far back in blazing gardens, peering
coyly out at us from between the ranks of stately cypresses which lined
the highway, like daintily-gowned girls seeking an excuse for a
flirtation. Dotting the Venetian plain are many quaint and charming
towns of whose existence the tourist, traveling by train, never dreams,
their massive walls, sometimes defended by moats and draw-bridges,
bearing mute witness to this region's stormy and romantic past. Towering
above the red-tiled roofs of each of these Venetian plain-towns is its
slender campanile, and, as each campanile is of distinctive design, it
serves as a landmark by which the town can be identified from afar.
Through the narrow, cobble-paved streets of Vicenza we swept, between
rows of shops opening into cool, dim, vaulted porticoes, where the
townspeople can lounge and stroll and gossip without exposing themselves
to rain or sun; through Rovereto, noted for its silk-culture and for its
old, old houses, superb examples of the domestic architecture of the
Middle Ages, with faded frescoes on their quaint façades; and so up the
rather monotonous and uninteresting valley of the Adige until, just as
the sun was sinking behind the Adamello, whose snowy flanks were bathed
in the rosy _Alpenglow_, we came roaring into Trent, the capital and
center of the Trentino, which, together with Trieste and its adjacent
territory, composed the regions commonly referred to by Italians before
the war as _Italia Irredenta_--Unredeemed Italy.
Rooms had been reserved for us at the Hotel Trento, a famous tourist
hostelry in pre-war days, which had been used as headquarters by the
field-marshal commanding the Austrian forces in the Trentino, signs of
its military occupation being visible in the scratched wood-work and
ruined upholstery. The spurs of the Austrian staff officers on duty in
Trent, as Major Rupert Hughes once remarked of the American staff
officers on duty in Washington, must have been dripping with furniture
polish.
Trent--or Trento, as its new owners call it--is a place of some 30,000
inhabitants, built on both banks of the Adige, in the center of a great
bowl-shaped valley which is completely hemmed in by towering mountain
walls. In the church of Santa Maria Maggiore the celebrated Council of
Trent sat in the middle of the sixteenth century for nearly a decade. On
the eastern side of the town rises the imposing Castello del Buon
Consiglio, once the residence of the Prince-Bishops but now a barracks
for Italian soldiery.
No one who knows Trent can question the justice of Italy's claims to the
city and to the rich valleys surrounding it, for the history, the
traditions, the language, the architecture and the art of this region
are as characteristically Italian as though it had never been outside
the confines of the kingdom. The system of mild and fertile Alpine
valleys which compose the so-called Trentino have an area of about 4,000
square miles and support a population of 380,000 inhabitants, of whom
375,000, according to a census made by the Austrians themselves, are
Italian. An enclave between Lombardy and Venetia, a rough triangle with
its southern apex at the head of the Lake of Garda, the Trentino,
originally settled by Italian colonists who went forth as early as the
time of the Roman Republic, was for centuries an independent Italian
prince-bishopric, being arbitrarily annexed to Austria upon the fall of
Napoleon. In spite of the tyrannical and oppressive measures pursued by
the Austrian authorities in their attempts to stamp out the affection of
the Trentini for their Italian motherland, in spite of the systematic
attempts to Germanicize the region, in spite of the fact that it was an
offense punishable by imprisonment to wear the Italian colors, to sing
the Italian national hymn, or to have certain Italian books in their
possession, the poor peasants of these mountain valleys remained
unswervingly loyal to Italy throughout a century of persecution. Little
did the thousands of American and British tourists who were wont to make
of the Trentino a summer playground, climbing its mountains, fishing in
its rivers, motoring over its superb highways, stopping in its great
hotels, realize the silent but desperate struggle which was in progress
between this handful of Italian exiles and the empire of the Hapsburgs.
The attitude of the Austrian authorities toward their unwilling subjects
of the Trentino was characterized by a vindictiveness as savage as it
was shortsighted. Like the Germans in Alsace, they made the mistake of
thinking that they could secure the loyalty of the people by awing and
terrorizing them, whereas these methods had the effect of hardening the
determination of the Trentini to rid themselves of Austrian rule. Cæsare
Battisti was deputy from Trent to the parliament in Vienna. When war was
declared he escaped from Austria and enlisted in the Italian army,
precisely as hundreds of American colonists joined the Continental Army
upon the outbreak of the Revolution. During the first Austrian offensive
he was captured and sentenced to death, being executed while still
suffering from his wounds. The fact that the rope parted twice beneath
his weight added the final touch to the brutality which marked every
stage of the proceeding. The execution of Battista provided a striking
object-lesson for the inhabitants of the Trentino and of Italy--but not
the sort of object-lesson which the Austrians had intended. Instead of
terrifying them, it but fired them in their determination to end that
sort of thing forever. From Lombardy to Sicily Battista was acclaimed a
hero and a martyr; photographs of him on his way to execution--an erect
and dignified figure, a dramatic contrast to the shambling, sullen-faced
soldiery who surrounded him--were displayed in every shop-window in the
kingdom; all over Italy streets and parks and schools were named to
perpetuate his memory.
Had there been in my mind a shadow of doubt as to the justice of Italy's
annexation of the Trentino, it would have been dissipated when, after
dinner, we stood on the balcony of the hotel in the moonlight, looking
down on the great crowd which filled to overflowing the brilliantly
lighted piazza. A military band was playing _Garibaldi's Hymn_ and the
people stood in silence, as in a church, the faces of many of them wet
with tears, while the familiar strains, forbidden by the Austrian under
penalty of imprisonment, rose triumphantly on the evening air to be
echoed by the encircling mountains. At last the exiles had come home.
And from his marble pedestal, high above the multitude, the great statue
of Dante looked serenely out across the valleys and the mountains which
are "unredeemed" no longer.
[Illustration: HIS FIRST SIGHT OF THE TERRA IRRIDENTA
King Victor Emanuel arriving at Trieste on a destroyer after its
occupation by the Italians]
Though Italy's original claims in this region, as made at the
beginning of the war, included only the so-called Trentino (by which is
generally meant those Italian-speaking districts which used to belong to
the bishopric of Trent) together with those parts of South Tyrol which
are in population overwhelmingly Italian, she has since demanded, and by
the Peace Conference has been awarded, the territory known as the upper
Adige, which comprises all the districts lying within the basin of the
Adige and of its tributary, the Isarco, including the cities of Botzen
and Meran. By the annexation of this region Italy has pushed her
frontier as far north as the Brenner, thereby bringing within her
borders upwards of 180,000 German-speaking Tyrolese who have never been
Italian in any sense and who bitterly resent being transferred, without
their consent and without a plebiscite, to Italian rule.
The Italians defend their annexation of the Upper Adige by asserting
that Italy's true northern boundary, in the words of Eugène de
Beauharnais, written, when Viceroy of Italy, to his stepfather,
Napoleon, "is that traced by Nature on the summits of the mountains,
where the waters that flow into the Black Sea are divided from those
that flow into the Adriatic." Viewed from a purely geographical
standpoint, Italy's contention that the great semi-circular barrier of
the Alps forms a natural and clearly defined frontier, separating her by
a clean-cut line from the countries to the north, is unquestionably a
sound one. Any one who has entered Italy from the north must have
instinctively felt, as he reached the summit of this mighty mountain
wall and looked down on the warm and fertile slopes sweeping southward
to the plains, "Here Italy begins."
Italy further justifies her annexation of the German-speaking Upper
Adige on the ground of national security. She must, she insists, possess
henceforward a strong and easily defended northern frontier. She is
tired of crouching in the valleys while her enemies dominate her from
the mountain-tops. Nor do I blame her. Her whole history is punctuated
by raids and invasions launched from these northern heights. But the new
frontier, in the words of former Premier Orlando, "can be defended by a
handful of men, while therefore the defense of the Trentino salient
required half the Italian forces, the other half being constantly
threatened with envelopment."
As I have already pointed out, the annexation of the Upper Adige means
the passing of 180,000 German-speaking Austrians under Italian
sovereignty, including the cities of Botzen and Meran; the ancient
centers of German-Alpine culture, Brixen and Sterzing; of Schloss Tyrol,
which gives the whole country its name; and, above all, of the Parsier
valley, the home of Andreas Hofer, whose life and living memory provide
the same inspiration for the Germans of Tyrol that the exploits and
traditions of Garibaldi do for the Italians.
That Italy is not insensible to the perils of bringing within her
borders a _bloc_ of people who are not and never will be Italian, is
clearly shown by the following extract from an Italian official
publication:
"In claiming the Upper Adige, Italy does not forget that the highest
valleys are inhabited by 180,000 Germans, a residuum from the
immigration in the Middle Ages. It is not a problem to be taken
light-heartedly, but it is impossible for Italy to limit herself only to
the Trentino, as that would not give her a satisfactory military
frontier. From that point of view, the basin of Bolzano (Bozen) is as
strictly necessary to Italy as the Rhine is to France."
No one has been more zealous in the cause of Italy than I have been; no
one has been more whole-heartedly with the Italians in their splendid
efforts to recover the lands to which they are justly entitled; no one
more thoroughly realizes the agonies of apprehension which Italy has
suffered from the insecurity of her northern borders, or has been more
keenly alive to the grim but silent struggle which has been waged
between her statesmen and her soldiers as to whether the broad
statesmanship which aims at international good-feeling and abstract
justice, or the narrower and more selfish policy dictated by military
necessity, should govern the delimitation of her new frontiers. But,
because I am a friend of Italy, and because I wish her well, I view with
grave misgivings the wisdom of thus creating, within her own borders, a
new _terra irredenta_; I question the quality of statesmanship which
insists on including within the Italian body politic an alien and
irreconcilable minority which will probably always be a latent source of
trouble, one which may, as the result of some unforseen irritation,
break into an open sore. It would seem to me that Italy, in annexing the
Upper Adige, is storing up for herself precisely the same troubles which
Austria did when she held against their will the Italians of the
Trentino, or as Germany did when, in order to give herself a strategic
frontier, she annexed Alsace and Lorraine. When Italy puts forward the
argument that she must hold everything up to the Brenner because of her
fear of invasion by the puny and bankrupt little state which is all that
is left of the Austrian Empire, she is but weakening her case. Her
soundest excuse for the annexation of this region lies in her fear that
a reconstituted and revengeful Germany might some day use the Tyrol as a
gateway through which to launch new armies of invasion and conquest.
But, no matter what her friends may think of the wisdom or justice of
Italy's course, her annexation of the Upper Adige is a _fait accompli_
which is not likely to be undone. Whether it will prove an act of wisdom
or of shortsightedness only the future can tell.
The transition from the Italian Trentino to the German Tyrol begins a
few miles south of Bozen. Perhaps "occurs" would be a more descriptive
word, for the change from the Latin to the Teutonic, instead of being
gradual, as one would expect, is almost startling in its abruptness. In
the space of a single mile or so the language of the inhabitants changes
from the liquid accents of the Latin to the deep-throated gutturals of
the German; the road signs and those on the shops are now printed in
quaint German script; _via_ becomes _weg_, _strada_ becomes _strasse_,
instead of responding to your salutation with a smiling "_Bon giorno_"
the peasants give you a solemn "_Guten morgen_." Even the architecture
changes, the slender, four-square campaniles surmounted by bulging
Byzantine domes, so characteristic of the Trentino, giving place to
pointed steeples faced with colored slates or tiles. On the German side
the towns are better kept, the houses better built, the streets wider
and cleaner than in the Italian districts. Instead of the low,
white-walled, red-tiled dwellings so characteristic of Italy, the houses
begin to assume the aspect of Alpine chalets, with carved wooden
balconies and steep-pitched roofs to prevent the settling of the winter
snows. The plastered façades of many of the houses are decorated with
gaudily colored frescoes, nearly always of Biblical characters or
scenes, so that in a score of miles the traveler has had the whole story
of the Scriptures spread before him. They are a deeply religious people,
these Tyrolean peasants, as is evidenced not only by the many handsome
churches and the character of the wall-paintings on the houses, but by
the amazing frequency of the wayside shrines, most of which consist of
representations of various phases of the Crucifixion, usually carved and
painted with a most harrowing fidelity of detail. Occasionally we
encountered groups of peasants wearing the picturesque velvet jackets,
tight knee-breeches, heavy woolen stockings and beribboned hats which
one usually associates with the Tyrolean yodelers who still inflict
themselves on vaudeville audiences in the United States. As we sped
northward the landscape changed with the inhabitants, the sunny Italian
countryside, ablaze with flowers and green with vineyards, giving way to
solemn forests, gloomy defiles, and crags surmounted by grim, gray
castles which reminded me of the stage-settings for "Tannhäuser" and
"Lohengrin."
Seen from the summit of the Mendel Pass, the road from Trent to Bozen
looks like a lariat thrown carelessly upon the ground. It climbs
laboriously upward, through splendid evergreen forests, in countless
curves and spirals, loiters for a few-score yards beside the margin of a
tiny crystal lake, and then, refreshed, plunges downward, in a series of
steep white zigzags, to meet the Isarco, in whose company it enters
Bozen. Because the car, like ourselves, was thirsty, we stopped at the
summit of the pass at the tiny hamlet of Madonna di Campiglio--Our Lady
of the Fields--for water and for tea. Should you have occasion to go
that way, I hope that you will take time to stop at the unpretentious
little Hotel Neumann. It is the sort of Tyrolean inn which had, I
supposed, gone out of existence with the war. The innkeeper, a jovial,
white-whiskered fellow, such as one rarely finds off the musical comedy
stage, served us with tea--with rum in it--and hot bread with honey, and
heaping dishes of small wild strawberries, and those pastries which the
Viennese used to make in such perfection. There were five of us,
including the chauffeur and the orderly, and for the food which we
consumed I think that the innkeeper charged the equivalent of a dollar.
But, as he explained apologetically, the war had raised prices terribly.
We were the first visitors, it seemed, barring Austrians and a few
Italian officers, who had visited his inn in nearly five years. Both of
his sons had been killed in the war, he told us, fighting bravely with
their Jaeger battalion. The widow of one of his sons--I saw her; a
sweet-faced Austrian girl--with her child, had come to live with him, he
said. Yes, he was an old man, both of his boys were dead, his little
business had been wrecked, the old Emperor Franz-Joseph--yes, we could
see his picture over the fireplace within--had gone and the new Emperor
Karl was in exile, in Switzerland, life had heard; even the Empire in
which he had lived, boy and man, for seventy-odd years, had disappeared;
the whole world was, indeed, turned upside down--but, Heaven be praised,
he had a little grandson who would grow up to carry the business on.
[Illustration: A LITTLE MOTHER OF THE TYROL
We gave her some candy: it was the first taste of sugar that she had had
in four years]
[Illustration: THE END OF THE DAY
A Tyrolean peasant woman returning from the fields]
"How do you feel," I asked the old man, "about Italian rule?"
"They are not our own people," he answered slowly. "Their language is
not our language and their ways are not our ways. But they are not an
unkind nor an unjust people and I think that they mean to treat us
fairly and well. Austria is very poor, I hear, and could do nothing for
us if she would. But Italy is young and strong and rich and the officers
who have stopped here tell me that she is prepared to do much to help
us. Who knows? Perhaps it is all for the best."
Immediately beyond Madonna di Campiglio the highway begins its descent
from the pass in a series of appallingly sharp turns. Hardly had we
settled ourselves in the tonneau before the Sicilian, impatient to be
gone, stepped on the accelerator and the big Lancia, flinging itself
over the brow of the hill, plunged headlong for the first of these
hairpin turns. "Slow up!" I shouted. "Slow up or you'll have us over the
edge!" As the driver's only response to my command was to grin at us
reassuringly over his shoulder, I looked about for a soft place to land.
But there was only rock-plated highway whizzing past and on the outside
the road dropped sheer away into nothingness. We took the first turn
with the near-side wheels in the gutter, the off-side wheels on the
bank, and the car tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. The second
bend we navigated at an angle of sixty degrees, the off-side wheels on
the bank, the near-side wheels pawing thin air. Had there been another
bend immediately following we should have accomplished it upside down.
Fortunately there were no more for the moment, but there remained the
village street of Cles. We pounced upon it like a tiger on its prey.
Shrilling, roaring and honking, we swooped through the ancient town,
zigzagging from curb to curb. The great-great-grandam of the village was
tottering across the street when the blast of the Lancia's siren pierced
the deafness of a century and she sprang for the sidewalk with the
agility of a young gazelle. We missed her by half an inch, but at the
next corner we had better luck and killed a chicken.
Meran--the Italians have changed its official name to Merano, just as
they have changed Trent to Trento, and Bozen to Bolzano--has always
appealed to me as one of the most charming and restful little towns in
Europe. The last time I had been there, before the war-cloud darkened
the land, its streets were lined with powerful touring cars bearing the
license-plates of half the countries in Europe, bands played in the
parks, the shady promenade beside the river was crowded with
pleasure-seekers, and its great tourist hostelries--there were said to
be upwards of 150 hotels and _pensions_ in the town--were gay with
laughter and music. But this time all was changed. Most of the large
hotels were closed, the streets were deserted, the place was as dismal
as a cemetery. It reminded me of a beautiful house which has been closed
because of its owner's financial reverses, the servants discharged, the
windows boarded up, the furniture swathed in linen covers, the carpets
and hangings packed away in mothballs, and the gardens overrun with
weeds. At the Hotel Savoy, where rooms had been reserved for us, it was
necessary, in pre-war days, to wire for accommodations a fortnight in
advance of your arrival, and even then you were not always able to get
rooms. Yet we were the only visitors, barring a handful of Italian
commercial travelers and the Italian governor-general and his staff. The
proprietor, an Austrian, told me that in the four years of war he had
lost $300,000, and that he, like his colleagues, was running his hotel
on borrowed money. Of the pre-war visitors to Meran, eighty per cent.
had been Germans, he told me, adding that he could see no prospect of
the town's regaining its former prosperity until Germany is on her
financial feet again. Personally, I think that he and the other
hoteliers and business men with whom I talked in Meran were rather more
pessimistic than the situation warranted, for, if Italy will have the
foresight to do for these new playgrounds of hers in the Alps even a
fraction of what she has done for her resorts on the Riviera, and in
Sicily, and along the Neapolitan littoral, if she will advertise and
encourage and assist them, if she will maintain their superb roads and
improve their railway communications, then I believe that a few years, a
very few, will see them thronged by even greater crowds of visitors than
before the war. And the fact that in the future there will be more
American, English, French and Italian visitors, and fewer Germans, will
make South Tyrol a far pleasanter place to travel in.
The Italians are fully alive to the gravity of the problems which
confront them in attempting to assimilate a body of people, as
courageous, as sturdily independent, and as tenacious of their
traditional independence as these Tyrolean mountaineers--descendants of
those peasants, remember, who, led by Andreas Hofer, successfully defied
the dictates of Napoleon. Though I think that she is going about the
business of assimilating these unwilling subjects with tact and common
sense, I do not envy Italy her task. Generally speaking, the sympathy of
the world is always with a weak people as opposed to a strong one, as
England discovered when she attempted to impose her rule upon the Boers.
Once let the Italian administration of the Upper Adige permit itself to
be provoked into undue harshness (and there will be ample provocation;
be certain of that); once let an impatient and over-zealous
governor-general attempt to bend these stubborn mountaineers too
abruptly to his will; let the local Italian officials provide the
slightest excuse for charges of injustice or oppression, and Italy will
have on her hands in Tyrol far graver troubles than those brought on by
her adventure in Tripolitania.
Though the Government has announced that Italian must become the
official language of the newly acquired region, and that used in its
schools, no attempt will be made to root out the German tongue or to
tamper with the local usages and customs. The upper valleys, where
German is spoken, will not, however, enjoy any form of local autonomy
which would tend to set their inhabitants apart from those of the lower
valleys, for it is realized that such differential treatment would only
serve to retard the process of unification. All of the new districts,
German and Italian-speaking alike, will be included in the new province
of Trent. It is entirely probable that Italy's German-speaking subjects
of the present generation will prove, if not actually irreconcilable, at
least mistrustful and resentful, but, by adhering to a policy of
patience, sympathy, generosity and tact, I can see no reason why the
next generation of these mountaineers should not prove as loyal Italians
as though their fathers had been born under the cross of the House of
Savoy instead of under the double-eagle of the Hapsburgs.
We crossed the Line of the Armistice into Austria an hour or so beyond
Meran, the road being barred at this point by a swinging beam, made
from the trunk of a tree, which could be swung aside to permit the
passage of vehicles, like the bar of an old-fashioned country toll-gate.
Close by was a rude shelter, built of logs, which provided sleeping
quarters for the half-company of infantry engaged in guarding the pass.
One has only to cross the new frontier to understand why Italy was so
desperately insistent on a strategic rectification of her northern
boundary, for whereas, before the war, the frontier ran through the
valleys, leaving the Austrians atop the mountain wall, it is now the
Italians who are astride the wall, with the Austrians in the valleys
below.
[Illustration: ITALY'S NEW FRONTIER
A sharp turn on the highroad over the Brenner Pass]
No sooner had we crossed the Line of the Armistice than we noticed an
abrupt change in the attitude of the population. Even in the
German-speaking districts of the Trentino the inhabitants with whom we
had come in contact had been courteous and respectful, though whether
this was because of, or in spite of, the fact that we were traveling in
a military car, accompanied by a staff-officer, I do not know. Now that
we were actually in Austria, however, this atmosphere of seeming
friendliness entirely disappeared, the men staring insolently at us
from under scowling brows, while the women and children, who had less to
fear and consequently were bolder in expressing their feelings,
frequently shouted uncomplimentary epithets at us or shook their fists
as we passed.
Under the terms of the Armistice, Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol, was
temporarily occupied by the Italians, who sent into the city a
comparatively small force, consisting in the main of Alpini and
Bersaglieri. Innsbruck was one of the proudest cities of the Austrian
Empire, its inhabitants being noted for their loyalty to the Hapsburgs,
yet I did not observe the slightest sign of resentment toward the
Italian soldiers, who strolled the streets and made purchases in the
shops as unconcernedly as though they were in Milan or Rome. The
Italians, on their part, showed the most marked consideration for the
sensibilities of the population, displaying none of the hatred and
contempt for their former enemies which characterized the French armies
of occupation on the Rhine.
We found that rooms had been reserved for us at the Tyroler Hof, before
the war one of the famous tourist hostelries of Europe, half of which
had been taken over by the Italian general commanding in the Innsbruck
district and his staff. Food was desperately scarce in Innsbruck when we
were there and, had it not been for the courtesy of the Italian
commander in sending us in dishes from his mess, we would have had great
difficulty in getting enough to eat. A typical dinner at the Tyroler Hof
in the summer of 1919 consisted of a mud-colored, nauseous-looking
liquid which was by courtesy called soup, a piece of fish perhaps four
times the size of a postage-stamp, a stew which was alleged to consist
of rabbit and vegetables but which, from its taste and appearance, might
contain almost anything, a salad made of beets or watercress, but
without oil, and for dessert a dish of wild berries, which are abundant
in parts of Tyrol. There was an extra charge for a small cup of black
coffee, so-called, which was made, I imagine, from acorns. This, of
course, was at the best and highest-priced hotels in Innsbruck; at the
smaller hotels the food was correspondingly scarcer and poorer.
Though the inhabitants of the rural districts appeared to be moderately
well fed, a majority of the people of Innsbruck were manifestly in
urgent need of food. Some of them, indeed, were in a truly pitiable
condition, with emaciated bodies, sunken cheeks, unhealthy complexions,
and shabby, badly worn clothes. The meager displays in the shop-windows
were a pathetic contrast to variety and abundance which characterized
them in ante-bellum days, the only articles displayed in any profusion
being picture-postcards, objects carved from wood and similar souvenirs.
The windows of the confectionery and bake-shops were particularly
noticeable for the paucity of their contents. I was induced to enter one
of them by a brave window display of hand-decorated candy boxes, but,
upon investigation, it proved that the boxes were empty and that the
shop had had no candy for four years. The prices of necessities, such as
food and clothing, were fantastic (I saw advertisements of stout,
all-leather boots for rent to responsible persons by the day or week),
but articles of a purely luxurious character could be had for almost
anything one was willing to offer. In one shop I was shown German
field-glasses of high magnification and the finest makes for ten and
fifteen dollars a pair. The local jewelers were driving a brisk trade
with the Italian soldiers, who were lavish purchasers of Austrian war
medals and decorations. Captain Tron bought an Iron Cross of the second
class for the equivalent of thirty cents.
We left Innsbruck in the early morning with the intention of spending
that night at Cortina d'Ampezzo, but, owing to our unfamiliarity with
the roads and to delays due to tire trouble, nightfall found us lost in
the Dolomites. For mile after mile we pushed on through the darkness
along the narrow, slippery mountain roads, searching for a shelter in
which to pass the night. Occasionally the twin beams from our lamps
would illumine a building beside the road and we, chilled and hungry,
would exclaim "A house at last!" only to find, upon drawing nearer,
that, though it had evidently been once a habitation, it was now but a
shattered, blackened shell, a grim testimonial to the accuracy of
Austrian and Italian gunners. It was late in the evening and bitterly
cold, before, rounding a shoulder of the mountain up whose steep
gradients the car seemed to have been panting for ages, we saw in the
distance the welcome lights of the hamlet of Santa Lucia.
I do not think that the public has the slightest conception of the
widespread destruction and misery wrought by the war in these Alpine
regions. In nearly a hundred miles of motoring in the Cadore, formerly
one of the most delightful summer playgrounds in all Europe, we did not
pass a single building with a whole roof or an unshattered wall. The
hospitable wayside inns, the quaint villages, the picturesque peasant
cottages which the tourist in this region knew and loved are but
blackened ruins now. And the people are gone too--refugees, no doubt, in
the camps which the Government has erected for them near the larger
towns. One no longer hears the tinkle of cow-bells on the mountain
slopes, peasants no longer wave a friendly greeting from their doors: it
is a stricken and deserted land. But Cortina d'Ampezzo, which is the
_cheflieu_ of the Cadore, though still showing many traces of the
shell-storms which it has survived, was quickening into life. The big
tourist hotels at either end of the town, behind which the Italians
emplaced their heavy guns, were being refurnished in anticipation of the
resumption of summer travel and the little shops where they sell
souvenirs were reopening, one by one. But the losses suffered by the
inhabitants of these Alpine valleys, desperately serious as they are to
them, are, after all, but insignificant when compared with the enormous
havoc wrought by the armies in the thickly settled Friuli and on the
rich Venetian plains. Every one knows, presumably, that Italy had to
draw more heavily upon her resources than any other country among the
Allies _(did you know that she spent in the war more than four-fifths of
her total national wealth?_) and that she is bowed down under an
enormous load of taxation and a staggering burden of debt. But what has
been largely overlooked is that she is faced by the necessity of
rebuilding a vast devastated area, in which the conditions are quite as
serious, the need of assistance fully as urgent, as in the devastated
regions of Belgium and France.
Probably you were not aware that a territory of some three and a half
million acres, occupied by nearly a million and a half people, was
overrun by the Austrians. More than one-half of Venetia is comprised in
that region lying east of the Piave where the wave of Hunnish invasion
broke with its greatest fury. The whole of Udine and Belluno, and parts
of Treviso, Vicenza and Venice suffered the penalty of standing in the
path of the Hun. They were prosperous provinces, agriculturally and
industrially, but now both industry and agriculture are almost at a
standstill, for their factories have been burned, their machinery
wrecked or stolen, their livestock driven off and their vineyards
destroyed. The damage done is estimated at 500 million dollars. It is
unnecessary for me to emphasize the seriousness of the problem which
thus confronts the Italian Government. Not only must it provide food and
shelter for the homeless--a problem which it has solved by the erection
of great numbers of wooden huts somewhat similar to the barracks at the
American cantonments--but a great amount of livestock and machinery must
be supplied before industry can be resumed. At one period there was such
desperate need of fuel that even the olive trees, one of the region's
chief sources of revenue, were sacrificed. The Italians have set about
the task of regeneration with an energy that discouragement cannot
check. But the undertaking is more than Italy can accomplish unaided,
for the resources of her other provinces are seriously depleted. We are
fond of talking of the debt we owe to Italy, not merely for her
sacrifices in the war, but for all that she has given us in art and
music and literature. Now is the time to show our gratitude.
From Cortina, which is Italian now, we swung toward the north again,
re-crossed the Line of the Armistice at Tarvis, and, just as night was
falling, came tearing into Villach, which, like Innsbruck, was occupied,
under the terms of the Armistice, by Italian troops. We had great
difficulty in obtaining rooms in Villach, not because there were no
rooms but because we were accompanied by an Italian officer and were
traveling in an Italian car. The proprietors of five hotels, upon seeing
Captain Tron's uniform, curtly declared that every room was occupied. It
was nearly midnight before we succeeded in finding shelter for the
night, and this was obtained only when I made it amply clear to the
Austrian proprietor of the only remaining hotel in the town that we were
not Italians but Americans. The unpleasant impression produced by the
coolness of our reception in Villach was materially increased the
following morning, when Captain Tron greeted us with the news that all
of our luggage, which we had left on the car, had been stolen. It
seemed that thieves had broken into the courtyard of the barracks, where
the car had been locked up for the night, and, in spite of the fact that
the chauffeur was asleep in the tonneau, had stripped it of everything,
including the spare tires. I learned afterwards that robberies of this
sort had become so common since the war as scarcely to provoke comment,
portions of Austria being terrorized by gangs of demobilized soldiers
who, taking advantage of the complete demoralization of the machinery of
government, robbed farmhouses and plundered travelers at will. It is
much the same form of lawlessness, I imagine, which manifested itself
immediately after the close of the Napoleonic Wars, when bands of
discharged soldiers sought in robbery the excitement and booty which
they had formerly found under the eagles. Though the local police
authorities attempted to condone the robbery on the ground that it was
due to the appalling poverty of the population, this excuse did not
reconcile my wife to the loss of her entire wardrobe. As she remarked
vindictively, she felt certain that the inhabitants of Villach were
called Villains.
I wished to visit Klagenfurt, the ancient capital of Carinthia, which is
about twenty miles beyond Villach, because at that time the town, which
is a railway junction of considerable strategic and commercial
importance, threatened to provide the cause for an open break between
the Jugoslavs and the Italians. Though the Italians did not demand the
town for themselves, they had vigorously insisted that, instead of being
awarded to Jugoslavia, it should remain Austrian, for, with the triangle
of which Klagenfurt is the center in the possession of the Jugoslavs,
they would have driven a wedge between Italy and Austria and would have
had under their control the immensely important junction-point where the
main trunk line from Venice to Vienna is joined by the line coming up
from Fiume and Trieste. The Jugoslavs, recognizing that the possession
of Klagenfurt would give them virtual control of the principal railway
entering Austria from the south, and that such control would probably
enable them to divert much of Austria's traffic from the Italian ports
of Venice and Trieste to their own port of Fiume, which they
confidently expected would be awarded them by the Peace Conference, lost
no time in occupying the town with a considerable force of troops. They
further justified this occupation by asserting that Jugoslavia was
entitled to Carinthia on ethnological grounds and that the inhabitants
of Klagenfurt were clamoring for Jugoslav rule. In view of these
developments, I had expected to find Jugoslav soldiery in the town, but
I had not expected to be challenged, a mile or so outside the town, by a
sentry who was, judging from his appearance, straight from a _comitadji_
band in the Macedonian mountains. He was a sullen-faced fellow wearing a
fur cap and a nondescript uniform, with an assortment of weapons thrust
in his belt, according to the custom of the Balkan guerrillas, and with
two bandoliers, stuffed with cartridges, slung across his chest. He was
as incongruous a figure in that pleasant German countryside as one of
Pancho Villa's bandits would have been in the Connecticut Valley. And
Klagenfurt, which is a well-built, well-paved, thoroughly modern
Austrian town, was occupied by several hundred of his fellows, brought
from somewhere in the Balkans, I should imagine, for the express
purpose of aweing the population. It was perfectly apparent that the
inhabitants, far from welcoming these fierce-looking fighters as
brother-Slavs and friends, were only too anxious to have them take their
departure, having about as much in common with them, in appearance,
manners and speech, as a New Englander has with an Apache Indian. So
great was the tension existing in Klagenfurt that a commission had been
sent by the Peace Conference to study the question on the spot, its
members communicating with the Supreme Council in Paris by means of
American couriers, slim young fellows in khaki who wore on their arms
the blue brassard, embroidered with the scales of justice, which was the
badge of messengers employed by the Peace Commission.
A few miles outside of Klagenfurt my attention was attracted by an iron
paling, in a field beside the road, enclosing a gigantic chair carved
from stone. My curiosity aroused, I stopped the car to examine it. From
a faded inscription attached to the gate I learned that this was the
crowning chair of the Dukes of Carinthia, in which the ancient rulers of
this region had sat to be crowned. There it stands in a field beside
the highway, neglected and forgotten, a curious link with a picturesque
and far-distant past.
Our route from Klagenfurt led back through Villach to Tarvis and thence
over the Predil Pass to the Friuli plain and Udine, a journey which we
expected to accomplish in a single day; but there were delays in
re-crossing the Line of the Armistice and other and more serious delays
in the mountains, caused by torrential rains which had in places washed
out the road, so that it was already nightfall when, emerging from the
gloomy defile of the Predil Pass, we saw before us the twinkling lights
of the Alpini cantonment at Caporetto, that mountain hamlet of black
memories where, in the summer of 1917, the Austro-German armies, aided
by bad Italian generalship and Italian treachery, smashed through the
Italian lines and forced them back in a headlong retreat which was
checked only by the heroic stand on the Piave. The Caporetto disaster
would have broken the hearts and annihilated the resistance of a less
courageous people than the Italians. Yet the Italian army, shattered and
disorganized as it was, stopped the triumphant progress of the
invaders; stopped it almost without artillery or ammunition, for
hundreds of guns had been abandoned during the retreat; stopped it with
the bodies of Italy's youth, the boys fresh from the training-camps, the
class of 1919, called to the colors two years before their time! They
stopped that victorious rush upon the line of the Piave, a broad,
shallow stream meandering through a flat plain with never a height to
command the enemy's positions, never a physical feature of the terrain
to satisfy the requirements of strategy. Not only was the line of the
Piave held by the Italians against the advice of their Allies, but it
was held in defiance of all the lessons taught by Italian history, for
that the Piave could not be successfully defended has been the judgment
of every military leader since first the barbarians began to sweep down
from the Alps to lay waste the rich Venetian plain. The Italians made
their heroic stand, moreover, without any help from their Allies. That
help came later, it is true, but only after the stand had been made. You
doubt this? Then read this extract from the report of General the Earl
of Caven, who commanded the Allied troops sent to the aid of the
Italians:
"In 1917, in the terrible days which followed the disaster at Caporetto,
I saw, just after my arrival at Venice, the Italian army in full
retreat, and I became convinced that a recovery was impossible before
the arrival of sufficient reenforcement from France and England. But I
was deceived, for shortly afterward I saw the Italian army, which had
seemed to be in the advanced stages of an utter rout, form a solid line
on the Piave and hold it with miraculous persistence, permitting the
English and French reenforcements to take up the positions assigned to
them without once coming in contact with the enemy."
I have heard it said by critics of Italy that the retreat from Caporetto
showed the lack of courage of the Italian soldier. To gauge the courage
of an army a single disaster is as unjust as it is unintelligent. Was
the rout of the Federal forces at Bull Run a criterion of their behavior
in the succeeding years of the Civil War? Was the surrender at Sedan a
true indication of the fighting ability of the French soldier? Every
nation has had its disasters and has had to live them down. Italy did
this when, on the banks of Piave, she turned her greatest disaster into
her most glorious triumph.
Because it was my privilege to be with the Italian army in the field
during various periods of the war, and because I know at first-hand
whereof I speak, I regret and resent the disparagement of the Italian
soldier which has been so freely indulged in since the Armistice. It may
be, of course, that you do not fully realize the magnitude of Italy's
sacrifices and achievements. Did you know, for example, that Italy held
a front longer than the British, Belgian, French and American fronts put
together? Did you know that out of a population of 37 millions she put
into the field an army of 5 million men, whereas France and her
colonies, with nearly double the population, was never able to raise
more than 5,064,000, a considerable proportion of which were black and
brown men? Did you know that in forty-one months of war Italy lost
541,000 in dead and 953,000 in wounded, and that, unlike France and
England, her armies were composed wholly of white men? Did you know
that, in spite of all that has been said about the Allies giving her
assistance, Italy at all times had more troops on the Western front than
the Allies had on the Italian? Did you know that she called up the
class of 1919 two years before their time, a measure which even France,
hard-pressed as she was, did not feel justified in taking? (I have
mentioned this before, but it will bear repetition.) Have you stopped to
think that she was the only one of the Allied nations which won a
clean-cut and decisive victory, when, on the Piave, she attacked with 51
divisions an Austro-German army of 63 divisions, completely smashed it,
forced its surrender, and captured half a million prisoners? Did you
know that she lost more than fifty-seven per cent, of her merchant
tonnage, while England lost less than forty-three per cent, and France
less than forty per cent.? And, finally, had you realized that Italy
made greater sacrifices, in proportion to her resources and population,
than any other country engaged in the war, having devoted four-fifths of
her entire national wealth to the prosecution of the struggle? There is
your answer, chapter and verse, for the next man who sneeringly remarks,
"The Italians didn't do much, did they?"
Just as the Trentino and the Upper Adige have been added to the kingdom
as the Province of Trent, so the redeemed regions of which Trieste is
the center, including the towns of Gorizia, Monfalcone, Capodistria,
Parenzo, Pirano, Rovigno and Pola, have been consolidated in the new
province of Julian Venetia, with about a million inhabitants and an area
of approximately 6,000 square miles.
[Illustration: THIS IS NOT VENICE, AS YOU MIGHT SUPPOSE, BUT TRIESTE
The sails of the fishing craft are of many colors, yellow, burnt-orange,
vermilion. At the head of the canal, its stately columns reflected in
the turquoise waters, the Bourse rises like some ancient Roman temple]
Trieste, which, with its suburbs, has a population of not far from
400,000, with its splendid terminal facilities, its vast harbor-works,
its dry-docks and foundries, its railway communications with the
hinterland, and, above all else, its position as the natural outlet for
the trade of Austria, Bavaria and Czecho-Slovakia, constitutes not only
Italy's most valuable prize of war, but, everything considered, probably
the most important city, commercially at least, to change hands as a
result of the conflict. Curiously enough, Trieste is the least
interesting city of its size, from a visitor's point of view, that I
know. Venice always reminds me of a beautiful and charmingly gowned
woman, perpetually young, interested in art, in music, in literature,
always ready for a stroll, a dance or a flirtation. Trieste, on the
contrary, is a busy, preoccupied, rather brusque business man, wholly
self-made, who has never devoted much time to devote to pleasure because
he has been too busy making his fortune. Venice says, "If you want a
good time, let me show you how to spend your money." But Trieste growls,
"If you want to get rich, let me show you how to invest your money." The
city has broad and well-kept streets bordered by the same sort of
four-and five-and six-story buildings of brick and stone which you find
in any European commercial city; it has several unusually spacious
piazzas on which front some really pretentious buildings; it has a few
arches and doorways dating from the Roman period, though far better ones
can be found in almost any town on the Italian peninsula; on the hill
commanding the city there are an old Austrian fort and an ancient
church, both chiefly interesting for the views they command of the
harbor and the coast of Istria; some of the most abominably rough
pavements which I have ever encountered in any city; one hotel which
just escapes being excellent and several which do not escape being bad;
and a harbor, together with the wharves and moles and machinery which go
with it, which is the Triestino's pride and joy.
To my way of thinking the most interesting sight in Trieste is a small
château, built in the castellated fashion which had a considerable vogue
in America shortly after the close of the Civil War, which stands amid
most beautiful gardens on the edge of the sea, two or three miles to the
west of the city. This is the Château of Miramar, formerly the residence
of the young Austrian Archduke Maximilian, who, dazzled by the dream of
life on an imperial throne, accepted an invitation to become Emperor of
Mexico and a few years later fell before a Mexican firing-party on the
slopes of Queretaro. Though the château has now passed into the
possession of the Italian Government it is still in charge of the aged
custodian who, as a youth, was body-servant to Maximilian. Barring the
fact that the paintings and certain pieces of furniture had been removed
to Vienna to save from injury by aerial bombardment, the interior of the
château is much as Maximilian left it when he set out with his bride,
Carlotta, the sister of the late King Leopold of the Belgians, on his
ill-fated adventure. In the study on the ground floor hangs a
photograph, still sharp and clear after the lapse of half a century, of
the members of the delegation--swarthy men in the high cravats and long
frock-coats of the period, some of them wearing the stars and sashes of
orders--who came to Miramar to offer Maximilian the Mexican crown. The
old custodian told me that he witnessed the scene and he pointed out to
me where his young master and the other actors in this, the first act of
the tragedy, stood. How little could the youthful Emperor have dreamed,
as he set sail for those distant shores, that the day would come when
the Dual Monarchy would go down in ruins, when the ancient dynasty of
the Hapsburgs would come to an inglorious end, and when the garden paths
where he and his beautiful young bride used to saunter in the moonlight
would be paced by Italian carabineers.
If you will get out the atlas and turn to the map of Italy you will
notice at the head of the Adriatic a peninsula shaped like the head of
an Indian arrow, its tip aimed toward the unprotected flank of Italy's
eastern coast. This arrow-shaped peninsula is Istria. In the western
notch of the arrowhead, toward Italy, is Trieste--terminus of the
railway to Vienna. In the opposite notch is Fiume--terminus of the
railway which runs across Croatia and Hungary to Budapest. And at the
very tip of the arrow, as though it had been ground to a deadly
sharpness, is Pola, formerly Austria's greatest naval base. Dotting the
western coast of Istria, between Trieste and Pola, are four small
towns--Parenzo, Pirano, Capodistria and Rovigno--all purely and
distinctively Italian, and, on the other side of the peninsula, the
famous resort of Abbazia, popular with wealthy Hungarians and with the
yachtsmen of all nations before the war.
Parenzo, Pirano, Capodistria and Rovigno were all outposts of the
Venetian Republic, forming an outer line of defense against the Slav
barbarians of the interior. Everything about them speaks of Venice: the
snarling Lion of St. Mark which is carved above their gates and
surmounts the marble columns in their piazzas; their old, old
churches--the one at Parenzo was built in the sixth century, being
copied after the famous basilica at Ravenna, across the Adriatic--the
interiors of many of them adorned, like that of St. Mark's in Venice,
with superb mosaics of gold and semi-precious stones; the carved lions'
heads, _bocca del leone_, for receiving secret missives; the delicate
tracery above the doors and windows of the palazzos, and all those other
architectural features so characteristic of the City of the Doges. There
is no questioning what these Istrian coast-towns were or are. They are
as Italian to-day as when, a thousand years ago, they formed a part of
Venice's far-flung skirmish line. But penetrate even a single mile into
the interior of the peninsula and you find a wholly different race from
these Latins of the littoral, a different architecture (if architecture
can be applied to square huts built of sun-dried bricks) and a different
tongue. These people are the Croats, a hardy, industrious agricultural
people, generally illiterate, at least as I found them in Istria, and
with few of the comforts and none of the culture which characterized the
Latin communities on the coast. In short, the towns of the western coast
are undeniably Italian; the rest of the peninsula is solidly Slav.
The interior of Istria consists, in the main, of a barren, monotonous
and peculiarly unlovely limestone plateau known as the Karst, a
continuation of that waterless and treeless ridge, called by Italians
the Carso, which stretches from Trieste northwestward to Goritzia and
beyond. With the exception of the Bukovica of Dalmatia and the lava-beds
of southern Utah, the Istrian Karst is the most utterly hopeless region,
from the standpoint of agriculture, that I know. It is dotted with many
small farmsteads, it is true, but one marvels at the courage and
patience which their peasant owners displayed in their unequal struggle
with Nature. The rocky surface is covered with a stunted,
discouraged-looking vegetation which reminded me of that clothing the
flanks of the mountains in the vicinity of the Roosevelt Dam, in
Arizona, and here and there are vast rolling moors, uninhabited by man
or animal, as desolate, mysterious and repelling as that depicted by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle in _The Hound of the Baskervilles_. The Karst, like
the Carso, is dotted with curious depressions called _dolinas_, some of
them as much as 100 feet in depth, the floors of which, varying in
extent from a few square yards to several acres, are covered with soil
which is as rich as the surface of the surrounding plateau is worthless.
Because of the fertility of these singular depressions, and their
immunity from the cold winds which in winter sweep the surface of the
Karst, they are utilized by the peasants for growing fruits, vegetables
and, in some cases, small patches of grain, being, in effect, sunken
gardens provided by Nature as though to recompense the Istrians, in some
measure, for their discouraging struggle for existence.
Just behind the very tip of the peninsula, on the edge of a superb
natural harbor, the entrance to which is masked by the Brioni Islands,
is the great naval base of Pola, from the shelter of whose
fortifications and mined approaches the Austrian fleet was able to
terrorize the defenseless towns along Italy's unprotected eastern
seaboard and to menace the commerce of the northern Adriatic. Pola Is a
strange mélange of the ancient and the modern, for from the topmost
tiers of the great Roman Arena--scarcely less imposing than the Coliseum
at Rome--we looked down upon a harbor dotted with the fighting monsters
of the Italian navy, while all day long Italian seaplanes swooped and
circled over the splendid arch, erected by a Roman emperor in the dim
dawn of European history, to commemorate his triumph over the
barbarians.
It is just such anomalies as these that make almost impossible the
solution, on a basis of strict justice to the inhabitants, of the
Adriatic problem. Here you see a city that, in history, in population,
in language, is as characteristically Italian as though it were under
the shadow of the Apennines, yet encircling that city is a countryside
whose inhabitants are wholly Slav, who are intensely hostile to Italian
institutions, and many of whom have no knowledge whatsoever of the
Italian tongue. The Italians claim that Istria should be theirs because
of the undoubted Latin character of the towns along its coasts, because
their Roman and Venetian ancestors established their outposts here long
centuries ago, because the only culture that the region possesses is
Italian, and, above all else, because its possession is essential to the
safety of Italy herself. The Slavs, on the other hand, lay claim to
Istria on the ground that its first inhabitants, whether barbarians or
not, were Slavs, that the Italians who settled on its shores were but
filibusters and adventurers, and that its inhabitants, by blood, by
language, and by sentiment, are overwhelmingly Slav to-day. The only
thing on which both races agree is that the peninsula should not be
divided. It was no easy problem, you see, which the peace-makers were
expected to solve with strict justice for all. If my memory serves me
right, King Solomon was once called upon by two mothers to settle a
somewhat similar dispute, though in that case it was a child instead of
a country whose ownership was in question. So, though both Latins and
Slavs may continue to assert their rights to the peninsula in its
entirety, I imagine that the Istrian problem will eventually be settled
by the judgment of Solomon.