CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
WHY ITALY IS WITH 
 THE ALLIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANTHONY HOPE. 
 
 lHct\^i<ih^i f)h/hoh</ /^o^fe c/" 
 
 l^ 
 
 LONDON i 
 
 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LTD. 
 
 191 7 
 
 HO, 
 
J) 
 
 S^CO^Sl/S 
 
WHY ITALY IS WITH THE 
 ALLIES. 
 
 "The power of this great national movement has 
 fortunately been directed only to the securing of Italian 
 liberty and not to the oppression of others. No doubt 
 the reason of this is the fortunate fact that no alien 
 race dwells beside the Italian within the boundaries 
 •of the Peninsula. There is no one for the Italian to 
 oppress. But the result kas been the sustained purity 
 and idealism of patriotic emotion there, from the time 
 of Mazzini's Young Italy to our own." 
 
 G. M. Trevelyan. 
 
 Garibaldi and the Making of Italy. Page 294. 
 
 What may conveniently be called modern 
 Italian history is summed up in the story of the 
 great national movement to which the accomplished 
 biographer of the Liberator refers in these words — 
 the movement which inspired Italy to the task of 
 winning her unity and her liberty. It matters little 
 whether we say that her aspiration was liberty 
 through unity, or unity through liberty. The two 
 things were indissolubly combined — ^were indeed 
 fused into one — in idea and in fact. Her dreamers 
 and prophets on the one hand, her rulers and states- 
 men on the other — we may content ourselves with 
 the representative names of Mazzini and Cavour — 
 differed about many things — means and methods, 
 times and seasons, internal political ideals and 
 forms of government — but they never differed about 
 the great twofold aspiration, which was but a single 
 ■one. Italy mu.st be united and Italy must be free. 
 This was the aim — one and indivisible — which fired 
 
 3 
 
the hearts and nerved the arms of Italian patriots 
 from the beginning of the Risor gimento to the day 
 on which Victor Emmanuel entered Rome. Ai^d 
 beyond that day. 
 
 To an Italian patriot it could not be otherwise. 
 Melancholy centuries had taught him that division 
 spelt servitude, servitude to many masters, or per- 
 haps, in the end, to one. Whether he approached 
 the question from the idealistic point of view or 
 from the severely practical — whether he were a 
 patriotic dreamer or the most "real" of "real" 
 politicians — the same conclusion was forced upon 
 him. An united Italy alone could be a free Italy. 
 An Italy united and free was at once the only 
 Italy worth having and the only Italy possible to 
 get. It alone satisfied the heart of the dreamer and 
 the mind of the statesman. Italy was no Italy 
 unless she were free ; Italy could not be Italy at all, 
 unless union gave her the strength to maintain and 
 defend her freedom. Unless she possessed that 
 strength, both unity and freedom were impossible ; 
 they could never be obtained or, at best, would be 
 transitory and delusive. The old enemies who had 
 parcelled her out, tim.e and again, would be able and 
 only too ready to repeat the operation. There w^as, 
 then, nothing wild and extravagant in the vision of 
 the dreamer, any more than there was anything un- 
 reasonable or aggressive in the demand of the 
 statesman. They met in the end, and met on firm 
 ground. In the end all that either asked was to 
 possess his own house and to possess it in security. 
 
 There is one thing always to be remembered 
 when we are considering Italian questions. This 
 Italy, united and thereby free, is a great nation. 
 There is perhaps no single criterion judging by 
 which we can call a nation great ; but what possible 
 criterion does not united and free Italy satisfy?" 
 
 4 
 
Whether we judge by history and tradition, or by 
 literature and art, or by territory, population, and 
 resources, she is great. Greatness cannot give or 
 increase the right to freedom — that depends upon 
 other considerations — but it does and should ex- 
 tend the use to be made of freedom. Greatness 
 brings responsibility. Italy is not only able, she 
 is also bound, to make her voice heard in the world, 
 to take her share in the government of it, to do her 
 part in securing that right and not wrong ideals 
 shall prevail, that a right and not a wrong concep- 
 tion of civilisation shall triumph. If she does not 
 do these things, she is false to the heritage which 
 she has reclaimed for herstif by splendid effort. 
 If they will properly conceive of their position, the 
 Great Pow"ers must see themselves as trustees of 
 the welfare of the world. Italy is one of them. 
 She is not one of the small nations who may pro- 
 perly, with full right and with no loss of dignity, 
 ask to be guarded by civilisation ; she is bound her- 
 self to be a guardian of it. 
 
 And yet, guardian as she was and was bound to 
 be of civilisation — of right and justice — she was 
 herself also a claimant, a petitioner at the bar of 
 justice and of right. Her union was not complete, 
 nor her freedom secure. She was not yet mistress 
 of the whole of her house, and not quite safe in 
 any part of it. And plainly it is difficult, with all 
 the goodwill in the world, to be an efficient guardian 
 unless you are yourself independent and secure. 
 Italy did not feel herself, in a full measure, either. 
 The "work of the great national movement was still 
 incomplete — incomplete alike for the dreamer and 
 for the statesman. 
 
 lialia Irredenta — Italy Unredeemed — is a pic- 
 turesque phrase, and picturesque phrases are apt 
 to be. suspected, often with justice. This one, how- 
 
 5 
 
ever, happens to express a simple truth. There 
 still exist, beyond the present political frontiers of 
 Italy but contiguous with them, considerable terri- 
 tories inhabited by people Italian by nationality, 
 language, history, and culture, even as the terri- 
 tories themselves are Italian by every canon of 
 political geography. For centuries they were 
 Italian; it is hardly more than a century ago that 
 they were forcibly torn from Italy; there is no 
 manner of doubt that the}- are Italian now in heart 
 and feeling, and eagerly await the chance of be- 
 coming so again in fact. 
 
 More than this. Not only are these territories 
 essential to the unity and completeness of Italy; 
 they are no less indispensable to her securit)- and 
 to her freedom. Through the possession of these 
 territories i\ustria holds the keys to Italy — the 
 mountains from which her armies can descend on 
 the Italian plains, the harbours whence her fleet 
 can assail the eastern coast of Italy. 
 
 A hard situation for Italy to accept ! And yet 
 she did accept it — not indeed in the sense that she 
 abandoned her rightful claims or the hope of 
 realising them some day and by some means, but in 
 the sense that she consented to, their remaining in 
 abeyance, and — so far from seeking to enforce 
 them by her own arms, or by intrigue, or by concert- 
 ing alliances against Austria — even became, in- 
 obedience to what she herself (or her rulers) con- 
 sidered to be paramount national interests, an ally 
 of Austria and a participant in the Triple Alliance. 
 There is no need to examine the soundness or 
 unsoundness of her policy in taking this step. Ir 
 is sufficient here to say that, having entered into 
 this engagement, she loyally observed it so long 
 as the Alliance which she had joined preserved — 
 or could possibly be regarded as preserving — the 
 
pacific and purely defensive character in the guise 
 of which it had gained her adherence. 
 
 Thus matters stood with Italy when this war 
 came upon the world, and whatever doubts might 
 be felt in some quarters as to its origin and its 
 originators, its nature and character, Italy felt none. 
 She knew her allies too well, and had too good 
 cause for her knowledge. She was not deceived 
 by the pretext of Serajevo. How should she be, 
 when her statesmen knew that Austria, or rather 
 the Central Powers, had meditated just the same 
 couf a year before, and had been turned from it 
 only by her own refusal to be their accomplice? 
 She knew that it was no defensive war. She said 
 as much, and announced that she would be no 
 party to it. Probably the other two hardly ex- 
 pected that she would, for this time they had not 
 even taken the trouble, or observed the courtesy, 
 of consulting her. Yet Austria, at least, was 
 bound to consult her before she occupied, either 
 permanently or even temporarily, a yard of Serbian 
 territory ; indeed, she was not merely bound to con- 
 sult her; she was bound by the Treaty of Alliance 
 to arrive with her at " a previous agreement on the 
 principle of reciprocal consent" in regard to an}^ 
 advantages which she might derive from the 
 alteration of the stattts qtio in the Balkans. A 
 like obligation would have lain on Italy, had she 
 been the Power whose action altered the status qtio. 
 
 Italy, then, declared herself neutral and, let it 
 be remembered, by this neutrality rendered great 
 service to the Allies and to the cause for which 
 they were fighting. Even moderate Italian forces, 
 arrayed on the side of the Central Powers, might 
 have vitally affected the course of the war in 1914. 
 But the moral service was no less valuable. Italy's 
 neutrality was an independent support of the 
 
 7 
 
Allies' contention, a clear and unhesitating con- 
 demnation of the real aggressors. "But," says 
 an Italian writer, "Italy has not claimed and will 
 not claim any gratitude from the Allies for this; 
 to enter the war on the side of the Central Empires 
 would have been something like a physical impossi- 
 bility to us. It might have meant an internal 
 revolution, if the Government had chosen to engage 
 the nation on that course; but no Italian Govern- 
 ment would in any case have made Italy the accom- 
 plice of a deliberate aggression on the peace of 
 Europe, of a war waged for the purpose of imposing 
 the hegemony of one nation on the world."* 
 And it seems to be a fact that no Italian statesman 
 of established rank urged his countrymen to such 
 a course,. a rather remarkable fact when we remem- 
 ber the extent to which Italy was permeated by 
 German commercial interests and influences. But 
 if Italy had allowed too much of her business to 
 slip into German hands, she kept her honour and 
 her conscience in her own. 
 
 For nine months Italy maintained her neutrality, 
 and during this period she carried on negotiations 
 with Austria on the subject of her unredeemed 
 provinces and her frontiers. Into these we need 
 not enter in detail, but something must be said, 
 because some extreme idealists — at least we shall 
 see some reason to think them extreme — have 
 accused Italy of trying to make profit out of her 
 principles, that is, out of the opportunity which her 
 refusal to participate in an aggressive war gave 
 her. There was a party in Italy which might 
 perhaps fairly be considered as open to this charge 
 (not, after all, as politics go, a very heinous one) — 
 the party led by Sign or Giolitti, one of her most 
 
 *Raffaello Piccoli. "Italy and the War." T. Fisher 
 Unwin, London. Page 9. 
 
influential statesmen.. He advised Italy tb pledge 
 her continued neutrality, and in return for it to 
 accept from Austria a farecchio or, as we might 
 say, "something on account" of her historic claims. 
 But this party, stroaig as it was in some influential 
 quarters, upheld by powerful commercial and finan- 
 cial interests, and energetically backed by Germany 
 and Austria, was not the party that won the day. 
 Nations are judged not by the policies that they 
 reject, but by those which they accept. The policy 
 pursued by the Ministry of Signor Salandra, which 
 was in power and which the nation was unmistakably 
 resolved to keep in power, was something quite 
 different. 
 
 It was the duty of responsible Italian statesmen 
 to ensure that the country should come to no harm 
 by its policy of neutrality, if that proved to be the 
 policy for which Italy finally elected. The risks 
 of it were considerable ; they were seen and appre- 
 ciated from the outset. If the Central Powers were 
 victorious, how would Italy stand ? Her gates were 
 still open, or at least the keys of them were in 
 Austria's hands. If the victorious Empires were 
 minded to punish the desertion of their ally, the 
 way was open. Here was the crux of the matter. 
 What Italy demanded might be styled, in the veiled 
 language of diplomacy, "compensations" — com- 
 pensations due under the Treaty of Triple Alliance 
 for Austria's disturbance of equilibrium in the 
 Balkans. In reality, and above all for the purposes 
 of these uneasy months, they were safeguards. 
 Would Austria give — and would Germany guaran- 
 tee — to Italy frontiers which she could defend, 
 behind which she could be safe and free? ^ The 
 moment that tlic Triple Alliance ceased to be in 
 effective force, then necessarily, and as it were auto- 
 matically'die question of rhc unredeemed provinces, 
 
 Q 
 
which had been in abeyance, was raised at once and 
 in an urgent form. For with the provinces went 
 the frontiers — and with them both -went also the 
 question of strategic safety in the AHriatic Sea. 
 Again, as in the earlier days of the great national 
 movement, the two questions were but one. Again 
 for Italy unity and freedom were indissohibly con; 
 nected, and safety was the condition of both. How 
 could Austria or her partner complain, when it was 
 their own unprovoked action which roused the two- 
 fold question from its troubled sleep .-^ If Italy 
 " grasped her opportunity," it was the only oppor- 
 tunity of national safety that she grasped — unless 
 indeed she were even now to buy her safety at the 
 price of becoming an accomplice in the crime of 
 the war. 
 
 Well, Austria would give something — at least 
 she would promise something; she would promise 
 something some day ; after the war was over would 
 be the most convenient time. And Germany would 
 guarantee her promise to give something some day 
 —after the war, by preference. And what nation 
 ought not to be happy, content, and confident with 
 Austria's promise and Germany's guarantee? But 
 events had happened in other parts of the world 
 which made Italian statesmen pardonably shy of 
 confiding in Austrian promises and even in German 
 guarantees. 
 
 To these events, to this wider field, we must now 
 turn, not indeed in order to re-tell, in any detail, 
 the thrice-told story of horror and brutality, of utter 
 lawlessness, and of an ambition which revealed 
 itself as at once pitiless and unbounded, but to 
 show how the revelation of these things — growing- 
 clearer day by day through the anxious and restless 
 months cf neutrality — affected the Italian people, 
 and brought them, as .surely and perhaps even more 
 
 10 
 
quickly than it brought their statesmen, to a realisa- 
 tion of what was in truth at stake in the war and 
 of what part it behoved Italy to play. Many Italians 
 indeed there were who needed no such enlighten- 
 ment, who saw from the beginning the bearing of 
 the struggle, who knew by memory and tradition 
 what the tedeschi — Germans and Austrians, for in 
 Italy the one hated name is common to both — were 
 and what manner of things they did. Early in the 
 fight the name of Garibaldi — in itself a battle-cry — 
 was written on the roll of the legions of France. 
 From the beginning there was a strong party of 
 generous and ardent, yet clear-sighted, men who 
 saw that the fate of Italy was involved in the fate 
 of Europe, and that the fate of Europe, yes, and 
 of the world, was in question. " It was not to us," 
 writes one of these, "who have of the tedeschi a 
 recent and bitter experience, besides an intimate 
 knowledge that spreads over centuries — that the 
 revelation of the temper of the German people 
 could come as a surprise. We knew what to expect 
 from them, and here too we had our place assigned 
 in advance. It was not a matter of choice."* 
 
 Many such voices made themselves heard. 
 .There was, God knows, no lack of texts to preach 
 on, no want of material from which a moral might 
 be drawn. Belgium, with its utter negation alike 
 of law, of faith, and of humanity — with the rapine 
 and flame and blood of Aerschot and Andenne, of 
 Dinant and Louvain — Poland, Serbia, and invaded 
 France — the staggering deed of shame that sank 
 the Lusitania — if these things were to be, done and 
 suffered, civilisation was dead. Here was one issue 
 which the course of the war revealed to Italy; she 
 could not well have been expected to anticipate 
 such things; nobody anticipated them. But seeing 
 
 *Raffaello Piccoli. "Italv and the War." Page i^ 
 
 II 
 
is believing, and a new light dawned on the mind 
 of Italy — Italy, the heir of Rome, who had given 
 civilisation and law to Europe. 
 
 But another light dawned on. her as the war went 
 on. If German methods of warfare were thus 
 rudely inconsistent with law, good faith, humanity, 
 and civilisation — and on which of all these counts 
 can any man of independent mind acquit Germany ? 
 — it was inevitable that Italy should ask herself, 
 with more and more urgency, and more and more 
 misgiving, whether German objects were any more 
 consonant with the ideals — or rather with the most 
 modest demands— of Western civilisation than her 
 methods. Ruthless cruelties were based on — and 
 almost avowedly defended by — arrogant pretensions. 
 If civilisation was to be banished, freedom was to 
 follow in its train. In his great speech, delivered 
 at the Capitol in Rome on the and June, 19 15, 
 Signor Salandra, then Italian Prime Minister, 
 eloquentl}'^ puts the case, and we may take his voice 
 for that of his country. He puts Italy's case first, 
 but passes on from that to embrace the European, 
 the world-wide, issue. " Let us suppose," he says, 
 "that Germany's guarantee was given with the full 
 intention of carrying it out. Let us suppose that 
 at the end of the war Germany would be in a posi- 
 tion to keep her word — which is by no means cer- 
 tain — what would our position have been after this 
 agreement.'' There would have been a new Triple 
 Alliance, a renewed Triple Alliance, but under far 
 other and far inferior conditions than had existed 
 before, because there would have been one sovereig-n 
 state and two vassal states. On the day on which 
 ' one of the clauses of the Treaty was not fulfilled 
 . . . . of whom could we ask redress? Should 
 we have to apply to our common superior — to 
 Germany ? " 
 
 !2 
 
Then from this national point of view he rises 
 to the international — not with bitterness towards 
 Germany (with far less bitterness than history would 
 justly warrant from Italy towards the tedeschi) — 
 indeed with a generous recognition of her qualities, 
 but with ardour and with clarity. "With all the 
 respect due to learned, powerful, great Germany, 
 that marvellous example of organisation and re- 
 sistance, I must say, in the name of my country, 
 no vassalage; no protectorate under anyone. The 
 dream of a universal hegemony has been shattered. 
 The whole world is risen up against it. The peace 
 and civilisation of humanity must in the future be 
 basea on respect for existing nationalities, among 
 which great Germany must take her place as an 
 equal and not as a mistress." And we are told that 
 this transition from the national to the international, 
 from the Italian to the world-wide point of view, 
 was greeted with loud applause by the audience 
 assembled in the Capitol. 
 
 It might well be thus acclaimed : for the orator 
 was faithfully reflecting the mind of his country, 
 and truh' expressing the change which had come 
 over it during the first months of the war, and thanks- 
 to the revelation which the war had brought. For 
 this transition, this progress, from the national to- 
 the international standpoint is exactly what had 
 happened in Italy during the months of her neu- 
 trality, and sums up the history of that period. Or 
 the same thing may be better put by saying that 
 Italy had *^me to realise that the national and the 
 international were bound up together, just as, in the 
 old days of the great movement of the re-birth of 
 Italy, unity and freedom had been bound up to- 
 gether for Italy herself. The concrete objectives 
 which she set before her, when she entered on the 
 war, might be stated in terms of national aspira- 
 
 1.3 
 
tions and of military security, but they transcended 
 these limits. To Italy's now fully awakened con- 
 sciousness these things, still cherished and necessary 
 in themselves, took on a yet higher and wider 
 significance. They were seen as the conditions- — ■ 
 and the only possible conditions— on which Italy 
 could share in the freedom and civilisation of the 
 world, and could take a worthy part in preserving 
 and maintaining them. No longer merely har- 
 boured as national aspirations for the fulfilment of 
 which Italy was content to wait and hope — even as 
 France had schooled herself to wait and hope in 
 peace for the return of her lost provinces — they 
 w-ere perceived now to be at once a national neces- 
 sity, and a European necessity, essential to Italy's 
 independent life, essential to Europe's freedom. 
 
 And they could be realised only by entering the 
 war on the side of the Allies. To this conclusion 
 also Italy had been driven — in part by the course 
 •of her negotiations with Austria, no less powerfully 
 by what she had seen in the larger theatre of events. 
 She saw now that she could no longer rely on her 
 rights, that she could no longer afford to repose a 
 passive confidence in what might come to her in a 
 future when the claims of nationality and freedom 
 should be better recognised. She had witnessed 
 plain proofs of the emptiness of such a confidence. 
 This is the Nemesis which waits on German princi- 
 ples and methods. Repudiating right, Germany 
 makes others despair of resting their case on right. 
 Suddenly seizing for herself her military oppor- 
 tunity, she makes others afraid to wait for their - 
 peaceful opportunities. Appealing to force only — - 
 as sole method, as paramount justification, as reli- 
 gion Itself — she makes of no avail the appeal to 
 anything else. How can she be allowed to com- 
 plain of the arbitrament which she herself has not 
 
 H 
 
only challenged but glorified ? She is contemptuous 
 of anything but power — and of all kinds of power 
 save one. To that one power of the sword she 
 compels all nations to appeal — yet with the hope 
 and the purpose that it may not stand thus with 
 the world for all time. But for the moment so it 
 does stand, and by May, 1915, Italy had realised it. 
 
 "Each for all, all for each, all confident that 
 by our supreme efforts we shall hand over to the 
 generations that are to come an Italy more complete, 
 more powerful, more honoured; an Italy who shall 
 take her seat in the comity of nations, not as a 
 vassal, not as a minor, but secure within her natural 
 boundaries ; an Italy who shall return to the fruitful 
 rivalries of Peace, the champion, as she has ever 
 been, of liberty and justice in the world." 
 
 In these words her Prime Minister defined the 
 aims that Italy set before her when she entered the 
 war. They are national, but they are also more 
 than national. In what Italy seeks, she seeks only 
 that which is her own and without which she cannot 
 be secure. And, if it be given her to attain what 
 she seeks, she engages to use it as a free and equal 
 member of the comity of free anH equal nations, 
 and for the better advancement of the cause of 
 liberty and justice in the world. , She is true to the 
 traditions of the great national movement — to the 
 aims of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. She is 
 true to them, but she passes beyond and even above 
 them. She sees herself not only as the free nation 
 which those great men aspired to make her, but as 
 a member of the community of free nations, a place 
 that she will make for herself. 
 
 Is there anything unworthy in this — anything 
 that can support a charge of calculated ambition 
 and rapacity? There is no substance in the 
 accusation. The purity and idealism which 
 
 26 
 
inspired her struggle for unity and freedom 
 are alive in her still, but they have taken 
 on a broader view and a higher vision. For the 
 freedom of her unredeemed provinces Italy had 
 been content to wait. For the freedom of the 
 world she saw that she must strike. By her great 
 decision she did honour to herself and to the cause 
 to which she <jave alleoiance. 
 
 Printed in Great Briiniyt by /layman, Christy & Lilly, Ltd. London. 
 
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Cornell University Library 
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 Why Italy Is with the allies. 
 
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