in the disregard of
this obligation: Italy evidently was too unimportant a factor to be
precise with. Italy might, then and there, the 1st of August, 1914, very
well have denounced the Alliance, and perhaps would have done so had
she been prepared for the consequences, had the Salandra Government
been then at the helm.
There is another coil to the affair, not generally recognized in America.
Austria in striking at Serbia was potentially aiming at a closer
envelopment of Italy along the Adriatic, provision for which had been
made in a special article of the Triple Alliance,--the seventh,--under
which she had bound herself to grant compensations to Italy for any
disturbance of the Balkan situation. Austria, when she was brought to
recognize this commission of fault,--which was not until December,
1914, not seriously until the close of January, 1915,--pretended that her
blow at Serbia was chastisement, not occupation. But it is absurd to
assume that having chastised the little Balkan state she would leave it
free and independent. It is true that in January Austrian troops were no
longer in Balkan territory, but that was not due to intention or desire!
They had been there, they are there now, and they will be there as long
as the Teutonic arms prevail. It is a game of chess: Italy knew the
gambit as soon as Austria moved against Serbia. The response she must
have known also, but she had not the power to move then. So she
insisted pertinaciously on her right under the seventh clause of the
Triple Alliance to open negotiations for "compensations" for Austria's
aggression in the Balkans, and finally with the assistance of Berlin
compelled the reluctant Emperor to admit her right.
These complexities of international chess, which the American mind
never seems able to grasp, are instinctively known by the man in the
street in Europe. Every one has learned the gambits: they do not have to
be explained, nor their importance demonstrated. The American can
profitably study those maps so liberally displayed in shop windows, as
I studied them for hours in default of anything better to do in the
drifting days of early May. The maps will show at a glance that Italy's
northern frontiers are so ingeniously drawn--by her hereditary
enemy--that her head is virtually in chancery, as every Italian knows
and as the whole world has now realized after four months of patient
picking by Italian troops at the outer set of Austrian locks. And there is
the Adriatic. When Austria made the frontier, the sea-power question
was not as important as it has since become. The east coast of the
Adriatic was a wild hinterland that might be left to the rude peoples of
Montenegro and Albania. But it has come into the world since then.
Add to this that the Italian shore of the Adriatic is notably without good
harbors and indefensible, and one has all the elements of the strategic
situation. All fears would be superfluous if Austria, the old bully at the
north, would keep quiet: the Triple Alliance served well enough for
over thirty years. But would Austria play fair with an unsympathetic
ally that she had not taken into her confidence when she determined to
violate the first term of the Triple Alliance?
All this may now be pondered in the "Green Book," more briefly and
cogently in the admirable statement which Italy made to the Powers
when she declared war on Austria. That the Italian Government was not
only within its treaty rights in demanding those "compensations" from
Austria, but would have been craven to pass the incident of the attack
on Serbia without notice, seems to me clear. That it was a real necessity,
not a mere trading question, for Italy to secure a stronger frontier and
control of the Adriatic, seems to me equally obvious. These, I take it,
were the vital considerations, not the situation of the "unredeemed"
Italians in Trent and Trieste. But Austria, in that grudging maximum of
concession which she finally offered to Italy's minimum of demand,
insisted upon taking the sentimental or knavish view of the Italian
attitude: she would yield the more Italianated parts of the territory in
dispute, not the vitally strategic places. Nor would she deliver her
concessions until after the conclusion of the war--if ever!--after she had
got what use there was from the Italians enrolled in her armies fighting
Russia. For Vienna to regard the tender principle of nationalism is a
good enough joke, as we say. Her persistence in considering Italy's
demands as either greed or sentiment is proof of Teutonic lack of
imagination. The Italians are sentimental, but they are even more
practical. It was not the woes of the "unredeemed" that led the Salandra
Government to reject the final offering of
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