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.
In D’Annunzio’s “Virgins of the Rocks” the protagonist expresses his belief that oratory is a weapon of war, and that it should be unsheathed, so to speak, in all its brilliancy only with the definite view of rousing people to action. Surely no man ever had a better chance of wielding the brilliant weapon than D’Annunzio, in his triumphal progress through Italy during that fateful month of May, 1915, when he uttered against neutralism and pacifism, germanophilism and petty parliamentarism, the “quo usque tandem” of the newest Italy.
Nor can we forget how Premier Antonio Salandra in his memorable speech from the Capitol, expressed the living and the fighting spirit of Italy, a spirit of strength and humanity, when he said: “I cannot answer in kind the insult that the German chancellor heaps upon us: the return to the primordial barbaric stage is so much harder for us, who are twenty centuries ahead of them in the history of civilization.” To support his, came the quiet utterances of Sonnino (whose every word is a statement of Italian right and a crushing indictment of Austro-German felony) “proclaiming still once the firm resolution of Italy, to continue to fight courageously with all her might, and at any sacrifice, until her most sacred national aspirations are fulfilled alongside with such general conditions of independence, safety and mutual respect between nations as can alone form the basis of a durable peace, and represent the very “raison d’être” of the contract that binds us with our Allies.”
This is the voice of right: the voice of victory which upholds it is registered frequently in the admirable war-bulletins of General Cadorna, than which nothing more Caesarian has been written in the Latin world since the days of Caesar. The simple words follow with which the taking of Gorizia was announced to the nation.
“August ninth.
…”Trenches and dugouts have been found, full of enemy corpses: everywhere arms and ammunition and material of all kinds were abandoned by the routed opponent. Toward dusk, sections of the brigades Casale and Pavia, waded through the Isonzo, bridges having been destroyed by he enemy, and settled strongly on the left bank. A column of cavalry and ‘bersaglieri ciclisti’ was forthwith started in pursuit beyond the river.”
Now, the voice of Italy is thundering down from the Stelvio to the sea, echoed by forty thousand shells a day on the contested San Gabriele: a mighty thing indeed, the voice of Italy at war; a thing of which all Italians may well feel proud. And yet, there is another thing of which they are perhaps even prouder in the depths of the national heart: the voice of the children of Italy “redeemed.” All along the re-claimed land, from Darzo to Gorizia, sixteen thousand children of Italian speech and of Italian blood, for whom Italian schools and Italian teachers have been provided even under the increasing menace of the Austrian aircraft or gunfire, join daily and enthusiastically in the refrain which the soldiers of Italy are enforcing, but a few miles ahead:
“Va fuora d’Italia, va fuora ch’e’ l’ora, va fuora d’Italia, va fuora, stranier!” [From the Inno di Garibaldi: “Get out of Italy, it’s high time; get out of Italy, stranger, get out!”]
[signed] Amy Bernardy