LAND AND ,W,ATER. 
May 29, 1915. 
THE SOUL OF ITALY. 
By GUGLIELMO EMANUEL. 
London Correspondent of the " Carrier e della Sera." 
THE soul of Italy is aflame. 
Italy, entering on the war, sees in it for her 
a war of liberation and defence; liberation of 
her lands and her sons from the domination of an 
alien race; defence against the menace to all the 
Latin peoples, which would be the permanent outcome of a 
German victory. Not only is Italy fighting to free those 
[Italians who alone of all Austrian subjects were denied the 
Bacred right of their nationality, but she is fighting to defend 
what Italy is now, what Italy possesses already, from the 
danger of a Teutonic hegemony. 
Serbia had been attacked — and Russia through her; 
France had been assailed and England menaced when the 
land frontier of Belgium was invaded by the German hordes. 
But it would be childish to consider as defensive wars only 
those conflicts in which the enemy suddenly invades the 
territory of a country. Defensive wars are all that are 
waged in defence of threatened freedom, and the threat 
again.st Italian independence has been urgent and continuous 
from the day in which Italy entered the Triple Alliance. 
•That unfortunate pact has never been rightly understood in 
this country; for Italy it was the only way to postpone the 
inevitable attack from Austria. Prince Biilow himself in 
his memoirs has clearly stated the problem in admitting that 
" Italy and Austria can only be allies or enemies." Just 
because Italy could not afford to be the open enemy of the 
Dual Monarchy, she had to accept the position of an ally. 
For more than three decades Italy lived in the dread of an 
ally in whom she plainly saw an enemy; defence had to 
be discreet as it was permanent, under the perennial veiled 
threat. Austria openly and insolently made armed prepara- 
tions on the Italian north-eastern frontier, coldly calcu- 
lating that it was — together with the persistent suppression 
of Italian nationality among her subjects — the best way to 
cow Italy into submission and renunciation of her dream 
of complete national unity. It was quite clear that the Haps- 
burg Monarchy was not simply taking excusable measures of 
preparation against the time that her neighbour should 
grow tired of subjection. Austria was in reality preparing 
to attack Italy when the opportunity should be favourable. 
The strange thing about the Triple Alliance was this, that it 
had already ceased to guarantee that security from an Aus- 
trian menace for which alone we had entered the compact. 
Twice, though we had not offered to Austria any cause of 
offence, Italy had been in immediate danger of invasion by 
her ally: once when the country was visited by one of the 
greatest disasters that ever befell a country, the Messina 
earthquake; the second time when the young kingdom was 
engaged in the Tripoli campaign. It is no exaggeration to 
say that at every moment Italy was open to attack, because 
•he had not those strategic frontiers on the Alps and the 
Adriatic which the present war is going to assure her. 
Behind Austria was the mighty danger of Germany. 
The march on Salonica through Serbia not only spelt the end 
of the free Balkan nationalities, but also meant that Italy 
should become in the Mediterranean what she was already in 
the Adriatic, the humble servant of the Teutonic powers. 
Such was the situation when the ultimatum launched 
against Serbia plunged Europe into the greatest war 
that the world has known. Italy could not be asked to fight 
on the side of Germany and Austria to help her own further 
subjugation and accomplish her own final downfall. Not 
even the stolid, unimaginative German could advance such a 
pretence. Italian neutrality was proclaimed and accepted 
by her allies. But that eventful day made an empty formula 
of the Triple Alliance, and prepared the way for the partici- 
pation of Italy in the war on the side of the nations fighting 
for freedom and right. 
Neutrality has lasted nine months. They were not 
wasted months. It is no longer a secret that last August 
Italian military preparations were not such as to allow her to 
enter the field with reasonable chances of success. Those 
adventurous spirits who immediately understood the call of 
destiny had to wait patiently for her workshops and arsenals 
to pile lip the arms which were sorely needed. The out- 
break of war had caught Italy just while she was in the 
process of renewing her artillery armament; to rush into 
hostilities before such all-important bu.siness had been com- 
pleted would have been sheer madness. But the long vigil 
has been a blessing, because during the suspen.se the national 
consciousness has developed, and every hour has afforded new 
reasons why the Italian people should enter the fray with an 
invincible purpose. 
From the purely national problem of accomplishing the 
final unity of the country, and conquering her natural 
frontiers on land and sea, the people has been slowly but 
surely brought to consider another aspect of the struggle: 
the human— or inhuman— aspect. In this Italy has been 
helped by the way Germany has chosen to wage war. The 
Latin soul has been shocked and revolted by the ruthless 
devastation of Belgium, by the systematic frightfulness of 
the German armies, by the slaughter of non-combatants on 
board the Litsiiania, and the unscrupulous use of poison gases 
blown against a most chivalrous opponent. 
It is just because Italy knows now what a modern war 
means — and nobody of those who were involved in it last 
August knew — it is just because she does not ignore the cost, 
the sacrifices, the appalling losses she is going to incur, that 
her decision is equivalent to national regeneration. 
The resolve to fight has been maturing slowly but deeply 
in the conscience of the Italian masses, who visualised what 
a German hegemony over Europe would mean. Even among 
the most simple of Italian peasants, as among the fiery 
nationalists, the aim of Italy became twofold ; not only was 
war necessary to make Italy greater, but to make her 
greater in a better Europe, where such horrors would be made 
impossible, and a more just, more human order of things 
would be inaugurated. 
One could not gauge this deep working in the people's 
soul in term of numbers or of Parliamentary majorities. 
German and Austrian diplomatists, of course, were quite 
unable, for psychological reasons, to understand the strong 
and ever-increasing determination of the Italian people to 
share in the great defence of civilisation against barbarism. 
But, happily, the Italian Government of Signor Salandra — 
probably the most national and representative one that tai 
kingdom ever had from the days of the Risorgimento — was 
quite alive to the real feelings of the country. 
And the people felt sure, by their wonderful prophetic 
instinct, that the Cabinet was in accord with them, and 
worthy of the honour and the responsibility of leading the 
nation in this supreme hour. The spiritual preparation for 
the sacrifice was going on unobserved, perhaps unconsciously, 
all those long months of vigil. Now the decision is irrevoc- 
able, and the conviction from which it arises lends it a sort 
of religious exaltation. 
All the events of the last two weeks, from the day in 
which Italy's poet, after five years of voluntary exile, came 
back 10 clarion the dawn of a new Italy, to the day when two 
himdred thousand people marched to the Quirinal after Par- 
liament had sanctioned war, were marked not only by enthu- 
siasm but also by a kind of vivid romantic glow. Every 
assertion of Italian feeling was marked by expressions of 
singular beauty. There was nothing prearranged or 
organised in the demonstrations, with the exception of tha 
Quarto celebrations, but a sort of ritual full of subtle mean- 
ings was unconsciously created every time the crowd gathered 
— a natural outcome of the stirring of the national soul. 
When the processions started, very often they were pro- 
ceded by wagons laden with garlands which the citizens took 
to hang as votive offerings before the statues of the illus- 
trious dead who gave their lives to the making of Italy ; it was 
very like a propitiatory ceremony of ancient Rome, bufc 
nobody thought of this, for it was utterly spontaneous. 
Surely it has been fortunfate that Italy should hava 
found the voice of a supreme poet like D'Annunsdo to express 
the emotions of the nation in those days of spiritual miUtia, 
when every citizen felt himself a soldier even before the war. 
The mob was moved by his eloquence, from the roughest of 
navvies that acclaimed him when he reached the first Italian 
frontier town, to the crowds who begged for speeches from 
him, in Turin, in Genoa, in Rome, every day, and would nofc 
be satisfied. There is something angnst in this adoration of 
a whole peopla for the man who more than any other has the 
gift of creating noble words — fit to celebrate noble deeda; 
surely this recognition of the creattvo energy of poetry ia a 
testimony to the pure motives of tha Italian people in entev- 
ing ||{B .war. All the country is aflama for la heUa guerra. 
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