By G.H. Perris.
[This article appeared originally in The London Daily Chronicle of May
29, 1915.]
We have all learned a good deal of French, Russian, and Austrian
geography in the last ten months; and, in the same sad school, we
shall now become better acquainted with the region of mountain and
plain which, through and for 140 miles east of Lake Garda, is the
Austro-Italian borderland, and with the northeastern coast of the
Adriatic, where there will be important side issues. There is this
great difference, among others, between the Adriatic and the Alpine
military problems: On the one side, the Germanic powers can now only
assume the defensive; on the other, they can, and probably will,
attempt the invasion of provinces dear not only to Italians, for their
homes and a splendid galaxy of historic associations, but to
cultivated minds throughout the world for treasures of art abounding
even in the humblest towns and villages.
The irregularity of this northern frontier is the product of an
unhappy history; it does not follow the line of the mountain summits
or any other natural feature, and still less is it a limit marked by
race or language. A glance at the map shows its salient
characteristic--the piece of the Austrian Tyrol, from forty to sixty
miles wide, which is thrust southward toward the great plain of
Lombardy and Venetia, and toward the four provincial capitals,
Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, and Belluno. The Trentino--as it is called,
after the very ancient city of Trent, once the chief town of Tyrol,
now a market centre dignified by many towers and poverty-stricken
palaces and castles--is thoroughly Italian; but it still gathers much
of its importance, as it has done ever since Roman times, from the
fact that the best and oldest road from Germany and West Austria over
the Alps runs through it to Verona. For nearly half a century one of
the grandest of mountain railways has followed this olden track of
conquest and pilgrimage, from Innsbruck over the Brenner Pass, through
Botzen, and down the Adige Valley. More recently a branch line has
been built which runs from Trent southeastward to Padua and Venice.
It is not only the Italian resistance to Austrian aggression and
tyranny that has made this doorway into the lowlands about the Po a
vast battlefield. From the Middle Ages onward France and Austria
constantly fought out their quarrels here. In 1796, Napoleon, after
routing Marshal Wurmser at Lonato and Castiglione, small towns to the
south of the Lake of Garda, drove him up the Adige Valley to Trent,
and then round the side track already named, the Brenta Valley, by
Bassano back to Mantua. In 1848 the Piedmontese Army advanced upon the
famous quadrilateral of fortresses, then Austrian, covering the
entry--Mantua and Peschiera on the Mincio, Verona and Legnago on the
Adige. Charles Albert was far from being another Napoleon; and the
three days' battle of Custoza, when four weary and ill-found Italian
brigades held out against Radetzky's five army corps, did not serve to
turn the tide of the national fortunes. That year saw the first
appearance of Garibaldi as a military leader and the accession of the
present Austrian Emperor; and it is strange now to recall that in the
war of 1859, when Lombardy was liberated by the French and Sardinian
Armies, this same Francis Joseph was actually in command of the
Austrian forces. The battle of Solferino, fought on a front of five
leagues, along the hills to the south of Lake Garda, was a terrible
butchery, even by the worst of modern standards, for in twelve hours
25,000 of the 300,000 combatants were killed or wounded. In the war of
1866 Garibaldi took a body of volunteers up the Adige; but the treaty
which gave Venetia to the new Kingdom of Italy left the Trentino still
to be recovered.
The Adige and Brenta Valley roads to Trent and Botzen are, then,
clearly marked out for Italian effort in the present juncture; and if
the Austrians have the advantage of innumerable defensive positions on
the mountain heights, they have the disadvantage of very long and
frail lines of supply and reinforcement. It may be supposed that the
Alpine regiments, which are in some ways the flower of the Italian
Army, will also attempt the lesser approaches to Tyrol from the west,
by the Val di Sole and the Valtelline, and from the east from Belluno
and Pieve. The Brenner railway, with its twenty-two tunnels and sixty
large bridges, is peculiarly vulnerable. With many cities and good
railways behind them, and a popular welcome in front, the Italian
troops, on the other hand, will face the hill roads, now generally
free from snow, with confidence.
Very different are the natural conditions on the only other part of
the frontier where the hostile forces can well come to grips. The Alps
gradually fall and break up into separate ridges as we pass east; and
beyond Udine there is a flat gap, 50 miles wide, beyond which lies
Trieste, with its fine harbor and predominantly Italian population.
Further north, where the main line for Vienna passes the border at
Pontebba, to penetrate the double barrier of the Carinthian and
Styrian Alps, there can be little temptation to adventure on either
side. But in the lowlands of Friuli a beginning has been made, the
advance at one point, Caporetto, reaching as far as the River Isonzo,
while Terzo, Cormons, and other small places have been occupied. If
there is to be any large-scale warfare on the Alpine frontier, it must
apparently occur either in this gap or in and about the Adige Valley,
on the way to Trent.
"Italy's Violation of Faith"
By Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Imperial Chancellor.
[Speech in the Reichstag, May 28, 1915.]
When I spoke eight days ago there was still a glimpse of hope that
Italy's participation in the war could be avoided. That hope proved
fallacious. German feeling strove against the belief in the
possibility of such a change. Italy has now inscribed in the book of
the world's history, in letters of blood which will never fade, her
violation of faith.
I believe Machiavelli once said that a war which is necessary is also
just. Viewed from this sober, practical, political standpoint, which
leaves out of account all moral considerations, has this war been
necessary? Is it not, indeed, directly mad? [Cheers.] Nobody
threatened Italy; neither Austria-Hungary nor Germany. Whether the
Triple Entente was content with blandishments alone history will show
later. [Cheers.] Without a drop of blood flowing, and without the life
of a single Italian being endangered, Italy could have secured the
long list of concessions which I recently read to the House--territory
in Tyrol and on the Isonzo as far as the Italian speech is heard,
satisfaction of the national aspirations in Trieste, a free hand in
Albania, and the valuable port of Valona.
Why have they not taken it? Do they, perhaps, wish to conquer the
German Tyrol? Hands off! [Prolonged cheers.] Did Italy wish to provoke
Germany, to whom she owes so much in her upward growth of a great
power, and from whom she is not separated by any conflict of
interests? We left Rome in no doubt that an Italian attack on
Austro-Hungarian troops would also strike the German troops. [Cheers.]
Why did Rome refuse so light-heartedly the proposals of Vienna? The
Italian manifesto of war, which conceals an uneasy conscience behind
vain phrases, does not give us any explanation. They were too shy,
perhaps, to say openly what was spread abroad as a pretext by the
press and by gossip in the lobbies of the Chamber, namely, that
Austria's offer came too late and could not be trusted.
What are the facts? Italian statesmen have no right to measure the
trustworthiness of other nations in the same proportion as they
measured their own loyalty to a treaty. [Loud cheers.] Germany, by her
word, guaranteed that the concessions would be carried through. There
was no occasion for distrust. Why too late? On May 4 the Trentino was
the same territory as it was in February, and a whole series of
concessions had been added to the Trentino of which nobody had thought
in the Winter.
It was, perhaps, too late for this reason, that while the Triple
Alliance, the existence of which the King and the Government had
expressly acknowledged after the outbreak of war, was still alive,
Italian statesmen had long before engaged themselves so deeply with
the Triple Entente that they could not disentangle themselves. There
were indications of fluctuations in the Rome Cabinet as far back as
December. To have two irons in the fire is always useful. Before this
Italy had shown her predilection for extra dances. [Cheers and
laughter.] But this is no ballroom. This is a bloody battlefield upon
which Germany and Austria-Hungary are fighting for their lives against
a world of enemies. The statesmen of Rome have played against their
own people the same game as they played against us.
It is true that the Italian-speaking territory on the northern
frontier has always been the dream and the desire of every Italian,
but the great majority of the Italian people, as well as the majority
in Parliament, did not want to know anything of war. According to the
observation of the best judge of the situation in Italy, in the first
days of May four-fifths of the Senate and two-thirds of the Chamber
were against war, and in that majority were the most responsible and
important statesmen. But common sense had no say. The mob alone ruled.
Under the kindly disposed toleration and with the assistance of the
leading statesmen of a Cabinet fed with the gold of the Triple
Entente, the mob, under the guidance of unscrupulous war instigators,
was roused to a frenzy of blood which threatened the King with
revolution and all moderate men with murder if they did not join in
the war delirium.
The Italian people were intentionally kept in the dark with regard to
the course of the Austrian negotiations and the extent of the Austrian
concessions, and so it came about that after the resignation of the
Salandra Cabinet nobody could be found who had the courage to
undertake the formation of a new Cabinet, and that in the decisive
debate no member of the Constitutional Party in the Senate or Chamber
even attempted to estimate the value of the far-reaching Austrian
concessions. In the frenzy of war honest politicians grew dumb, but
when, as the result of military events, (as we hope and desire,) the
Italian people become sober again it will recognize how frivolously it
was instigated to take part in this world war.
We did everything possible to avoid the alienation of Italy from the
Triple Alliance. The ungrateful rôle fell to us of requiring from our
loyal ally, Austria, with whose armies our troops share daily wounds,
death, and victory, the purchase of the loyalty of the third party to
the alliance by the cession of old-inherited territory. That
Austria-Hungary went to the utmost limit possible is known. Prince
Bülow, who again entered into the active service of the empire, tried
by every means, his diplomatic ability, his most thorough knowledge of
the Italian situation and of Italian personages, to come to an
understanding. Though his work has been in vain the entire people are
grateful to him. Also this storm we shall endure. From month to month
we grow more intimate with our ally. From the Pilitza to the Bukowina
we tenaciously withstood with our Austro-Hungarian comrades for months
the gigantic superiority of the enemy. Then we victoriously advanced.
So our new enemies will perish through the spirit of loyalty and the
friendship and bravery of the central powers. In this war Turkey is
celebrating a brilliant regeneration. The whole German people follow
with enthusiasm the different phases of the obstinate, victorious
resistance with which the loyal Turkish Army and fleet repulse the
attacks of their enemies with heavy blows. Against the living wall of
our warriors in the west our enemies up till now have vainly stormed.
If in some places fighting fluctuates, if here or there a trench or a
village is lost or won, the great attempt of our adversaries to break
through, which they announced five months ago, did not succeed, and
will not succeed. They will perish through the heroic bravery of our
soldiers.
Up till now our enemies have summoned in vain against us all the
forces of the world and a gigantic coalition of brave soldiers. We
will not despise our enemies, as our adversaries like to do. At the
moment when the mob in English towns is dancing around the stake at
which the property of defenseless Germans is burning, the English
Government dared to publish a document, with the evidence of unnamed
witnesses, on the alleged cruelties in Belgium, which are of so
monstrous a character that only mad brains could believe them. But
while the English press does not permit itself to be deprived of news,
the terror of the censorship reigns in Paris. No casualty lists
appear, and no German or Austrian communiqués may be printed. Severely
wounded invalids are kept away from their relations, and real fear of
the truth appears to be the motive of the Government.
Thus it comes about, according to trustworthy observation, that there
is no knowledge of the heavy defeats which the Russians have
sustained, and the belief continues in the Russian "steam-roller"
advancing on Berlin, which is "perishing from starvation and misery,"
and confidence exists in the great offensive in the west, which for
months has not progressed. If the Governments of hostile States
believe that by the deception of the people and by unchaining blind
hatred they can shift the blame for the crime of this war and postpone
the day of awakening, we, relying on our good conscience, a just
cause, and a victorious sword, will not allow ourselves to be forced
by a hair's breadth from the path which we have always recognized as
right. Amid this confusion of minds on the other side, the German
people goes on its own way, calm and sure.
Not in hatred do we wage this war, but in anger--[loud cheers]--in
holy anger. [Renewed cheers from all parts of the House.] The greater
the danger we have to confront, surrounded on all sides by enemies,
the more deeply does the love of home grip our hearts, the more must
we care for our children and grandchildren, and the more must we
endure until we have conquered and have secured every possible real
guarantee and assurance that no enemy alone or combined will dare
again a trial of arms. [Loud cheers.] The more wildly the storm rages
around us the more firmly must we build our own house. For this
consciousness of united strength, unshaken courage, and boundless
devotion, which inspire the whole people, and for the loyal
co-operation which you, gentlemen, from the first day have given to
the Fatherland, I bring you, as the representatives of the entire
people, the warm thanks of the Emperor.
In the mutual confidence that we are all united we will conquer,
despite a world of enemies. [Loud and prolonged applause.]