CHAPTER VIII ITALY
"What will Italy do?" The question is often repeated in the newspapers of the capitals of Europe. The interest in the attitude of Italy, the only Great European Power which has not, to the time of writing, taken a part in the war, seems to increase every day.
For one who is here, in Rome, the answer can hardly be doubtful. Italy looks very much like a country getting ready for war; like a country that understands to the utmost that this is an occasion on which to fulfil her national ambition—an occasion that will never return.
When the war broke out, Italy found herself in a peculiar position. Bound by the decrepit Triple Alliance to Austria and Germany, but with her interests, feeling, and sympathies on the side of the Entente, Italy did not, unfortunately, feel strong enough to take a decision straight away. Her army, especially the artillery, was in need of much material; the Tripoli war, the plan and conduct of which was marred by the very same mistakes England committed in the South African War, had swallowed up more money and men than had been expected. Her diplomats, though warned of the approaching storm, did not believe that it would break so soon, and under such a condition of things, neutrality seemed for the moment the only possible attitude.
Italy fully realised that if she wanted to take her part in this war, or at least if she wanted to safeguard her own interests, she had to get ready first. The large quantity of guns, which had been ordered at Krupp's, was not supplied, and Italy had to make good the deficiencies with her national industrial resources. Nearly all the large metal-works in Italy started making guns under the supervision of artillery officers; new uniforms, new boots, ammunition, sanitary necessities, etc., have been prepared in very large quantities. The fortresses on the Alps and the eastern frontiers have been reinforced, and a number of regiments generally quartered in South and Central Italy have been moved steadily to the northern towns.
This as far as the Government goes. As for the spirit of the army, it could not be keener. In the barracks the old songs of the "Risorgimento" have been resurrected and have taken the place of the Neapolitan melodies.
Many officers told me that their men kept asking, "When are we going to fight?" just as if Italy was already at war. The aspiration to the possession of Trento and Trieste, which, during the last twenty years seemed to have weakened considerably, has now reawakened as strong as ever, and the many inhabitants of Dalmatia and Istria, who have left their homes for Italy during the last months, to escape persecutions and vexations of all kinds, are carrying on an active propaganda.
Almost every day there are demonstrations in favour of going to war. The university towns of Italy are like powder-magazines ready to explode at the first spark of war, and the professors have to use all their authority to keep their students quiet and to prevent them running away to enlist in France or Montenegro. Before the war the most educated Italian classes gave to Germany a place of honour amongst the cultivated nations of the world. Now this feeling has completely disappeared and its place has been taken by disgust and hate for the country which has disguised her incurable barbarism under a mask of more or less real culture. German people in Italy have never got on very well with the majority of the population, but now they are having a very hard time. Everybody tries to avoid them, in the way of business and relations of all other kinds, and most of those who did not go back to fight for their country have left for America, or have become naturalised Italian citizens.
Public opinion in Italy varies from province to province. While all the south is frankly eager for war as soon as possible, in the northern provinces, the richest and most industrial of Italy, the population is just now recovering from the financial losses inflicted by the last war, and would prefer Italy to keep neutral as far as possible.
This does not mean that the war would be unpopular there. Rich provinces are a little like wealthy people; they would rather keep quiet and continue in their profitable business, but when the danger is near and fighting is unavoidable they give up without regret their everyday habits and bravely do their duty.
The different tendencies of the north and south meet in Rome. Though there are no more convinced adherents of the Triple Alliance left in Italy, and though you cannot find a single Italian who will say that his country ought to have fought side by side with Austria and Germany, the neutralist party is still very strong, and the idea of making cause commune with France still keeps some of the intransigent Catholics from joining the War Party. The Socialists have assumed a sort of wait-and-see attitude which will easily be changed at the right moment to frank support of the war; and the new Nationalist Party, though only a few years old, is making gigantic progress.
The most important part of the Italian Press has never ceased, since the beginning of the war, to try and make the nation feel the disadvantages of an uncertain position.
Without England or France having supported them, or even treated particularly well their correspondents (many Italian journalists, Barzini included, were arrested and sent back to Paris when found too near the front), the Italian Press, with few and not important exceptions, has opposed the idea of neutral policy. One of the most important of Italian journals printed as a sub-title to its heading in big type the sentence of Machiavelli: "Neutrality is never suitable to a nation, for a State who keeps neutral loses her friends, does not gain advantages and, when the war is over, ingenerates such diffidence about her future conduct that no other nation cares to conclude an alliance with her."
Germany and Austria, recognising the trend of public opinion in Italy, did not economise money or trouble in an endeavour to change its course if possible. Two or three newspapers were bought by a sort of secret trust which depends upon "Palazzo Venezia," the Austrian Embassy in Rome; some others were largely subventioned; news made in Germany was sent out, not only to all newspapers, but to private houses. A friend of mine kept a full collection of such pamphlets right from the beginning of the war. The circulars are issued every two or three weeks, and generally begin with a formal denial of everything that has been stated by the French, English, and Russian official bulletins. Accusations of pillage, robbery, murder, and cruelties of every possible kind are made against the Allies, and are proved by bogus letters from German officers and soldiers. This system, though it certainly does not succeed amongst the more educated classes, scores a little more amongst the lower-class folk, who are highly flattered to see amongst their weekly correspondence a large letter bearing for crest the Austrian or German eagle.
Another system largely employed by Germany in their attempted work of modifying Italy's public opinion is the free supply of photographs and sketches to illustrated newspapers. Above all, however, they have concentrated their endeavours upon the kinema.
The picture-house has ceased to be the means of spending an hour far from business and worry, in a restfully darkened room, watching a moderately amusing and, possibly, highly moral film, which does not suffer if one misses part of it. Now it has become an instrument used by Governments for educating the people.
Germany produces a large number of war films, both for home display and for abroad. There are descriptive, allegoric, sentimental, even comic films inspired by the war: the soldiers of the Kaiser do the most wonderful things. They are strong, generous, good-humoured. Most of these scenes are arranged, and only slices of real life in the case of military revues and parades are introduced.
The German authorities seem to be specially anxious to prove one thing: that the German soldiers are behaving like gentlemen, and that the stories about their deeds in Belgium and France are calumnies.
Perhaps this very earnestness in trying to alter a prevalent belief proves that Germany has not quite a clear conscience on the subject.
So, at least, seem to think the Italian public; and when some such pictures were shown lately in Rome and Milan, nobody took them seriously, and they were considered as childish fakes.
Such films are offered to picture-house managers on extremely tempting terms by special agents, who tour all over Italy. Nearly all the atrocities which were proved to have been committed by the Germans themselves are attributed in these films to the Belgians. In one of them a Belgian woman sets fire to the bed on which three wounded German soldiers are dying, and runs away after taking their watches and pocket-books. In another picture the old tale of the treachery of the Louvain inhabitants is staged in a very fierce manner; I have also seen a picture of a cavalry charge given as having been actually taken during the war in Flanders, but which was really part of a two years' old manœuvre film, easily recognisable because the uniforms have changed since then.
As no English or French war pictures reach Italy, the local firms have to make their own war-films to suit the taste of their public. In the country round about Milan, Turin, and Rome, the principal centres of the Italian film industry, cardboard Belgian villages and churches, trenches, and terrible-looking fortresses have been constructed, and one can often see hundreds of "Tommies" in khaki, French "pioupious" and helmeted Germans fighting miniature battles.
Another of Germany's devices to capture Italian public opinion was the famous tour of Italian journalists, organised by a well-known German emissary, who, by the way, has been arrested lately as a spy in Naples.
None of Italy's best-known journalists, nor any correspondents of predominant papers, accepted the invitation, and only about twelve young men, belonging to second-rate journals, went, chaperoned by the vigilant Herr Sweinhart.
But they were only allowed to see parades and specially prepared trenches, or batteries which had never been exposed to the fire. They were shown a concentration camp, but were not allowed to speak to the prisoners. They were taken to Liège to see the forts, but not to the destroyed towns in Belgium. Then they had to go back to Berlin and were kept there in one of the principal hotels, waiting for the moment when everything should have been arranged for them on some quiet spot of the Russian frontier. The tour came to a sudden and rather unfortunate end, as the journalists, having realised that they were allowed to see nothing of interest, but only what pleased Herr Sweinhart, decided to return to Italy at their own expense, and did not write a line about their experiences so as not to excite the hearty laughter of their wiser colleagues.
The cleverest move of the Austro-Germans in the direction of keeping Italy quiet as long as possible was certainly the sending of von Buelow to Rome as German Ambassador.
The personal charm of this clever diplomat probably accounts for Italy's attitude during the last months. He acted, and is still acting, like a rubber cushion between the Teutonic ruggedness and the Italian susceptibility.
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In the little "Trattoria" near Piazza Colonna, in which most parliamentary men meet in preference to the big, gilded, French-style restaurants, where the food is excellent, the wine taken with a gay murmur from large barrels showing at the back, and where hardly any "outsider" or any foreigners dare enter, so modest is the appearance of the establishment, half-a-dozen world-known writers, politicians, and journalists were enjoying a "fritto di pesce," abundantly accompanied by the light wine, "delli Castelli." The subject of the conversation was, of course, the war. All the sympathies were on the side of the Entente. A copy of The Times was passed from one to another, and the most important news was translated for the benefit of the few of the company who were not familiar with English. A well-known writer of military criticism in one of the principal Italian papers, a former Major in the army, produced a letter from one of his sons, now fighting with the French army in Alsace. The letter was very enthusiastic about everything and everybody at the front; the young man was one of the very last to manage to join the voluntary corps, Italy having, since December last, stopped completely the granting of passports to young men liable for military service.
The wonderful work of the "Dante Alighieri," the society which has been struggling hard during the last years to keep the Italian language alive in the provinces under foreign domination, the last poem of D'Annunzio on the war, the concentration of troops near Verona, were, in turn, subjects of conversation. I got the impression that for them the question was not, "Are we going to war?" but, "When are we going to war?"
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Italy has suffered very much already for this war. All her commerce with the Continent has been stopped, as well as her shipping lines trading with Constantinople and the Black Sea. The shortage of petroleum, coal and wood has hit many of her industries, and some foodstuffs have increased considerably in prices.
Moreover, the annual tide of foreigners which is the principal resource of many Italian towns has not come this year, and Italy begins to realise that if she is not going to war now, she has made enormous financial sacrifices to equip her army. She will have shared all the disadvantages of the fighting countries without being able to get any of the recompense.
It is now for Italy to make a great decision. If she believes in her destiny, if she feels that there are in her energies, intelligence, and possibilities of taking her real place amongst the great Powers of Europe, she has to fight.
If she feels she is not equal to such a task, then she had better become at once the first of the defensive countries and renounce all her dreams of empire; she had better sell her fleet, economise on armaments, and invest the money saved in first-class hotels, casinos, and spas. She has certainly beauty and natural advantages enough to out-rival Switzerland, Spain, or Norway.
But the modern Italian is rather tired of being the citizen of a country admired only for her blue skies, her Roman monuments, and her rich museums. He is more proud of her industrial enterprise, of the wide expansion, of the wonderful progress of his country in the last fifty years, than of the fair pages of her history. He will not hear about renouncing what he calls the third renaissance of Italy.
That is why I believe Italy is going to fight.