The Triple Alliance was a secret document, but everybody knew that it
required Italy to join with Austria and Germany in the event of their
being compelled to engage in a defensive war. Therefore the first
question for Italy was whether the war declared by Austria against
Serbia and by Germany against Belgium, although apparently aggressive,
was in reality defensive. There was a further question for Italy--what
would happen to her if she decided against her Allies? She did decide
against them, thereby giving the lie direct to the Harnacks, Hauptmanns,
Ballins, and von Bülows who had been telling the neutral nations that
the war had been forced upon Germany. By all the laws of nations Germany
and Austria ought then, if they had honestly believed their own story,
to have declared war on Italy. They preferred to wheedle her, to try to
buy her, bribe her, corrupt her, body and soul.
They failed. After flooding the peninsula with lying literature,
directed chiefly against ourselves, Germany sent back to the Italian
capital its most astute statesman, who was married to a much-admired
Italian woman. It was all in vain. Italy knew her own mind and had made
reckoning with her own heart. She had begun with contempt for the nation
which could invade Serbia, under the pretence of avenging the murder
of the Archduke Ferdinand, and with loathing for the other nation which
could violate Belgium after it had sworn to protect her, and now she
went on to hatred and horror of the perpetrators of the outrages in
Liège, in Louvain, and in Rheims, that were scorching men’s eyes in the
name of war.
Still, Italy, although separating herself from her former allies, was
not yet taking sides against them. Why? If their war was an aggressive
and unjustifiable one, why could not Italy say so at once with her sword
as well as her pen? There was a period of uncertainty, impatience, even
of misunderstanding among her own people. Whispers reached them that
their King had said (he never had) that he had given his “kingly word”
for it that if Italy could not fight with her former friends she should
not fight against them. This was a blow to Italian aspirations, for
Victor Emmanuel III is the best-beloved man in Italy, the father of his
people, whose heads would bow before his will even though their hearts
were torn.
Then came negotiations with Austria about the restoration of provinces
which had once belonged to Italy and were still inhabited by Italians.
It looked like paltering and peddling, like sale and barter. The people
were losing patience; they thought time was being wasted. Beyond the
Alps men were dying for liberty in a mighty struggle against the worst
tyranny that had ever threatened the world, yet Italy was doing nothing.
But the people did not know all. Even then their country was already
at war within the limits of her own frontier--silently in her tailors’
workshops, where uniforms were being sewn for the immense army she was
soon to call into the field, audibly in the forges of Milan and Terni,
where vast quantities of munitions were being hammered out for a long
campaign.