JNovember i, 1917 
LAND & WATER, 
II 
Italy's Hour of Trial 
By Lewis R. Freeman 
Mr. Lewis Freeman has had during the last two years ex- 
ceptional experience of Italy. He resided in Rome for several 
months last wi>iter atul enjoyed the friendship of a number of 
prominent officials, some of them viembcrs of t/ie late Govern- 
ment. Last December and January he passed some weelis on 
the Italian front, and has only recently returned from a tour^ 
which took him to all parts of the Italian operations during 
July and August this summer. He therefore writes with 
intimacy of the actual conditions of Italy, civil atid military. 
STAGGERING as are the military results of it, there 
can be small doubt that the longer objective of the 
present Austro-German offensive on the Upper Isonzo 
is political, in short, that it aims, through the infliction 
of a decisive defeat on the battlefield, so to weaken what the 
enemy has recently repeatedly referred to as the " shattered 
moral " of the Italian people, that they would weaken in their 
prosecution of the war or even be willing to consider proposals 
for a separate peace. Nothing less than a bid for such a stake 
could have induced the Central Powers to embark upon an 
operation of such magnitude at the very end of the practicable 
campaigning season. That such an eventuality is not con- 
sidered beyond the realm of possibility even in Rome would 
seem to be indicated by these grave words with which Baron 
Sonnino— on what was practically the first day of the Austro- 
C^rman attack — addressed the Deputies in an endeavour to 
bring home to them the supreme gravity of the moment. 
It is a question of the future destiny of Italy, and 
any error may be irreparable .... The warmest upholder 
of peace must desire that the public order should not be dis- 
turbed, realising that any upheaval would retard peace and 
revive the belligerent spirit, at present depressed, of the 
Autocratic Empires To demand an immediate peace is 
equivalent to asking for a peace of dishonour and shame, and 
betrayal of our Allies. It would also mean the complete 
ruin of Italy. , 
The Political Objective 
It is my purpose here to discuss briefly the possibilities of 
the " longer or political objective " of the Austro-German 
offensive rather than the military situation, but a word 
parenthetically regarding the effect of local meteorological 
conditions on the continuance of the attack will possibly 
be of interest. The campaigning season on the Isonzo Front, 
while perhaps a month or two longer at each end than that in 
the High Alps, has been generally reckoned as coming well 
towards its close by the end of October. In 1916 the Italians 
struck, on the Carso, one of their most successful blows of 
the year in the first days of November, but from that time on 
until Cadorna launched his great double attack on the Upper 
Isonzo and against the Hermada, there was practically no 
action at all upon this Front. It had been Cadorna's inten- 
tion last year to follow the November attack with another 
t im'-'d for from two to three weeks later, and everything was 
ready for the launching of a heavy assault toward the end of 
that month. After waiting, however, for thirty-five days, 
on every one of which there was a considerable fall of rain or 
snow, the attack was abandoned for the season, and the Front 
settled down to its comparative winter quiet. 
The weather is, of course, much more severe on the Upper 
than on the Lower Isonzo, and the fact that snow has already 
fallen in the Julian Alps should have the effect of limiting 
the extent to which the enemy can develop his offensive as 
soon as he passes beyond the zone in which his communica- 
tions have_ been prepared in advance. Mud will not be a 
serious deterrent in this theatre, for the roads — ^most of them 
blasted out of the solid rock — are practically " self -metalling " 
from t^e moment their grade is established. In this con- 
nection it is only too probable that the magnificent road.^ 
which the Italians have been constructing with so much skill 
and labour from the moment of their entry into the war may 
greatly simplify the enemy's problem of advance. 
The people of the Allied countries have become so used to 
expecting exaggerations, misstatements, and even deliberate 
falsehoods in the speeches of German Ministers, that they 
paid rath(;r less attention than was its due to the declaration 
of Michaelis. in his speech to licichstag a month or more back, 
that there was a good deal of internal unrest in Italy. Nor 
were they especially concerned at the brief and casual reports 
tardily transmitted abroad regarding riots at Turin, Milan, 
Genoa, and several other industrial centres or ports of that 
country. Nor did the general public even attacli especial 
significance to the news that, following these disturbances, 
martial law had been proclaimed, not only in all of Lombardy 
and Piedmont — ^where the most of Italian war industry is 
carried on — ^but also in Calabria, at the southern extremity 
of the peninsula, and in a portion of Sicily. Tliis latter action 
—in which the strong hand of Cadorna was plainly evident, 
and which was undoubtedly the best way of dealing with the 
situation — ^"A'ould hardly have been resorted to unless there 
had been something more than sporadic symptoms of unrest 
to contend with. 
Bread Riots 
As a matter of fact the riots of a month or more ago were 
serious affairs, especially those in Turin. Since the Italian 
censor has passed the statement in a private letter I received 
shortly after these disturbances from a friend who was an 
eye-witness of most of them, there cannot be any harm 
in writing now that machine guns had to be used in the streets 
and that the dead ran into tliree figiu^es. " None but the 
rabble was concerned in these disturbances," wrote my in- 
formant, "and while their immediate cause might be ascribed 
to a temporary shortage of bvead, their real cause was a train 
of vicious propaganda set going by a committee of Russian 
Socialists who were through here not long ago, and who seem 
to have tried to jow the seeds of discord all over the country. 
... .It is a significant, but unfortunate fact that none of the 
local instigators of the trouble exposed himself anywhere, or 
at any time, where the bullets were flying." , 
During the several weeks I spent in Italy last summer — 
when, after landing at Brindisi from Albania, I traversed by 
slow stages the whole length of the peninsula, spent a fortnight 
at the Front, and visited Milan, Turin and other of the north- 
ern industrial centres on my way to F'rance — one sensed rather 
than saw evidence of impending trouble. The harvest had 
been uniformly excellent, aud I was especially struck by the 
fine progress of the havd-working peasants of all parts of the 
country in getting on with the harvest in spite of the shortage 
of labour. 
Most of the great industrial works of Lombardy and Pied- 
mont had been e.xtendcd since my last visit, six months pre- 
viously, and I must confess that the great Fiat plant at Turin 
impressed me as one of the most remarkable munition works 
I lad seen in any of the belligerent countries. Food, with the 
exception of sugar and butter, was fairly plentiful. The spirit 
of the men on all sectors of the Front seemed very high, though 
I do recall seeing a sign at the door of a big dug-out on the 
Carso which read, in Italian,. " We want Peace!" The fact 
that the officers with me did not order it to be taken down 
rather gave me the impression at the time that the thing was 
more or less of a joke. One also saw, especially at 
the junction stations, a good many soldiers going back from 
the Front in irons, but this I had attributed to the open way 
the Latin has of doing things that the Anglo-Saxon would be 
inclined to hide. 
Those in a position to get under the surface, however, saw 
trouble ahead, though none with whom I talked spoke 
quite so plainly as did the same gentleman whose words I 
have quoted above regarding the riots in Turin. " You 
cannot buy a ton of coal for heating in Turin for £20 " hesaid, 
" and there will not be a pound obtainable at any price this 
winter unless something is done to increase the import. So 
far, the only provision that has been made for fuel to tide over 
the six months of often bitter cold we have here is a lot of 
wood, stacked all together in one block, where the first enemy 
agent that wants to can set fire to it by soaking a cat in paraffin 
touching a match to it, and letting it loose anywhere in that 
vicinity. It goes down to zero here at times, and you may 
take it from me that the people will start trouble unless some- 
thing is done to enable them to keep warm." 
"Again, take the qustion of food. You think because you 
can now get practically anything you care to order that 
the outlook is favourable. But that is just the trouble. 
Food has been more plentiful than there has been any warrant 
for. The Government have not looked ahead. Italy is 
not much of a cereal producing coimtry, and I happen to be in 
a position' to know how greatly the normal import has been 
restricted at a time when there is also a falling off of the amount 
raised in the country. This has already made it hard to get 
bread, but the real pinch will come, when the macaroni supplies 
begin to run short, as they surely will by the autumn. Mark 
my word, the Itali;m Government — ^and all of the Allies are 
indirectly responsible — ^is skating on thin ice if it lets the one 
part of the country which furnishes practically all its war 
material — ^to say notliing of most of its best soldiers — ^go 
cold and hungry tliis winter." 
From what I "have gathered from letters which have come 
