With British Guns in Italy | Page 2

ASIAGO PLATEAU
CHAPTER XXX
SOME NOTES ON NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

CHAPTER XXXI
ROME IN THE SPRING
CHAPTER XXXII
THE FIFTEENTH OF JUNE, 1918
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN THE TRENTINO
CHAPTER XXXIV
SIRMIONE AND SOLFERINO
CHAPTER XXXV
THE ASIAGO PLATEAU ONCE MORE

PART VI THE LAST PHASE

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE MOVE TO THE PIAVE
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST BATTLE
CHAPTER XXXVIII

ACROSS THE RIVER
CHAPTER XXXIX
LIBERATORI
CHAPTER XL
THE COMPLETENESS OF VICTORY
CHAPTER XLI
IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS
CHAPTER XLII
LAST THOUGHTS ON LEAVING ITALY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Italian Troops Crossing a Snowfield in the Trentino
Railway Bridge over the Isonzo Wrecked by Austrian Shell Fire
Italian Mule Transport on the Carso
No. 3 Gun of the First British Battery in Italy
Casa Girardi and Italian Huts
Some of Our Battery Huts near Casa Girardi
The Eastern Portion of The Asiago Plateau
Road Behind Our Battery Position Leading to Pria Dell' Acqua
Chapel at San Sisto and Italian Graves

Huts on a Mountain Side in the Trentino
Lorries Leaving Asiago after Its Liberation
Captured Austrian Guns in Val D'Assa

LIST OF MAPS
Map of Northern Italy
Map of the Isonzo Front
Map of Val Brenta and the Asiago Plateau
* * * * *
WITH BRITISH GUNS IN ITALY


PART I
INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I
THE ANGLO-ITALIAN TRADITION AND ITALY'S
PART IN THE WAR
Anglo-Italian friendship has been one of the few unchanging facts in
modern international relations. Since the French Revolution, in the
bellicose whirligig of history and of the old diplomacy's reckless dance

with death, British troops have fought in turn against Frenchmen and
Germans, against Russians and Austrians, against Bulgarians, Turks
and Chinamen, against Boers, and even against Americans, but never,
except for a handful of Napoleonic conscripts, against Italians. British
and Italian troops, on the other hand, fought side by side in the Crimea,
and, in the war which has just ended, have renewed and extended their
comradeship in arms in Austria and Italy, in France and in the Balkans.
During the nineteenth century Italy in her Wars of Liberation gained, in
a degree which this generation can hardly realise, the enthusiastic
sympathy and the moral, and sometimes material, support of all the
best elements in the British nation. There were poets--Byron and
Shelley, the Brownings, Swinburne and Meredith--who were filled with
a passionate devotion to the Italian cause.[1] There were
statesmen--Palmerston, Lord John Russell and Gladstone--who did
good work for Italian freedom, and Italians still remember that in 1861
the British Government was the first to recognise the new Kingdom of
United Italy, while the Governments of other Powers were intriguing to
harass and destroy it. There were individual, adventurous Englishmen,
such as Forbes, the comrade of Garibaldi, who put their lives and their
wealth at the disposal of Italian patriots. But, beyond all these, it was
the great mass of the British people which stood steadily behind the
Italian people in its long struggle for unity and freedom.
[Footnote 1: Even Tennyson, who was not very susceptible to foreign
influences, invited Garibaldi to plant a tree in his garden.]
Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour, "the soul, the sword and the brain,"
which together created Modern Italy, all had close personal relations
with this country. Mazzini, driven from his own land by foreign
oppressors, lived a great part of his life in exile among us, and here
dreamed those dreams, which still inspire generous youth throughout
the world. When Garibaldi visited us in 1864, he was enthusiastically
acclaimed by all sections of the nation, by the Prince of Wales, the
Peerage and the Poet Laureate, no less than by the working classes. It is
recorded that, used as he was, as a soldier, to the roar of battle and, as a
sailor, to the roar of the storm, Garibaldi almost quailed before the

tumultuous roar of welcome which greeted him as he came out of the
railway station at Nine Elms. Cavour was a deep student and a great
admirer of British institutions, both political and economic, and in a
large measure founded Italian institutions upon them. And the first
public speech he ever made was made in London in the English tongue.
These great men passed in time from the stage of Italian public life, and
others took their places, but amid all the shifting complexities of recent
international politics, no shadow has ever fallen across the path of
Anglo-Italian friendship. And indeed during the Boer War Italy was the
only friend we had left in Europe.
Italy's membership of the Triple Alliance was always subject to two
conditions, first, that the Alliance was to be purely defensive, and
second, that Italy would never support either of her partners in war
against England. Thus, under the first condition, when Austria
proposed in 1913