[From The New York Times, Jan. 17, 1915.]
William Roscoe Thayer, author of the article printed below, is one of the leading authorities on Italy in this country. His works on Italian history include "The Dawn of Italian Independence," "Italica," "A Short History of Venice," and "The Life and Times of Cavour." The last named, published three years ago, made a marked impression and won for its author an enviable place as a historian. Mr. Thayer is a graduate of Harvard and has edited the Harvard Graduates' Magazine since 1892. Since 1913 he has been a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College.
TOO little has been said about Italy's refusal to join Germany and Austria in their war for world power. During the past five months we have heard German apologists offer the most contradictory arguments to prove, first, that Russia, next, that France and Belgium, and, finally, that England began the struggle. The Kaiser himself, with that disdain of fact which is the privilege of autocrats, declared that the sword was forced into his hands. And all the while the mere abstention of Italy from supporting Germany and Austria gave the lie to the Germanic protestations and excuses.
By the terms of the Triple Alliance every member of it is bound to communicate at once to the other members all international diplomatic transactions which concern the alliance. Germany and Austria failed to do this during the earlier stages in July, when they were preparing for the war. Only after they had laid their train so surely that an explosion was almost inevitable did they communicate the documents to Italy and call upon her to take her place in the field with them. But Italy refused; because, after examining the evidence, she concluded that Germany and Austria were the aggressors. Now, the terms of the Triple Alliance bind its members to stand by each other only in case of attack.
Italy's verdict, therefore, threw the guilt of the war on Germany and Austria. She had testimony before her which does not appear even in the "White Papers" and other official diplomatic correspondence; and all the efforts of German zealots and casuists have not subtracted one iota from the meaning of her abstention. Germany and Austria were the aggressors—that is the Italian verdict which history will confirm.
On this side of the water the German apologists made as little as possible of Italy's withdrawal—they were too busy trying to persuade the American public that trivialities like the passage of a French aeroplane or of a French automobile with two French officers in it, across a corner of Belgium, thirty minutes before the German Army invaded Belgium, proved that the French and Belgians began the war. They sneered a little at Italian honor; they implied that scuttling off was all that could be expected of a decadent Latin people; and they hinted that, after the Kaiser had disposed of France, Belgium, England, and Russia, he would punish Italy for her "flight."
At Berlin, however, the importance—military, political, and naval—of Italy's withdrawal from the Triple Alliance was appraised at its true value. The German Foreign Office employed alternately threats and blandishments upon her. They warned her that, if she refused to back up her allies, she would be treated without mercy at the end of hostilities. When the policy of terrorizing failed, seductive promises were held out—suggestions of an addition to Italian territory and of a subsidy for military expenses. These also failed. Italy could not be induced to send her million soldiers against the Allies. Then Germany labored to prevent her from actively joining the Allies—and this effort Germany is keeping up at the present moment, under the direction of the sleek Prince von Bülow.
The Italians, who have in large measure a sense of humor, that clarifying quality which Prussianization has destroyed in the Germans, must have smiled when they heard the German envoys expatiate on the beauties of neutrality, and, although they are a polite people, they must have found it hard to keep from laughing when the agents of Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg, who had just declared that a treaty is only a scrap of paper, to be torn up at pleasure, tried to impress upon Italy the sacredness of the treaty which bound her to the Triple Alliance.
Not content with these official, or officious, manoeuvres, the German Government sent Socialist leaders into Italy to urge the Italian Socialists not to consent to a war in behalf of the Allies; but they, too, seem to have met with a chilly reception. The Italian Socialists, like the rest of the world, wondered why it was that 5,000,000 Socialists in Germany should allow themselves to be commandeered, apparently without a murmur, to uphold a war waged to preserve and extend military despotism.
In addition to these direct efforts to win Italy to their side, or at least to keep her from going over to the enemy, the Germans have been busy since early in August with their Press Bureau, which has pursued methods there similar to those they have made us familiar with here. But in Italy they have been more guarded and less truculent, and they have not, like the preposterous Bernstorff and his associates, assumed that the public they were addressing was not only ignorant of the simplest facts of recent European history, but were also morally imbecile.
Although the Italians are not less susceptible than are other peoples to be swayed by sudden political gusts, they were not at the end of July, 1914, taken by surprise. For a long time past their King and statesmen had deliberated as to what ought to be Italy's course in case Germany should carry out her well-understood purpose of humbling England. The Italians were not deceived by the increase from year to year of the German Army. They knew perfectly well what the tremendous efforts of the Germans to create a great navy meant. They had no illusions as to the purpose of the strategic railways to the Belgian frontier on the west or to the Russian border on the east. They knew how narrowly a European war was averted during the Balkan cataclysm two years ago. They did not wrong the Kaiser by supposing that the immense fund which he had recently raised from "voluntary" 5 per cent. contributions on incomes was to be given to The Hague Tribunal to promote the cause of universal peace. They logically and honorably decided that, if Germany provoked war, Italy would not support her. The bond of the Triple Alliance called for no other action on her part. Germany and Austria provoked the war; Italy stood by her agreement.
But a still further consideration influenced her. It was understood that, if the war in which Germany and Austria engaged should involve England as an enemy, Italy's obligation to support the Triple Alliance would cease. Since it would be suicidal for Italy to accept the liability of a casus foederis which should expose her to attack by the English and French Navies, her participation in the Triple Alliance always carried the proviso that it did not bind her to fight England.
Such is the substance of the statement made by the dean of Italian statesmen, in a letter I received from him two months ago. No Italian could speak from a more thorough knowledge of the facts than he possessed, and that it has long been surmised that the Triplice could not drive Italy against England appears in various publications. Gen. Bernhardi, for instance, who knew so accurately the intentions of the German General Staff and the secrets of the German Foreign Office, intimates more than once that Germany and Austria, in their war for world power, need not hope for Italy's support. Referring to Col. Boucher's book, "L'Offensive contre L'Allemagne," he says: "Modern French writers are already reckoning so confidently on the withdrawal of Italy from the Triple Alliance that they no longer think it necessary to put an army in the field against Italy, but consider that the entire forces of France are available against Germany."[4]
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Why Italy made the reservation in the case of England will appear when we glance at the origin of the Triple Alliance.
In 1871 Bismarck thought that the Franco-Prussian war, by the military losses and by the immense indemnity which it inflicted on the French people, had rendered France powerless for a generation. But within four years she paid the indemnity and had so far recovered in her armament, commerce, and prosperity, that the Iron Chancellor prepared to attack her again, and this time, to quote his butcher's phrase, "to bleed her white." Only the certainty that the other powers would interfere stayed his hand then.
So he set about circumventing France by other means. A league of the three Emperors of Germany, Austria, and Russia was the combination he preferred; but Russia proved an uncertain partner, as she feared Germanization, on the one hand, and, on the other, she was the encourager of pro-Slavic aspirations which ran counter to the Germans' ambition. Bismarck, therefore, looked about him for an alternative plan.
He would keep the friendship of Russia—even though Russia declined a formal league—and he would lure Italy into the Germanic alliance. England, he knew, could not be persuaded to enter a Continental combination. Her commercial interests pointed elsewhere, and she still clung to her policy of splendid isolation. But Italy was unattached; and while she was the least formidable of the six great powers, Bismarck saw that he could make good use of her for his own purposes. The adroitness by which he drew her into his net is in direct contrast to the bovine diplomacy by which Kaiser William II. and his subservient Chancellors have succeeded, during the past twenty years, in smashing all their alliances and in alienating the sympathy of the civilized world.
After the completion of Italian unity in 1870, the new Italian Kingdom found itself harassed not only by the many details of solidifying the civil Government, but also by the perplexities of international relations. The abolition of the Pope's temporal power made her, in theory at least, an object of odium to zealous Roman Catholics throughout the world. Her nearest neighbors—France and Austria—having long been the most loyal supporters of the head of the Roman Church, Italy could not be sure that either or both of them might not intrigue against her in behalf of the restoration of the Papacy. There was also in Italy a group of patriotic Jingoes—the Irredentists—bent on "redeeming" from Austria territory whose inhabitants they claimed were Italian in language, ideals, and situation. The Irredentist propaganda naturally increased the rancor which Austria felt toward the Italians over whom she had recently despotized.
When Crispi, who was passing from his earlier character of conspirator and Radical to that of constitutional statesman, made the tour of the European Chancelleries, in 1877, he found Bismarck profuse in his expression of good-will toward Italy. If we are to believe Crispi, the Chancellor was ready then to draw up a treaty with her, and went so far as to hint that he approved of Italy's aspirations. Among these were the possession of Tunis and a foothold on the east coast of the Adriatic. The next year, at the Berlin Congress, however, Italy's interests were ignored, and, instead, Austria was encouraged to extend her dominion south of the Balkans, and the French were at least not discouraged from coveting a stronger position in the Mediterranean.
Finally, in 1882, France seized Tunis, to the immense indignation of the Italians, who had come to regard that as their predestined province. For it lay only a few hours by steamer from the southern coast of Sicily; it commanded the passage between the western and eastern Mediterranean; and, above all, it was the symbol of Italy's colonial ambition. To have a colony, if not several, was then regarded as the sign of being a first-class power; and that Italy should be tricked out of Tunis seemed to advertise to the world that she was not a first-class power. For her protests availed nothing.
The Italians did not know then, nor for a long time afterward, that the French seizure of Tunis was directly due to Bismarck's instigation. Lord Salisbury, also, who seems to have been in the plot, approved it for his own reasons. Bismarck's motives were plain—he wished to entangle France further in African colonial ventures. It had taken forty years, many thousand soldiers' lives, and great expenditures for France to make Algiers reasonably safe. As Tunis would increase the French burdens, it followed that every regiment needed there would diminish the strength of the armies with which France guarded herself from a German attack on her eastern frontier.
Having roused the Italians to wrath by this ruse, Bismarck had no difficulty in persuading them to join the Triple Alliance. He hardly needed to suggest that, if they had felt anxious at the possibility of French hostile pressure before, they had an even greater reason for such anxiety now that the French controlled the Mediterranean south of them. We may suspect also that Bismarck pointed out, as a special inducement, that, if Italy joined the alliance, she would be free from the likelihood of an attack by Austria.
Accordingly, in 1882, Italy entered into partnership with Germany and Austria for mutual defense. The only powers likely to assail them at that time were France and Russia; for England was still isolated, and Bismarck, although he felt a strong antipathy toward the English, was too shrewd a statesman either to scorn or to provoke them. As late as 1889, he approved of Italy's seeking an entente with England.
At the time Italy joined the Triplice she felt, no doubt, an unwonted sense of security. Were not two powerful empires standing by, ready to defend her? Her wounded pride, also, was solaced by her admission on equal terms into such a league. Neither France nor any other could henceforth taunt her with being a second-rate power.
The immediate result of the alliance was the spread of German commercial and financial enterprises throughout the peninsula, and the steady growth of Italian bad feeling toward France. A large group of Italians made Gallophobia their guiding principle. They remembered that, in the sixties, Napoleon III. had maintained at Rome that French garrison which prevented them from emancipating the States of the Church from Papal control, and from completing the unification of Italy. They remembered that Napoleon annexed Nice—Garibaldi's birthplace—to France, and that the French chassepots at Mentana dispersed Garibaldi and his red shirts bent on capturing the Eternal City. In the eighties, the Italians had good reason to suspect that the French Clericals were busy devising some imbroglio through which the Pope might be restored to the temporal power.
A convinced Gallophobe and crafty intriguer like Crispi, therefore, easily inflamed Italian indignation, so recently excited by the seizure of Tunis and by Clerical intrigues, and he counted it a gay feather in his cap when, in 1889, he declared a tariff war on France. Hard times for Italy followed; the commerce of the country was dislocated, and although Crispi tried to get compensation by negotiating special terms for trade with Germany and Austria, the new customers did not make up for the old. Germany could not furnish capital as France had done. Paris was, and is, the financial capital of the European Continent.
On this side Italy lost and Bismarck gained by the Triple Alliance—for he had attained his purpose of splitting France and Italy apart. What advantage did the Italians derive from the agreement? The reply commonly given is, protection. But, we ask, protection from whom? Not from France, because it is clear enough that, whether the Triplice existed or not, Germany would have attacked the French, if they had attacked the Italians; so that Italy had in Germany a logical protector, to whom she need not have sacrificed her initiative.
Her only other possible assailant was Austria, and it may fairly be argued that the alliance restrained Austria from attack; but Austria permitted herself every other unfriendly act toward Italy except open war; and Germany looked placidly on.
The fact that Germany, the chief Protestant nation in Europe, was the ally of Italy, might also be regarded as a support to the Italians in their long conflict with Papal pretensions; but how little Germany cared for Italy's welfare in this struggle appeared in 1903, when Kaiser Wilhelm prevented the election of Cardinal Rampolla as Pope. Rampolla, if not a Liberal, was a devoted Italian; Sarti, who defeated him, was a Reactionary, controlled by the Jesuits, hostile to Italy.
When we look at Germany's action in other affairs we find pleasant words but no tangible profit. From her geographical position Italy claimed an interest in the status of the Balkan Peninsula, and particularly in the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Germany pretended to favor her interests—according to Crispi, Bismarck even went so far as to ask, "Why don't you take Albania?"—but it was Austria that Germany steadily pushed on into the Balkans; and in 1908, when Austria, with Germany's connivance, appropriated Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Italians realized that they had been tricked again, as they were in the case of Tunis.
Since 1908 the Teutonic partners, growing more and more arrogant, have shown indifference to the concerns of their Italian ally, who, seeing no future for her in Europe, swooped down on Tripoli, the only stretch of North African littoral not already possessed by the French and by the English. Persons on the inside at Rome whispered that, if Italy had not occupied Tripoli when she did, Germany would have forestalled her; for the Kaiser, furious at being thwarted in Morocco and at having failed to bully France into submission, as he had done in 1905, had determined to seize Tripoli, come what might. More than one Foreign Office has ample proof to settle this assertion. Its plausibility is patent—Germany was already in close league with Turkey, and, looking forward to a war on England, she saw the advantage of owning territory and a naval base within easy reach of the Suez Canal.
Certain it is that both Germany and Austria frowned on Italy's Libyan enterprise, and that, in their intrigues in the Balkan Peninsula, in 1912 and 1913, they ignored their Italian partner.
And yet as long ago as 1895 Germany admitted that Italy was hardly getting a fair return from her bargain with her Teutonic allies. On March 5, 1895, Senator Lanza reported an interview he had just had with Emperor William, who said; "He had found Count Kálnoky (the Austrian Premier) ... still uneasy lest we (Italy) may come to consider the Triple Alliance insufficiently advantageous, merely because it cannot supply us, at once and in times of peace, with the necessary means of satisfying our desires with regard to the territories of Northern Africa and others as well. His Majesty ... added: 'Wait patiently. Let the occasion but present itself and you shall have whatever you wish.'"[5]
In spite of the Kaiser's assurance, Italy has got less and less return from the Triple Alliance every year since 1895.
It appears, therefore, that Italy long ago opened her eyes as to the real profit the alliance brought her. When England loomed up as the objective which Germany resolved to destroy, Italy quite logically let it be understood that she would not engage in a fight against England. Over thirty years of political alliance had created no sympathy among the Italians for the Germans. Like all other Europeans, they resented the arrogance of the Teutons who strode over their country.
But deeper, far deeper than personal dislike of bad manners was the fundamental antagonism between the Italian and the Prussian ideal. The Italians were pledged to Liberty, the Germans to Autocracy, bulwarked by militarism. In their long struggle for independence the Italians had had the sympathy of the best Englishmen, and in Palmerston, and especially in Lord John Russell, they found very powerful political helpers. But never since Bismarck took the helm of Prussia had one word in behalf of Democracy and Freedom been lisped by Monarch or Minister. For Italy to abandon her democratic ideal and to revert to the feudal-despotic ideal of the Pan-Germanists is unthinkable.
If she goes into the war, as now seems probable, it will be to uphold the Allies, who are fighting against Teutonic ambition inspired by despotic aims. Self-preservation demands that choice—because, should Germany win, she will not spare Italy. A stronger reason than self-interest, or than fear, however, will guide the Italians. In their past civilization and in their modern ideals they belong with the Western powers. They know the origin of their national independence. And if any Ministry should attempt to send them to replenish the wasting armies of Germany and of Austria, they would invoke the memory of Victor Emmanuel and of Garibaldi, of Mazzini and of Cavour, and refuse to be partners in schemes to aggrandize the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns.
"I am the son of Liberty," said Cavour; "to her I owe all that I am." That, too, is Italy's motto, which she will not deny.
HE HEARD THE BUGLES CALLING
BY CAREY C.D. BRIGGS
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There's an old red mill at the foot of the hill; Hear the mill-wheel turning, turning To the drip of tears through the long, long years Of my heart's relentless yearning— Oh, the tender note of the catch in his throat, Oh, the tear that he dried with laughter; "I'll be back some day— Mind the mill while I'm away," And he waved one last kiss floating after. Gone is the miller boy, Gone from the mill; Gone up the winding road, Gone o'er the hill; Gone with the drum-beat up over the hill, Where he heard the bugles calling. There's no grist for the mill or siller for the till, But I've kept the mill-wheel turning To the rumble and the beat of a million marching feet, And my sad heart's muffled yearning. Oh, the road his brave feet trod, lit with glory up to God, Oh, the courage of his call shames my sorrow; "I'll be back some day— Mind the mill while I'm away," And I caught one last kiss for tomorrow. Gone is the miller boy, Gone from the mill; Gone up the winding road, Gone o'er the hill; Gone with the drum-beat up over the hill, Where he heard the bugles calling. |