Then, by one of the most vivid, if pathetic, of the flashes as of
lightning that have shown us the drama of the past 365 days, we saw the
actual war come to Italy. It came in a profoundly impressive form--the
dead body of young Bruno Garibaldi, grandson of the Liberator. Fighting
for France, Bruno had fallen in a gallant charge at the front, and his
brother, who was by his side, had carried his body out of the trenches
and brought it home. We who know Rome do not need to be told how it
was received there. We can see the dense mass of uncovered heads in the
Piazza delle Terme, stretching from the doors of the railway station to
the bronze fountain at the top of the Via Nazionale, and we can hear the
deep swell of the Garibaldian hymn, which comes like a challenge as
well as a moan from 50,000 throats. Not for the first time was a dead
Garibaldi being borne through the streets of Rome, and those of us who
remembered the earlier day knew well that with the body of this Italian
boy the war had entered Italy.
Then, at a crisis in Italy’s internal government, our enemy, having
failed to buy, bribe, or corrupt Italy, began to threaten her. Out of
the delirium of his intoxicated conscience, which no longer shrank from
crime, he told Italy that if she dared to break her neutrality her
fate should be as the fate of Belgium. That frightened some of us for
a moment. We thought of Venice, of Florence, of Assisi, of Subiaco, of
Naples, and of Rome, and, remembering the methods by which Germany was
beating and bludgeoning her way through the war, our hearts trembled
and thrilled at a dreadful vision of the lovely and beloved Italian
land under the heel of a ruthless aggressor--of the destruction of the
history of Christendom as it had been written by great artists on canvas
and by great architects in stone through the long calendar of nearly two
thousand years. But we also thought of Savoy, of Palestro, of Cas-ale,
of Caprera, and of “Roma o morte,” and told ourselves that, come what
might, victory or defeat, the children of Victor Emmanuel III would
never allow themselves to buy the ease and safety of their bodies by the
corruption and degradation of their souls.