The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/The Part Played by Italy
THE PART PLAYED BY ITALY
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 presence 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 Liege, 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 Emanuel 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.