HOW THE WAR ENTERED ITALY
Then, by one of the most vivid, if pathetic, of the flashes as of lightning that have shown us the drama of the past 365 days, we saw the actual war come to Italy. It came in a profoundly impressive form—the dead body of young Bruno Garibaldi, grandson of the Liberator. Fighting for France, Bruno had fallen in a gallant charge at the front, and his brother, who was by his side, had carried his body out of the trenches and brought it home. We who know Rome do not need to be told how it was received there. We can see the dense mass of uncovered heads in the Piazza delle Terme, stretching from the doors of the railway station to the bronze fountain at the top of the Via Nazionale, and we can hear the deep swell of the Garibaldian hymn, which comes like a challenge as well as a moan from 50,000 throats. Not for the first time was a dead Garibaldi being borne through the streets of Rome, and those of us who remembered the earlier day knew well that with the body of this Italian boy the war had entered Italy.
Then, at a crisis in Italy’s internal government, our enemy, having failed to buy, bribe, or corrupt Italy, began to threaten her. Out of the delirium of his intoxicated conscience, which no longer shrank from crime, he told Italy that if she dared to break her neutrality her fate should be as the fate of Belgium. That frightened some of us for a moment. We thought of Venice, of Florence, of Assisi, of Subiaco, of Naples, and of Rome, and, remembering the methods by which Germany was beating and bludgeoning her way through the war, our hearts trembled and thrilled at a dreadful vision of the lovely and beloved Italian land under the heel of a ruthless aggressor—of the destruction of the history of Christendom as it had been written by great artists on canvas and by great architects in stone through the long calendar of nearly two thousand years. But we also thought of Savoy, of Palestro, of Cas-ale, of Caprera, and of “Roma o morte,” and told ourselves that, come what might, victory or defeat, the children of Victor Emmanuel III would never allow themselves to buy the ease and safety of their bodies by the corruption and degradation of their souls.
THE ITALIAN SOUL
That was the great and awful hour when Italy stood on the threshold of her fate; but though Great Britain’s heart was bleeding from the sacrifices she had already made, and had still to make, and though Italy’s intervention meant so much to us, we did not feel that we had a right to ask for it. And neither was it necessary that we should do so. The treaty that bound Italy to England was not written on a scrap of paper. It was in our blood, born of our devotion to humanity, to justice, to liberty, and to the memory of our great men. Therefore, with the world in arms about her, let Italy do what she thought best for herself, and the bond between us would not be broken!
How the sequel has justified our faith! And when the great hour struck at last, after ten months of suspense, and Italy—ready, fully equipped, united—found the voice with which she proclaimed war, what a voice it was! Eloquent voices she had had throughout, in her Press as well as in her legislative chambers—Morelli’s, Barzini’s, Albertini’s, Malagodi’s, not to speak of Sartorio’s, Ferrero’s, Annie Vivantes, and many more—but it quickens my pulse to remember that it was the voice of a poet which at the final moment was to speak for the Italian soul.
Friends newly arrived from Italy tell me that not even in Rome (where one always feels as if one were living on the borderland of the old world and the new, with thousands of years behind and thousands of years in front) can anybody remember anything so moving as the substance and the reception of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s speech from the balcony of the Hotel Regina. We can well imagine it. The spirit of Time itself could have found no greater scene, no more thrilling moment. The broad highway on the breast of the hill going up to the Porta Pinciana, faced by the palace of the Queen Mother and flanked by the gardens of the Capuchin monastery, with the Colosseum, the Capitol and the Forum almost visible to the right—what a theatre to speak in!
There were 5000 persons below, all “Romans of Rome,” and the Queen Mother was on her balcony. But the orator was worthy of his audience, and his theme. He had the past for his prologue, and the future for his epilogue. Cæsar, Brutus, Cicero, the story of the old oppression from which the world had freed itself after agelong tribulation, and then a picture of the new tyranny that was sweeping down from across the Rhine. What wonder if the warm-hearted Roman populace, to whom patriotism is a religion, were carried away by an appeal which seemed to come to them with the voice of Dante, Mazzini, Carducci, and Garibaldi from the very earth beneath their feet!