Gabriele D'Annunzio
To General Cadorna On his 69th birthday, September 11, 1917
"What I have given, that have I"
This fateful year which thou fulfillest so,
Our Italy, her cherisht goal in sight,
Exalts upon her sword; and gleameth bright
Her ruddy pathway to the gates of snow.
The power of death thou bendest like a bow
'Twixt Vodice and bleak Hermada's height;
And Victory, guided by thy hand of might,
Thro' wild Isonzo forth doth fording go.
Reborn from lands of drought, a youth art thou,
Upheaved by rugged Carso suddenly
With all the lads of thine advancing throng.
This bloody year which thou fulfillest now,
O may it, onward pressing, shine with thee
And keep thee for the fearful morrow strong!
Poetical Version by
[signed] C.H. Grangent
The Voice of Italy
In the great turmoil of nations it rings with a tone peculiarly true: for Italy is the country that found herself confronted, at the outbreak of the great war, by perhaps the most perplexing situation of any of the present allies. If she had chosen to follow the way which lay open and easy before her, the war would have long since been decided in favor of the Central Powers. Italy had entered the Triple Alliance as a clean contract, for an honest defensive purpose. It was never intended for a weapon of aggression. When Austria and Germany decided upon the outrage to Serbia that was the cause of the conflagration, they did not consult Italy about it, knowing well that Italy would not have consented; in fact, would have denounced it to the world. But they hoped that by surprising her with the "fait accompli," she would have to yield and follow. Italy chose the long hard trail instead, incredibly long, inconceivably hard, but morally right, and it has been made clear once more in the history of humanity, that "Latin" and "barbaric" are two incompatible terms.
True enough, Italy felt in her own heart the cry of her long-oppressed children from Istria, the Trentino and Dalmatia ringing just as loud as that of the children of Belgium and the women of Serbia; but who can blame her if history had it so, that the sudden outrage on other nations was but the counterpart of the long-continued provocation to the Italian nationality, when in the Italian provinces subject to Austrian rule, the mere singing of a song in the mother-language brought women to jail and children to fustigation; and a bunch of white, red and green flowers might cause an indictment of high treason? National aspirations and international honor equally called forth to Italy, and Italy leaped forth in answer as soon as she could make her way clear to the fight. She took it up where the political pressure brought to bear upon her in the name of European peace in 1866 had compelled the fathers of the present leaders to retire from combat.
General Luigi Cadorna leads the offensive of 1917 where his father Count Raffaele Cadoran found it stopped by diplomatic arrangements in 1866; Garibaldi's nephew avenges on the Col di Lana his "obbedisco" from the Trentino; Francesco Pecori-Giraldi's son repels from Asiago the sons of those Austrians who wounded him at Montanara and imprisoned him at Mantova. Gabriele d'Annunzio, mature in years and wonderfully youthful in spirit, takes up the national ideals of the great master Giosuè Carducci (who died before he could see the dream of his life realized with the reunion of Trento and Trieste, Istria and the Italian cities of Dalmatia, to the Motherland); and becomes the speaker of the nation expectant in Genoa and assembled in Rome to decree the end of the strain of Italian neutrality which has to its credit the magnificent rebellion to the unscrupulous intrigues of Prince von Bulow, and the releasing of five hundred thousand French soldiers from the frontier of Savoy to help in the battle of the Marne.