LAINU & WATER 
JSiovember i, 1917 
The Italian Peril 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THRKt military events have distinguished the jiast 
week.' Tliey differ greatly in importance and arc, 
in order of their importance, the breaking of tlie 
Italian front in the Julian Alps, tlie French action 
beyond the Aisne Kidge, and the further slight advance in 
I'Janders. 
The first of these is clearly a thing of the very first magni- 
tude. It must be dealt with more thoroughly and its signifi- 
cance comprehended even more clearly than the victory of the 
Trench in the Laonnais. It may determine the future of 
the war. It has already profoundly modified its character. 
Its gravity cannot be overestimated. 
And all this is true, not because the second Italian army 
has suffered a complete defeat -that may be repaired— but 
because /his defeat is the result of ii-hat we noic at last see to he 
the true situation oj the Russian armies and the true altitude 
of the enemy towards them. 
To understand what has happened we must begin by 
appreciating tlie two fundamental conditions of this enormous 
struggle. I mean the two fundamental military conditions as 
apart from the economic conditiuns which also determine it. 
These two fundamental military conditions arc the 
superiority of the old AWstern civilisation over the Central 
Empires in intelligence and direction of effort, and the 
superiority of the Central Empires (or, at any rate, of their 
governing Powers) o\'er the more primitive conditions of the 
East. 
The former of these truths we have long appreciated from 
familiarity with \\'estern conditions, from patriotism, and 
perhaps from vault}- as w ell : but the latter has been but slowly 
grasped and is perhaps not fully grasped even now. 
The former gave us the Marne, which saved the civilisation 
of Europe from immediate and apparently ine\itable disaster. 
The Marne was won because the intelligence of an old civilisa- 
tion, as it appeared in the particular field of strategy, was 
supermr to that of the Germans. That superiority in Western 
civilisation not only gave us the Marne : it also gave us the 
miracle of^the British military expansion : A thing which 
not only the enemy but probably most of our friends (and wc 
ourselves, for that matter) might have thought impossible. 
It gave us the power, did this first principle of Western 
superiority in culture and intelligence, to meet every new 
violation of international niorals on the enemy's part by 
rapidly impro\-ised counter-methods. It permitted the 
Western forces, far inferior numerically in 1914, to pin to the 
earth a numerically superior enemy, and it develoi»d with 
astonishing rapidity that p<iwer of munitionment of which 
Britain is the mainstay and which co\ers the whole of the 
Alliance. 
That first principle did all of these things, and (legitimately) 
was in our. eyes the governing condition of the war on its 
purely military side. 
But the second truth has proved very powerful indeed in 
modifying to our disadvantage the consequences of the first, 
and is at w^ork with disastrous effect to-day ' 
Germao Knowledge of Russia 
Tile German system of the Central Empires understood and 
could defeat the less developed society to the east of them. 
We knew that it was immensely superior in industrial power. 
We expected that superiority to tell. But we found it 
superior in a degree we had not expected. We found its 
political disciphne also supe-rior to that of the Slav in a degree 
we had not expected. Abo\c all, wc discovered the German 
to have -known the complex which used to be called the 
Russian Empiie as we in the U'est could never know it. 
It is this knowledge he has of the East, this superior know- 
ledge, which has produced the critical position in Italy. 
In the spring of 1915 every Western student of the war 
could tell you how the lines lav, the threat to Hungary through 
the Carpathian Passes, the strategical chances of the one side 
•and of the other ; the approacli of the Russians to the Mora- 
vian Gate ; the importance of the Dukla Pass ; the disadvan- 
tage they suffered from lack of lateral railways in Russian 
Poland, etc. 
I-Ivcry Western student of the war could also have told you 
that the enemy's industrial power being superior to that of 
the Russians, his power of munitionment was also superior. 
What such a student in the West could ml have told you, 
what no Western statesman or publicist dreamt of, but what 
the authorities of tire Central Empires clearly understood, was 
the decree of this difi'erence in po\\er of munitionment and the 
consequent chance the Austro-Germans had of breaking tli* 
Russian front. 
When the trial came the thesis of the German General Staff 
in this matter was amply confirmed. The difference in powei 
of fire was overwhelming and the Russian lines in Galicia 
were pierced. 
There followed a retreat conducted in a masterly fashion 
by the Grand Duke Nicholas, whidi preserved intact the 
organism of the Russian armies and the greater part of their 
artillery. But Poland was overrun and, north of Galicia, 
the Hues in nearly their present state established by the 
encniy. During the whole of that advance in the summer of 
1915 by the armies of the Central Powers, the governing 
condition was the overwhelming difference between munition- 
ment upon the one side and upon the other : Not only differ- 
ence of n>unitionmcnt in shell and general supply, but in the 
elementary matter of rifles. 
To-day the same phenomenon has appeared. Everyone 
\ratching the war from the West, with the very imperfect 
knowledge of Eastern conditions which the West possesses, 
postulated the necessity under which the Central Empirej 
must be of keeping a certain minimum of men to hold the 
Eastern line. To hold that line at all with such a very smal 
number (considering its immense length) was only made 
possible, of course, by the political collapse of Russia, orrathei 
of the numerous differing racial and religious groups which 
had formerly been called " Russia " under one common term. 
The Germans had kept there, on the Eastern front, about one- 
third of their total forces, and many of these of inferior 
niaterial ; the Austrians less than half their total. The 
immense line was watched by less than one man to a 
yard, counting everything— all the local reserves, all the 
auxiliaries. Never in history had a continuous line been so 
thinly held. 
Western Assumptions 
It was postula);ed in the W'est that, though the forces of the 
Central Powers thus detailed on the Eastern front were vir- 
tually in repose, subject to no pressure and suffering from no 
appreciable casualties, yet the enemy could not afford to leave 
gaps and to jeopardise the continuous strength of that line 
l>ecause the Russian Revolution, though in the military sense-a 
chaos, was yet also, in the military sense, incalculable. The 
enemy's Higher Command (it was thought) could not be certain 
that at any moment a reaction might not take place, discipline 
be restored in at any rate some portion of the idle men still 
wearing Russian uniform, and some local attack prove dis- 
astrous to the Austro-German defensive lines unless a bare 
minimum were left to defend them. 
We now know that this calculation was erroneous. The 
enemy, both Austrian and German, to whom the former 
Russian Empire and its inhabitants were not a distant thing 
known through books, but an immediate domestic problem 
intimately studied, had gauged the Russian situation weeks 
ago, and had gauged it rightly 
U'estern civilisation has for its defence ' under arms, 
and has always so_ had, far less men than the great mass 
which works under Prussia. The counterbalancing 
weight, the thing which made the event certain, was 
the number which the old Russian Empire could in 
practice keep armed and use actively as soldiers. This number 
was of course Smaller in proportion to the Czar's subjects by 
far than the corresponding mobilised force of the Western 
nations But it sufficed to keep the balance even while the 
material resources of Great Britain were being developed 
alter the astonishing fashion we have watched during the 
last three years, while the human material was being trained 
with a no less astonishing rapidity, and while the French 
sacTihced themselves in holding thepass for Europe.. 
But take away that balancing weight of Russia and things 
become very grave indeed. - The enemy judges that the balan- 
cing weight has gone.. He is probably right. Those now con- 
ducting or rather fomenting the chaos beyond the Eastern 
trontare in a great number his agents and in a greater number' 
ins well wishers. He has upon the situation there a minute, 
rleiailed, daily knowledge which we wholly lack. Acting 
upon that knowledge he has determined that" Russia no longer 
counts and that he can safely throw his weight westward. 
Hence this new Italian campaign. 
There is here another calculation in the enemy's mind 
which we must appreciate. He argues thus : 
' By m^' industrial superiority I compelled the retirement 
