and ethnological anomaly: it is a pistol held at the head of Italy.
Glance once more at the map, if you please, and you will see what I
mean. The Trentino is, you will note, nothing but a prolongation of
the valleys of Lombardy and Venetia. Held by Austria, it is like a
great intrenched camp in the heart of northern Italy, menacing the
valley of the Po, which is one of the kingdom's most vital arteries,
and the link between her richest and most productive cities. From the
Trentino, with its ring of forts, Austria can always threaten and
invade her neighbor. She lies in the mountains, with the plains
beneath her. She can always sweep down into the plains, but the
Italians cannot seriously invade the mountains, since, even were they
able to force the strongly defended passes, they would only find a
maze of other mountains beyond. When, in the summer of 1916, the
Archduke Frederick launched his great offensive from the Trentino,
supported by a shattering artillery, he came perilously near--much
nearer, indeed, than the world was permitted to know--to cutting the
main east-and-west line of communications, which would have resulted
in isolating the Italian armies operating on the Isonzo.
The Trentino is dominated by the army. Its administration is as
essentially military in character as that of Gibraltar. It is, to all
intents and purposes, one vast camp, commanded by thirty-five forts,
gridironed with inaccessible military highways, and overrun with
soldiery. Economic expansion has been systematically discouraged. The
waterfalls of the Trentino could, it is estimated, develop 250,000
horse-power, but the province has not benefited by this energy, for
the regions to the north are already supplied, and the military
authorities have not permitted its transmission to the manufacturing
towns of Lombardy and Venetia, where it is needed. Neither roads nor
railways have been built save for strategic purposes, and, as a
result, the peasants have virtually no outlets for their produce. In
fact, it has been the consistent policy of the Austrian Government to
completely isolate the Trentino from Italy. In pursuance of this
policy, all telephone and telegraph communications and many sorely
needed railway connections with the other side of the frontier have
been prohibited. Though the renting of their mountain pastures had
always been the peasants' chief source of income, the military
authorities issued orders, long before this war began, that Italian
herdsmen could no longer drive their cattle across the border to
graze, the prohibition being based on the ground that the herdsmen
were really Italian army officers in disguise. In recent years the
fear of Italian spies has become with the Austrian military
authorities almost an insane obsession. Innocent tourists, engineers,
and commercial travellers were arrested by the score on the charge of
espionage. The mere fact of being an Italian was in itself ground for
suspicion. Compared with the attitude of the Austrian Government
toward its Italian subjects in the Trentino, the treatment accorded by
the Boers to the British residents of the Transvaal was considerate
and kind. Thus there arose in the Trentino, as in all Austrian
provinces inhabited by Italians, a strange, unhealthy atmosphere of
suspicion, of secrecy, and of fear. This atmosphere became so
pronounced in recent years that it was sensed even by passing
tourists, who felt as though they were in a besieged city, surrounded
by secret agents and spies.
But, oppressive and tyrannical as are Austria's methods in the
Trentino, the final expression of her anti-Italian policy is to be
found in the Adriatic provinces. Here lie Austria's chief
interests--the sea and commerce. Here, therefore, is to be found an
even deeper fear of Italianism, and here still sterner methods are
employed to stamp it out. The government of Trieste is, in fact,
organized for that very purpose--witness the persecutions to which the
citizens of Italian descent are subjected by the police, the countless
political imprisonments, the systematic hostility to Italian schools
in contrast to the Government's generosity toward German and Slovene
institutions, and the State assistance given to Czech, Croatian, and
Slovene banks for the purpose of taking the trade of the city out of
Italian hands. Italians are excluded from all municipal employments,
from the postal service, the railways, and the State industries. Nor
does the official persecution end there. The presentation of many of
the old Italian operas is forbidden. The singing of Garibaldi's Hymn
leads to jail. Every year thousands of Italian papers are
confiscated. Until the war began hundreds of Italians were expelled
annually by the police, to be replaced (according to the official
instructions of 1912) "by more loyal and more useful elements."
Though for more than five centuries Trieste has belonged to the House
of Hapsburg, the city is as Italian as though it had always been ruled
from Rome. There is nothing in Trieste, save only the uniforms of the
military and the _K.K._ on the doors of the Government offices, to
remind one of Austrian rule. The language, the customs, the
architecture, the names over the shop-doors, the faces of the
people--everything is characteristically Italian. Outside of Trieste
the zones of nationality are clearly divided: to the west, on the
coast, dwell the Italians; in the mountainous interior to the eastward
are the Slavs. But in Istria, that arrowhead-shaped peninsula at the
head of the Adriatic, the population is almost solidly Italian. Though
alternately bribed and bullied, cajoled and coerced, there persists,
both among the simple peasants of the Trentino and Istria and the
hard-headed business men of Trieste, a most sentimental and
inextinguishable attachment for the Italian motherland. There is,
indeed, something approaching the sublime in the fascination which
Italy exercises across the centuries on these exiled sons of hers.
The arguments adduced by Italy for the acquisition of Dalmatia are by
no means as sound ethnographically as her claims to the Trentino and
Trieste. Though the apostles of expansion assert that ten per cent of
the population of Dalmatia is Italian, this is an exaggeration, the
most reliable authorities agreeing that the Italian element does not
exceed three or four per cent. But this is not saying that Dalmatia is
not, in spirit, in language, in traditions, Italian. Cruise along its
shores, talk to its people, view the architecture of Ragusa, of Zara,
of Spalato, and you will not need to be reminded that Dalmatia was
Venetian until, little more than a century ago, Napoleon handed it
over to Austria at the peace of Campo Formio in return for the
recognition of his two made-to-order states, the Cis-Alpine and
Ligurian Republics.
It is safe to say that the war will produce no more delicate problem
than that of Dalmatia, which, as I have already shown, can never be
settled on purely racial lines. Those who have studied the subject
agree that to completely shut off Austria-Hungary from the sea would
be a proceeding of grave unwisdom and one which would be certain to
sow the seed for future wars. This is, I believe, the view taken by
most deep-thinking Italians. The Italianization of the Adriatic's
eastern seaboard would result, moreover, in raising a barrier against
the legitimate expansion of the Balkan Slavs and would end the Serbian
dream of an outlet to the sea. But the statesmen who are shaping
Italy's policies are, I am convinced, too sensible and too far-seeing
to commit so grave a blunder. Were I to hazard a prophecy--and
prophesying is always a poor business--I should say that, no matter
how conclusive a victory the Allies may achieve, neither
Austria-Hungary nor Serbia will be wholly cut off from the salt water.
Events in the less remote theatres of war have prevented the Italian
occupation of Albania from attracting the attention it deserves. The
operations in that region have, moreover, been shrouded in mystery;
foreigners desiring to visit Albania have met with polite but firm
refusals; the published reports of the progress of the Albanian
expedition--which, by the way, is a much larger force than is
generally supposed--have been meagre and unsatisfying. The Italians
figure, I fancy, on making their occupation as extensive and as solid
as possible before the Albanian question comes up for international
discussion.
If Italy's ambitions in Dalmatia bring her into collision with the
Slavs, her plans for expansion in Albania are bound to arouse the
hostility of the Greeks. The Italian troops at Argyocastro are
occupying territory which Greece looks on as distinctly within her
sphere of influence, and they menace Janina itself. Though Italy has
intimated, I believe, that her occupation of Albania is not to be
regarded as permanent, she is most certainly on the eastern shore of
the Adriatic to stay, for her commercial and political interests will
not permit her to have a Haiti or a Mexico at her front door. So I
rather fancy that, when the peacemakers deal out the cards upon the
green-topped table, Albania will become Italian in name, if not in
fact, under a control similar to that which the French exercise in
Morocco or the British in Egypt. And it will be quite natural, for
there is in the Albanians a strong streak of Italian.
The settlement of this trans-Adriatic problem is going to require the
most cautious and delicate handling. How far will Italy be permitted
to go? How far may Serbia come? Shall Austria be cut off from the sea?
Is Hungary to become an independent kingdom? Is Montenegro to
disappear? What is Greece to get? The only one of these questions that
can be answered with any certainty is the last. Greece, as the result
of her shifty and even treacherous attitude, will get very little
consideration. On the decision of these questions hangs the future of
the Balkan peoples. Though their final settlement must, of course, be
deferred until the coming of peace, some regard will have to be paid,
after all, to actual occupancies and accomplished facts. That is why
Italy is making her position in Albania so solid that she cannot
readily be ousted. And perhaps it is well that she is. Europe will owe
a debt of gratitude to the Italians if they can bring law and order to
Albania, which has never had a speaking acquaintance with either of
them.
Nor do Italian ambitions end with the domination of the eastern shore
of the Adriatic. With the destruction, or at least the disablement, of
the Austrian Empire, Italy dreams of bringing within her political and
commercial sphere of influence a considerable portion of the Balkan
Peninsula, from which she is separated by only forty-seven miles of
salt water. But that is only the beginning of her vision of
commercial greatness. Look at the map and you will see that with its
continuation, the island of Sicily, Italy forms a great wharf which
reaches out into the Mediterranean, nearly to the shores of Africa.
Her peculiarly fortunate geographical position enables her, therefore,
to offer the shortest route from Western and Central Europe to North
Africa, the Levant, and the Farther East. It has been rumored, though
with what truth I cannot say, that the Allies have agreed, in the
event that they are completely victorious, to a rectification of the
Tunisian and Egyptian frontiers, thus materially improving Italy's
position in Libya, as the colony of Tripolitania is now known. It is
also generally understood that, should the dismemberment of Asiatic
Turkey be decided upon, the city of Smyrna, with its splendid harbor
and profitable commerce, as well as a slice of the hinterland, will
fall to Italy's portion. With her flag thus firmly planted on the
coasts of three continents, with her most dangerous rival finally
disposed of, with the splendid industrial organization, born of the
war, speeded up to its highest efficiency, and with vast new markets
in Africa, in Asia, in the Balkans opened to her products, Italy
dreams of wresting from France and England the overlordship of the
Middle Sea.
It would be useless to deny that an unfavorable impression was created
in the United States by the fact that Italy, in entering the war,
turned against her former allies. Her enemies have charged that she
dickered with both the Entente and the Central Powers, and only joined
the former because they made her the most tempting offer. That she did
dicker with Austria is but the unvarnished truth--and of that chapter
of Italian history the less said the better--but I am convinced that
she finally entered the war, not because she had been bribed by
promises of territorial concessions, but because the national
conscience demanded that she join the forces of civilization in their
struggle against barbarism. Suppose that I sketch for you, in brief,
bold outline, the chain of historic events which occurred during the
ten months between the presentation to Serbia of the Austrian
ultimatum and Italy's declaration of war on Austria. Then you will be
able to form your own opinion.
On the evening of July 23, 1914, Austria handed her note to Serbia. It
demanded in overbearing and insulting terms that Serbia should place
under Austrian control her schools, her law-courts, her police, in
fact her whole internal administration. The little kingdom was given
forty-eight hours in which to consider her answer. In other words, she
was called upon, within the space of two days, to sacrifice her
national independence. At six o'clock on the evening of July 25 the
time limit allowed by the Austrian ultimatum expired. Half an hour
later the Austrian Minister and his staff left Belgrade.
Now Article VII of the Treaty of Alliance between Italy, Austria, and
Germany provided that in the event of any change in the _status quo_
of the Balkan Peninsula which would entail a temporary or permanent
occupation, Austria and Italy bound themselves to work in mutual
accord on the basis of reciprocal compensation for any advantage,
territorial or otherwise, obtained by either of the contracting
Powers. Here is the text of the Article. Read it for yourself:
Austria-Hungary and Italy, who aim exclusively at the maintenance
of the _status quo_ in the East, bind themselves to employ their
influence to prevent every territorial change which may be
detrimental to one or other of the contracting Powers. They will
give each other all explanations necessary for the elucidation of
their respective intentions as well as those of the other Powers.
If, however, in the course of events the maintenance of the
_status quo_ in the Balkans and on the Ottoman coasts and in the
islands of the Adriatic and the Ægean Seas should become
impossible, and if, either in consequence of the acts of a third
Power or of other causes, Austria and Italy should be compelled to
change the _status quo_ by a temporary or permanent occupation,
such occupation shall only take place after previous agreement
between the two Powers, based on the principle of a reciprocal
arrangement for all the advantages, territorial or other, which
one of them may secure outside the _status quo_, and in such a
manner as to satisfy all the legitimate claims of both parties.
Nothing could be plainer than that Austria-Hungary, by forcing war
upon Serbia, planned to change the _status quo_ in the Near East. Yet
she had not taken the trouble to give Italy any explanation of her
intentions, nor had she said anything about giving her ally reciprocal
compensation as provided for in the treaty. Three days after the
memorable 23d of July, therefore, Italy intimated to the Vienna
Government that her idea of adequate compensation would be the cession
of those Austrian provinces inhabited by Italians. In other words, she
insisted that, if Austria was to extend her borders below the Danube
by an occupation of Serbia, as was obviously her intention, thus
upsetting the balance of power in the Balkans, Italy expected to
receive as compensation the Trentino and Trieste, which, though under
Austrian rule, are Italian in sentiment and population. Otherwise, she
added, the Triple Alliance would be broken. On the 3d of August,
having received no satisfactory reply from Austria, Italy declared her
neutrality. In so doing, however, she made it quite clear that she in
no way admitted Austria's right to a free hand in the Adriatic or the
Balkan Peninsula--regions which Italy has long regarded as within her
own sphere of influence.
Early in the winter of 1914 Prince von Bülow, one of the most suave
and experienced German diplomats, arrived in Rome on a special mission
from Berlin. In his first interview with the Italian Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Baron Sonnino, he frankly acknowledged Italy's right
to territorial compensation under the terms of Article VII of the
Triple Alliance. There is no doubt that Germany, recognizing the
danger of flouting Italy, brought strong pressure to bear on Austria
to surrender at least a portion of the regions in question. Austria,
however, bluntly refused to heed either Italy's demands or Germany's
suggestions. She refused even to discuss the question of ceding any
part of her Italian provinces. She attempted, indeed, to reverse the
situation by claiming compensation from Italy for the occupation of
the Dodecannesus and Vallona. The Dodecannesus was held as a pledge of
Turkish good faith, while the occupation of Vallona was indispensable
for the protection of Italian interests in Albania, where anarchy
reigned, and where much the same conditions prevailed which existed in
Mexico at the time of the American occupation of Vera Cruz.
The discussions might well have dragged on indefinitely, but late in
March, 1915, Austria, goaded by her ally into a more conciliatory
attitude, reluctantly consented to make concrete proposals. She
offered to Italy the southern half of the Trentino, but mentioned no
definite boundaries, and added that the bargain could not be carried
into effect until peace had been concluded. In return she claimed from
Italy heavy financial contributions to the National Debt and to the
provincial and communal loans, also full indemnity for all investments
made in the ceded territory, for all ecclesiastical property and
entailed estates, and for the pensions of State officials. To assign
even an approximate value to such concessions would entail a
prolonged delay--a fact of which Austria was perfectly aware.
Italy responded to the Austrian advances by presenting her
counter-claims, and for more than a month the negotiations pursued a
difficult and tedious course. It must be admitted that, everything
considered, Italy's claims were not particularly exorbitant. She
claimed (1) a more extended and more easily defendable frontier in the
Trentino, but she refrained from demanding the cession of the entire
region lying south of the Brenner, as she would have been justified in
doing from a strategic point of view; (2) a new boundary on the Isonzo
which would give her possession of the towns of Gradisca and Gorizia
(she has since taken them by arms); (3) the cession of certain islands
of the Curzolari group; (4) the withdrawal of Austrian pretensions in
Albania and the acknowledgement of Italy's right to occupy the
Dodecannesus and Vallona; (5) the formation of the city of Trieste,
together with the adjacent judicial districts of Priano and Capo
d'Istria, into an autonomous State, independent of both Italy and
Austria. By such an arrangement Austria would have retained nearly the
whole of the Istrian Peninsula, the cities of Pola and Fiume, the
entire Dalmatian coast, and the majority of the Dalmatian Islands. But
she refused to even consider Italy's proposed changes in the Adriatic,
or to do more than slightly increase her offer in the Trentino. Italy
therefore broke off negotiations, and on May 4, 1915, the alliance
with Austria was denounced.
Prince von Bülow was now confronted with the complete failure of his
mission of keeping Italy yoked to Austria and Germany. No one realized
better than this suave and astute diplomatist that the bonds which
still held together the three nations were about to break. He next
endeavored, by methods verging on the unscrupulous, to create distrust
of the Italian Government among the Italian people. A member of the
Reichstag circulated stealthily among the deputies and journalists,
flattering each in turn with the assumption that he alone was the man
of the moment, and offering him, in the names of Germany and Austria,
new concessions which had not been communicated to the Italian
Cabinet. It was back-stairs diplomacy in its shadiest and most
questionable form. The concessions thus unofficially promised
consisted of the offer of a new frontier in the Trentino, and for
Trieste an administrative but not a political autonomy. The Adriatic,
it seems, was to remain as before. And these concessions were all
hedged about by impossible restrictions, or were not to come into
effect until after the war. Yet at one time these intrigues came
perilously near to accomplishing their purpose. Matters were still
further complicated by the activities and interference of a former
Foreign Minister, Signor Giolitti, whose vanity had been flattered,
and whose ambitions had been cleverly played upon by the Teutonic
emissary. To fully understand the extraordinary nature of this
proceeding, one must picture Count von Bernstorff, at the height of
the submarine crisis, negotiating not with the Government of the
United States, but with Mr. William Jennings Bryan!
But, fortunately for the national honor, the Italian people, having
had time to reflect what the future of Italy would be after the war,
whatever its outcome, were they to be cut off from the only peoples in
Europe with which they had spiritual sympathy, took things into their
own hands. The storm of anger and indignation which swept the country
rocked the Government to its foundations. The Salandra cabinet, which
had resigned as a protest against the machinations of Giolitti, was
returned to power. Through every city, town, and hamlet from Savoy to
Sicily, thronged workmen, students, business and professional men,
even priests and monks, waving the red-white-and-green banner and
shouting the national watch-words "Italia Irredenta," and "Avanti
Savoia!"
But there was a deeper cause underlying these great patriotic
demonstrations than mere hatred of Austria. They were expressions of
national resentment at the impotent and dependent rôle which Italy had
played so long. D'Annunzio, in one of his famous addresses in May,
1915, put this feeling into words: "We will no longer be a museum of
antiquities, a kind of hostelry, a pleasure resort, under a sky
painted over with Prussian blue, for the benefit of international
honeymooners."
The sentiment of the people was expressed by the _Idea Nazionale_,
which on May 10 declared:
Italy desires war: (1) In order to obtain Trent, Trieste, and
Dalmatia. The country desires it. A nation which has the
opportunity to free its land should do so as a matter of
imperative necessity.... (2) ... in order to conquer for ourselves
a good strategic frontier in the North and East.... (3) ...
because to-day, in the Adriatic, in the Balkan Peninsula, the
Mediterranean, and Asia, Italy should have all the advantages it
is possible for her to have, and without which her political,
economic, and moral power would diminish in proportion as that of
others increased.... If we would be a great Power we must accept
certain obligations: one of them is war....
The voice of the people was unmistakable: they wanted war. To have
refused that demand would have meant the fall of the Government if not
of the dynasty. The King did not want war. The responsible
politicians, with a very few exceptions, did not want it. The nobility
did not want it. The Church did not want it. The bankers and business
men of the nation did not want it. It was the great mass of the
Italian people, shamed and indignant at the position in which the
nation had been placed by the sordid dickering with Austria, who swept
the country into war. I was in Italy during those exciting days; I
witnessed the impressive popular demonstrations in the larger cities;
and in my mind there was left no shadow of a doubt that the Government
had to choose between war and revolution. On the 23d of May, 1915,
Italy declared war on Austria.