Cesare Battisti and the Trentino
little larger, then he offered somewhat more, even on the eastern side, on condition that Italy kept quiet and refrained from joining the fray.
The temptation was not small. Here Battisti's character, expressive of the spirit of his people from Trentino, appears to great advantage. Even when the return of the entire Trentino was promised, he, a resident of Trentino, did not hesitate to protest against the omission of the other unredeemed countries. And he declared that none of the residents of Trentino would even think of forsaking and abandoning their brothers from the Adriatic, to Austria, as a price for their own liberation. "Either everything or nothing." That was his watchword in those days, as it was on former occasions during his political struggles in Trentino.
For a time it almost looked as if the coalition of the pacifists, the downhearted, and the "triplicists" was to get the upper hand. Who can ever forget the days of May, full of anxiety, when Minister Salandra wanted to retire, while Giovanni Giolitti was coming to the fore with the offer of the "parecchio" — that is, the many inducements!
For Cesare Battisti, as well as for the true Trentino people, these were very thrilling times. Battisti displayed in those days a tremendous activity, and in Rome his voice sounded, together with the voice of our greatest living poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio. The healthy conscience of the Italian people won; Italy resolutely preferred the way of Camillus, Caesar, Garibaldi — not the way urged by Prince Buelow. On the 24th of May, 1915, the bells of the Capitol belfry rang joyously for the victory Italy had achieved over herself. War was declared. On that day, from the Capitol, Cesare Battisti launched to the countless crowds his famous appeal: "Everyone to the frontier — everyone with arms or with heart!"
The following day he enlisted as a private and left for Edolo in the Fifth Regiment of the Alpine Corps. Soon afterward he was sent to the border with his battalion, to the high mountains confronting the Tonale Pass to the north.
