THE SAVING OF ITALY
“Many hot inroads
They make into Italy.”
_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I, Sc. iv.
AT the opening of the year 1917 the general situation of the World-war
in Europe offered fair promise for the cause of the Entente Allies. On
the Western front the immense latent resources of the British Empire
were now coming effectively into play and were creating an opportunity
for a really serious and formidable offensive. Tremendously reinforced
in men and munitions through the powers of the Munitions and Military
Service Acts, our gigantic armies inspired every observer with
immeasurable hopes of victory. The soldiers themselves were full of that
and fresh sanguine spirit in which the valour of the British race has
always expressed itself. France was now recovering from the grievous
losses of men endured in the first two years of the war; and the new
Generals, men of the younger school like Nivelle and Pétain, were
looking forward with no less confidence than ourselves to the results of
a new Western aggressive on a larger and more effective scale.
But the Western front was only a portion of that far-flung line of
embattled hosts who were holding back the great Teutonic armies from
desolating the fairest regions of Western and Southern Europe. Far away
across the snowy barriers of the Alps and beyond the interval of neutral
Switzerland the Italian armies lay in caves and trenches stretched from
the eastern frontier of the Swiss Canton Ticino right across the eastern
Alps down to the shores of the Adriatic Sea. On the west of this
hazardous line the Italians still held the Austrian armies to the edges
of the main Alpine ridge. On the east they had pressed them in a series
of heroic onslaughts through the mountains and across the deep valley of
the rushing Isonzo. They had captured the high and coveted city of
Gorizia, and they were threatening the suburbs of Trieste. They seemed
on the eve of momentous conquests. But the very achievements of their
heroic valour, so splendid to the outward eye, concealed a perilous and
precarious military position.
“No one,” said Mr. Lloyd George later on at Paris, “can look at these
frontier mountains without a thrill of respect for the gallantry that
has stormed them in face of the entrenched legions of Austria.”
Certainly no one who, like the present writer, has escaladed those peaks
in days of peace. There are no greater episodes in this war than those
of that titanic, gigantesque conflict amid the mighty jagged precipices
and the deep gloomy abysses of the Eastern Alps.[107]
But the greater the effort, the greater the exhaustion. It is written
large in letters of fire and blood across the history of the World-war
that any excess of human loss is in itself one of the gravest of
military perils. Italy poured out her blood without stint. Alone among
the Allied nations she possessed one organised party—the official
Socialists—genuinely opposed to the war. Taking advantage of this
weakness, the Germans had made a special effort to weaken her home
front. The great industrial centres of the north of Italy—Turin and
Milan—had been the objective of perhaps the most sustained effort of
German peace propaganda. The missionaries of this strange crusade had
crossed the Alps by every mountain path and had mixed themselves among
the armies, scattering their poisoned leaflets among the tired troops.
Thus every preparation had been made for an easier assault. Like
Hannibal when he crossed the Alps in a greater campaign, they had melted
the rocks with vinegar.
The military position, indeed, was not so strong as it looked. The right
wing of the Italian army was lunging forward victoriously, while the
centre and left were still entangled in the mountains. These things were
not clear to observers in the west of Europe; but there were English
visitors with the Italian armies who became uneasily aware of them.
In the absence of any unified control it was impossible to take any
effective steps to avert the coming danger. The British military chiefs
had their views about the position of the Italian army; many Italians
themselves had their views. But though these views were platonically
interchanged there was no machinery by which they could be compared and
collated, or produce any real effect on the course of the campaign. In
other words, there was no central power of vision or action—no active
organism that was responsible for the war as a whole, right from the
North Sea to the Adriatic. As Mr. Lloyd George afterwards pointed out in
the House of Commons, “there was a sort of feeling that that front was
not our business.”[108]
This did not, indeed, prevent Mr. Lloyd George from using such
opportunities as presented themselves for urging his views. In January
of that year (1917) there was an important Conference at Rome between
the Allied Premiers and Generals; and at that Conference the whole
European situation was surveyed in one of the most candid and exhaustive
discussions that had taken place up to that time. These conversations
extended over the whole ground, from the political relations between
Italy and her neighbouring Allies to the question of the proper strategy
for the Italian frontier. Mr. Lloyd George boldly placed before that
Conference his own views as to the proper campaign to be adopted in the
war between Italy and Austria. He pointed out the grave dangers to which
Italy was exposed; and his own characteristic remedy was a reinforced
aggressive across the Eastern Alps into the plains of Austria. That
proposal afterwards tentatively put forward in his Paris speech received
much foolish ridicule from English critics. If those critics would
follow the advice of the late Lord Salisbury, and study large maps, they
would observe that the most vulnerable flank of the Central Powers was
to be found precisely through that very Alpine door north of Trieste
round which the battle was then raging. While Berlin is remote from the
Teutonic frontiers, Vienna is dangerously exposed to attack from the
south and east, and every student of European wars knows that the great
captains of war, like Napoleon, have always availed themselves of that
fact.
This proposal was a revival in a more modest form of Mr. Lloyd George’s
earlier scheme for seeking a military decision on the Eastern front; and
subsequently in his Paris speech he stoutly maintained that if there had
been in January 1917 a proper unified machinery for military debate and
execution the history of that year (1917) might have been
different.[109]
But at that time both the Premiers of the Allied nations and the
Generals of the Allied armies were fighting the war in water-tight
compartments. It was not yet realised that the Italian front was
actually a back door to the West. It required more startling events to
convince the Allies that if either side broke through the line at any
point, East or West, the whole line would be in peril. Until those
events occurred there was not enough political or military driving power
behind any proposal for unified control.
So throughout those months from August to October 1917 the military
control was practically left to each set of military chiefs in his own
section of the war. The communications and consultations between them
were casual and uncertain; and naturally each set played for their own
hand. For, other things being equal, the first duty of a soldier is the
care of his own army. In our country it seemed the wisest course for the
War Cabinet to leave all important military decisions to the military
chiefs. The previous Government, indeed, had fortified the Generals with
an Order in Council which practically gave them strategic control. It
was considered best for the time being to fall in with that arrangement.
There was, indeed, no alternative. “Never,” as Mr. Lloyd George said
afterwards in the House of Commons, “never in the whole history of war
in this country have soldiers got more consistent and more substantial
backing from politicians than they have had this year (1917). . . . No
soldiers in any war have had their strategical dispositions less
interfered with by politicians. There has not been a single battalion,
or a single gun, moved this year except with the advice of the General
Staff—not one. There has not been a single attack ordered in any part
of the battle-field by British troops except on the advice of the
General Staff—not one. There has not been a single attack not ordered.
The whole campaign of the year has been the result of the advice of
soldiers.”
If the sole control of war by military authority was to be put to a
decisive test, the campaign of 1917 supplied a crucial instance.
The vital need revealed by that test on the Eastern front was unity of
control. But the same need was even earlier revealed on the West also.
There the year opened with smiling auspices. The retreat of the Germans
from the Somme Valley and the final abandonment of the Verdun attack
seemed to give the greatest hope for a successful Allied move forward
against the foe. As at Waterloo, the moment seemed to have come to cry
“Up Guards and at them!” Nor can it be said that there was any
hesitation or lack of utmost heroism in the attack when it was
delivered. On the contrary those attacks of 1917 displayed British and
French valour at their highest point. But the want of co-operative
effort and unified control led to a great reduction of war profits in
the final balance-sheet of the year’s efforts.
Sir Douglas Haig has frankly taken the world into his confidence as to
the incidents of divided counsel. In his published despatches on those
great events he has spoken freely. Sir Douglas Haig himself, a discreet
and moderate man, had entertained the highest hopes, and had even gone
so far as to express them through public channels. He was sanguine of a
complete break-through. General Nivelle, the French Commander-in-Chief,
was almost equally hopeful. It is no small gain to great armies when
their chieftains start out with such high expectations.
Whether those expectations would have been fulfilled if the efforts of
the British and French armies had been backed by unified control it is
now impossible to say. But it is quite certain that the want of unity
placed every obstacle in the way of victory. There were, indeed, shadows
of control—scattered, intermittent efforts to bring the great armies
into some form of combined action. But these efforts lacked authority or
decision. There was a military conference of Allied Generals at the end
of 1916; there was even an agreement to make a combined attack in
Flanders. But the decisions of that conference do not seem to have
carried with them any permanent effect on the Allied war councils.
Probably the swift movement of events made a mockery of such long-laid
schemes. At any rate, we have the fact that General Nivelle made a
separate attack in Champagne in the spring of the year, with the result
that our armies had to delay their advance until that great effort was
brought to a decision.
General Nivelle aimed at a great mark. He, too, aspired to break the
German lines. He succeeded in part, but at a cost of life too great for
France at that moment. General Nivelle had to pay the price. He ceased
to be Commander-in-Chief of the French armies. His place was taken by
General Pétain, with the understanding that he should adopt a less
aggressive policy. The result was that the British attack was delayed,
and when it took place was undertaken alone. It achieved great objects,
but not so great as had been hoped. The August fighting round Lens—the
September onslaughts of Haig’s armies east and north of Ypres, the
assault of Passchendaele—all these battles displayed the valour of
British, Canadian, and Australian troops at their highest point.
But there was no break-through. At the critical moment the British
armies were checked by the mud and rain of the Flanders autumn. Heroism
was literally choked in slime. The cold and gloom of winter descended on
those splendid British stormers before their great task could be
achieved.
Such were the fruits of divided control.
It was fated that there should blaze out a sign in the heavens even more
startlingly blood-red before the forces of national and army
particularism could be safely and successfully defied.
On October 24th (1917) the Italian eastern front was suddenly shaken by
a hammer-blow from the German central command. A new army under the
redoubtable Mackensen, secretly assembled behind the screen of the
mountain ridges, took over the attack from the nerveless Austrians.[110]
This German force made a sudden assault under cover of mist against a
weak point in the Italian line. They attacked and penetrated the Second
Italian Army in the neighbourhood of Tolmino on the Upper Isonzo. Only
one Italian regiment gave way, probably weakened by enemy influences.
But at such a critical point one was enough. It was like a small hole in
a great dyke. The flood of German invasion swept in, and soon began to
submerge the plain of Venetia. During the following week the
Austro-German armies advanced by forced marches from the north-east and
captured Cividale and Udine. The heroic Third Italian Army, conquerors
of Gorizia, held on to the line of the Isonzo for a time. But they were
taken in the rear, and it was necessary to command a retreat. Those
brave regiments—the Alpini and the Bersaglieri—suddenly fell back,
many of them preferring annihilation to retirement. The whole host
rallied on the line of the Tagliamento; but in the terrible confusion of
the great surprise the Italians lost 300,000 men and 2,000 guns.
Italy was now faced with a fearful peril. It was already clear that the
line of the Tagliamento could not be held; it was uncertain whether any
other line could be held. For if the Germans and Austrians could attain
mastery of the Alps to the north every one of those river lines of
Venetia would be outflanked; the whole northern plain of Italy would be
invaded; the exquisite prize of Venice and the great industrial cities
of Turin and Milan would fall as victims to the spear of the enemy.
Southern Italy would be cut off from the Western Allies; and, indeed,
the whole peninsula would be in danger, and with it our own naval hold
on the Mediterranean Sea. None of the Western Allies could be
indifferent to the threat of such calamities.
Mr. Lloyd George determined in a moment that Britain could not stand by
indifferent. He resolved at once that he would not be responsible for a
repetition of the calamities which had overwhelmed Serbia and Rumania.
The year 1917 should not close as 1915 and 1916 had closed—with the
head of a kingdom on a charger presented to the German Herod.
But it was necessary to act instantly. There was not a moment to be
lost. Mr. Lloyd George decided to go to Italy; and he resolved to go
armed with new powers of central control for the conduct of the war. He
had made up his mind that it was at last necessary to relieve the
Generals of their divided responsibilities by establishing a definite
organism of central control.
Before starting for Italy he prepared and passed through the British
Cabinet a document drawing up in a series of resolutions the
constitution of a new central council for the conduct of the war. With
that in his pocket he started to meet the Allied Premiers and Generals
at the little seaside town of Rapallo, a gem to the east of Genoa on the
Italian Riviera.
At that meeting he passed the resolutions contained in that document
almost without an alteration, so ready were the French and Italians now
to consent to any scheme for increasing the power of central
decision.[111]
That was the first step in setting up the Versailles Council.
From Rapallo Mr. Lloyd George proceeded to Turin and Milan, everywhere
encouraging the Italians and promising them speedy aid. He went as far
as Peschiera, where he met the young Italian King, whose heroic devotion
to his armies has rightly earned him the fervent love of true Italy. Mr.
Lloyd George discussed fully with him all the details of the assistance
that should be sent. Then with all speed he proceeded to organise and
expedite the arrival of British and French reinforcements. Within a few
days French and British infantry and artillery were speeding through the
Monte Cenis tunnel to Italy.
For the moment, indeed, there was no need to bring the new powers of the
Rapallo Conference into force. It was, at any rate, clear to every mind
at this crisis that the whole front was one. It was apparent to any one
who glanced at the map of Europe that the conquest of Italy by Germany
would shake the whole Allied combination. It was obvious to the French,
at any rate, that it might bring Germany to the back door of France.
Faced with such possibilities, British and French Generals vied with one
another in helping Italy. What divisions could be spared from the
Western front were spared. The young men of Western Europe marched
through the vineyards and maize-fields of those beautiful plains of
Northern Italy in the waning autumn to the help of the Italian armies
now pressed back to the Piave. The coming of this help put new heart
into the Italians. As our British boys advanced through the little white
villages between Milan and the front they were greeted as crusaders.
They were met by cascades of flowers from the joyful villagers, now
recovering from the terror of a cruel invasion. For it was known by the
Italians that the Germans were sending even Turkish and Bulgarian
soldiery to the invasion of the fair Italian provinces.
So sustained and fortified—with such a sense of comradeship behind and
beside them—the Italian regiments rallied. Along the line of the Piave
they put up that splendid resistance which redeemed the name of Italy
and inspired their people with a new strength and unity. To the north,
among the mountains, they were helped by French and English battalions,
thus forging between the peoples of Italy and Western Europe new links
imperishable and without price.
Certainly so far the principle of unified control was justified by its
results.
-----
[107] Signor Philippo Philippi has brought from this phase of the war a
wonderful photographic record which will make its glories lasting.
[108] November 20th, 1917. In the same speech Mr. Lloyd George
delicately expressed the fact that we were aware of the Italian peril
but unable to find any effective expression for our views.
[109] “I should like to be able to read to you the statement submitted
to the Conference in Rome in January (1917) about the perils and
possibilities of the Italian front this year, so that you might judge it
in the light of subsequent events. I feel confident that nothing could
more convincingly demonstrate the opportunities which the Allies have
lost through lack of combined thought and action” (November 12th, 1917).
[110] Ludendorff’s _War Memories_, Vol. II, pp. 497-99. He reveals that
the attack was undertaken to prevent the collapse of Austria Hungary.
[111] “In substance it was the document prepared here, discussed line by
line in the Cabinet, and which I had in my pocket after the last Cabinet
meeting which was held a few hours before I left” (November 20th, 1917.
Mr. Lloyd George’s speech in the House of Commons).