The World Decision | Page 6

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 Austria, and to accept the risks of war instead. It was rather the very practical consideration of that indefensible frontier, which Austria stubbornly refused to make safe for Italy--after she had given cause, by her attack upon Serbia, to render all her neighbors uneasy in their minds for their safety.
So much for the sentimental and the strategical