A Tribute to Italy
Even now, few Americans understand the great service which Italy has done to the Allied Cause. We have expected some sensational military achievements, being ourselves unable to realize the immense difficulty of the military tasks which confronted the Italians. The truth is that the Terrain over which they have fought is incredibly difficult. By the sly drawing of the frontier when in 1866 Austria ceded Venetia to the Italians, every pass, every access, from Italy into Austria was left in the hands of the Austrians. Some of those passes are so intricate and narrow that an Austrian regiment could defend them against an army. And yet, in two years’ fighting the Italians have advanced and have astonished the world by their exploits in campaigning above the line of perpetual snow and among crags as unpromising as church steeples.
On lower levels they have captured Gorizia, a feat unparalleled by any thus far accomplished by the English and French on the West. The defense of Verdun remains, of course, the supreme and sublime achievement of defensive action, but the taking of Gorizia is thus far the most splendid work of the Allied offensive.
I do not propose, however, to speak in detail of the Italians’ military service. Suffice it to say that they have proved themselves excellent fighters who combine the rare qualities of dash and endurance. I wish to speak of the vital contribution Italy has made from the beginning of the War to the Great Cause—the cause of Democracy and of Civilization.
When Italy at the end of July, 1914, refused to join Austria and Germany she announced to the world that the war which the Teutons planned was an aggressive war, and by this announcement she stamped on the Pan-German crimes that verdict which every day since has confirmed and which will be indelibly written on the pages of history.
For Italy was a partner of Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance and she knew from inside evidence that the Teutonic Powers were not acting on the defensive. Accordingly, her decision had the greatest significance, and when before the actual outbreak of the war she privately informed France that she had no intention of attacking that country she relieved the French of great suspense. If Italy had joined the Teutons the French would have been required to guard their southeastern frontier by a large force, perhaps not less than a million men, which were now set free to oppose the German attack in the north.
The world did not understand why Italy waited until May, 1915, before declaring war on Austria, but the reason was plain. Exhausted by their war in Tripoli the Italians had neither munitions nor food and their soldiers even lacked uniforms. It took nine months, therefore, to prepare for war. Another year passed before Italy could undertake to face Germany; for the Germans had so thoroughly honeycombed Italy’s commerce, industry and finances that it took two years for the Italians to oust the Germans and to train men to replace them.
By these delays, which seemed to the outside world suspicious, Italy did another service. If she had plunged in prematurely as the Allies and her friends besought her to do she would have been speedily overwhelmed. Imagine what a blow that would have been to the Allied Cause, especially coming so early in the War. Her prudence saved Europe this disaster. Had Northern Italy become enslaved the Teutonic forces could have threatened France on the southeast, and with Genoa as a port they could have made the Mediterranean much more perilous for the Allied ships and transportation. It is not for the United States, a country of over one hundred million population, and yet checked if not intimidated by a small body of German plotters and their accomplices, to look scornfully on Italy’s long deferred entrance into the War. The Pro-German element in Italy was relatively stronger than here and the elements which composed it—the Blacks, the Germanized financiers and business men, many nobles and the Vatican—openly opposed making war on the Kaiser. In spite of all these difficulties, in spite of the very great danger she ran, because if the Germans win they threaten to restore the Papal temporal power, and the Austrians, Italy stood by the Allies.
For her to be untrue tot he cause of Democracy would be almost unthinkable; the great men who made her a united nation were all in different ways apostles of Democracy. Mazzini was its preacher; Garibaldi fought for it on many fields, in South America, in Italy and in France; Victor Emmanuel was the first democratic sovereign in Europe in the nineteenth century; Cavour, beyond all other statesmen of his age, believed in Liberty, religious, social and political and applied it to his vast work of transforming thirty million Italians out of Feudalism, and the stunting effects of autocracy into a nation of democrats.
It was impossible also for Italy, the ancient home of Civilization, the mother of arts and refinement, to accept the standard of the Huns which the Germans embraced and imposed upon their allies. The conflict between the Germans and the Italians was instinctive, temperamental. For a thousand years it took the form of a struggle between the German Emperors and the Italian Popes for mastery. The Germans strove for political domination, for temporal power; the Italians strove, at least in ideal, in order that the spiritual should not be the vassal of the physical. It was soul force against brute force. Looking at it as deeply as possible we see that the Italians, a race sprung out of ancient culture, mightily affected but not denatured by Christianity, repudiated the Barbarian ideals of Teutonism. Men whose ancestors had worshiped Jupiter and Apollo, and who were themselves worshipping the Christian God, Madonna and the great saints, had no spiritual affinity with men whose ancestors could conceive of no Deities higher than Thor, Odin and the other rough, crude, and unmannered denizens of the Northern Walhalla. So Italy stood by Civilization. Her risk was great, but great shall be her guerdon in the approval of her own conscience and the gratitude of posterity.
[signed] William Roscoe Thayer
Sept. 1, 1917.