Italian Sentiment
IT is never easy to comprehend the sentiment of Italy; for her people, in the course of the centuries, have become highly individualized. Although capable of uniting on a national issue, as their manner of entering the Great War proved, they do not readily dispose of themselves in groups, and self-expression through organized channels is for them difficult and imperfect. ‘If you order us all,’ said one of them, ‘into uniforms of the same pattern, we shall put them on so differently that in a short time you will have no two of us alike.’
And now, when Italy’s aspirations are everywhere under discussion, there is so great diversity of opinion among Italians that one may find high-minded patriots and constructive statesmen aligned with jingos and champions of aggression, while thinkers and scholars and hard-headed men of affairs may be of one mind with the disaffected, the ignorant, or the indifferent. The small critic who condemns the government because it does not demand five times as much as it hopes to get is on the side of the historian and scholar who, for reasons geological, geographical, ethnological, philological, traditional, cultural, and moral, makes his point in learned discourses or in volumes bound up with maps and illustrations. Of two persons who were heart and soul in the war, sacrificing everything, one cries, ‘Italy made war for something far above and beyond a mere strip of land’; while the other, listening to the plea of the Dalmatian cities, exclaims, ‘They are Italians, and shall we deny them?’
That it has been for Italy a war of redemption, no loyal Italians have ever doubted: and so far they are of one unalterable mind. The wrongs of 1866 were to be righted in the name of justice. The making of Italy was to be completed, not by gifts, which the nation spurned, but by sacrifice and death. Yet while one irredentist would make large concessions in order to prove to the world that the charge of imperialism cannot be laid at Italy’s door, another cries out for a ‘Roman’ — an imperialistic — peace.
Cavour, who died with the names of Rome and Venice on his lips, knew well, as did Mazzini and all of the great patriots, that Italy would never be free and united until she had been liberated as far as her boundaries in the Julian Alps. This fact, the present generation, true to Cavour’s prophecy, has seen with a clear vision and an undivided will. But beyond Fiume lies Dalmatia; and on the whole question of the Adriatic voices are as confused as the problem is complex.
One gets no light from D’Annunzio, who speaks loudest and is farthest heard. By every preconception, D’Annunzio should belong as a poet to the idealists, or as a warrior to those who would interpret the peace in terms of the victory. Yet he is neither with the one nor with the other. For the idealists have the international point of view, which he has not, while many men of the army, deeply concerned with enlarging Italy to her Alpine boundaries, see grave difficulties in the holding of Dalmatia; and the necessity of a military force to keep the peace with a subject people is not in their reading of Italy’s triumph. ‘By every reason, human and divine,’ says D’Annunzio, ‘Dalmatia belongs to Italy.’ According to him, every soldier who fought and bled has borne on his shoulders the cross of Dalmatia, and sacrificed at the altars of her cities, over whose portals the Lion of Saint Mark stands guard among the ruins of ancient Rome. Every drop of blood shed on the Piave flows in the current that washes the shores of the Adriatic even to Otranto. ‘ Who denies you,’ he says to the Dalmatians, ‘gives you over to be the slaves of slaves, crowns your long martyrdom with a hideous death, slays you and every hope within you, commits a crime inexpiable.’
A wise humanitarian, who has proved himself a warrior no less intrepid than D’Annunzio, invokes the struggle in the Alps and on the Carso in a different sense, saying repeatedly, ‘We wrong the soldier when we argue that for his sake we must demand Dalmatia. You yourself have seen the battlefields. You have seen that unyielding ground where the conflict was no less against unconquerable nature than against man’s most unnatural weapons, where we fought our way up and up from hill to hill, always to find another hill beyond and the enemy still hurling fire upon us from above. You have seen our defenses hacked out of the solid rock which offered neither water to drink nor earth in which to bury our dead. Do you think it was to a cquire territory that we endured these things? “Trent and Trieste” was an effective war-cry, and as far as it went it was honest. But we were fighting for something more than to save Trent and Trieste. We wore fighting to save the soul of Italy. We were taking our part in the great world-contest: Italy had not failed to see her mission. And we were proud that we alone of the Allies were advancing into the enemy’s country. Whatever appeals were made to the armies in the name of conquest, I regret them bitterly. For I believe that by such appeals the ground was prepared for the poisonous seed of Caporetto.’
The poet-aviator and the wise humanitarian are no further apart in sentiment than any two people whom one may meet on any day in this talkative land of Italy. And perhaps in no other way than through conversation does one gain a more vivid impression of the mental attitudes which combine in some mysterious way to make up the national character. Ferrero will interpret the problem with scholarly premeditation from the historian’s point of view. Luzzatti will evolve in the same temper its economic bearings. The newspapers represent the politicians. But there is no substitute for the spoken word. And when the question shall have been once for all decided, it may not be unprofitable to recall some spontaneous expressions of the people’s will.
Yet conversations, like other gems, are only half-worth outside their setting. Within a few weeks I have heard the matter discussed in the Piazza of Venice among the soldiers and the pigeons; over the tea-cups in a fifteenth-century palace that bears the scars of an unexploded bomb which fell through its roof to its foundations; at the lunch-table of a torpedo-boat destroyer where the young marines, gayly beribboned for their deeds of valor, enjoy nothing so much as to praise America, unless it be to listen to praises of Italy; at an officers’ mess, where there were a physician, a professor of literature, an engineer, a baron whose estates are in the remote mountains of Calabria, and the gentle heir of an ancient family of Florence whose profession is the army; on the expresstrain, ‘Roma-Trieste,’ as it crossed the Piave on the new bridge beside the stark ruins of the old and wound its way among wrecks of villages, between the trenches of the lower Carso, through the Pompeian silence of Monfalcone, under the castle that was an Austrian stronghold, over the Virgilian Timavo that gushes from the heart of the mountains and falls down in bright streams to the sea, past the dark, formidable Hermada, into the city whose patron saint is named The Just. I have heard it discussed in a café in Pola near the great Roman amphitheatre, where stories of the suppression of Italian sympathy by Croatian priests in the neighboring villages made vivid arguments; in the ballroom of an American warship, where the music was beaten out with such super-energy that not all the Italian ladies gathered there could alter the conviction that one had been suddenly dropped into one’s native town; and on a certain broad embankment, where men and women of the ‘people’ pace up and down for recreation, ready always to give vent to their opinions and to adorn the subject with dramatic narrative in picturesque detail.
‘Only listen,’ says an eloquent countess over the tea-cups, ‘to the plea of the Dalmatian cities. “At least,” they cry, “we might have been left under the rule of Austria. That was a galling yoke. But to snatch us from Austria only to hurl us back beneath the crudest element of the Austrian hegemony, with a national existence not yet six months old! Is it for this the war was fought?” I know those people,’ the countess continues, ‘and I assure you they are the most Italian of Italians. Only think how many of our greatest men have been Dalmatians — literary men, sculptors, architects. An Austrian subject once remarked that the inhabitants of Zara were fond of writing poetry in the tongue of neighboring peoples! Even now they write Italian. They speak the Venetian dialect. Their very instincts are Italian. They have kept alive the flame of patriotism through the centuries and have taught their children—perforce in secret—that they are heirs of a noble race. And shall we destroy their hopes in the hour of victory, and exclude them from the great new Italy? The mountains separate them from their ancient enemy; the sea stretches out to join them to the Italian shores. By the principle of the free choice of peoples, must they not belong to Italy?’
‘Dalmatia would be a burden,’ said a high commander standing on a balcony that overhangs the Grand Canal, ‘a burden that Italy cannot afford to assume. Sentimental appeals aside, what should we gain? Only problems — insoluble problems. The Adriatic? Ah! the argument is antiquated. If we hold Fiume and the islands of the Quarnero, the Adriatic will serve as a defense against our Oriental friends who would be quite too near us if we held the coast of Dalmatia. We have had enough of mountain frontiers held over us.’ He paused a moment, looked down at some Tommies passing in a gondola, and went on: ‘Why should Italy make an inland lake of the Adriatic sea? Ah, yes! I know the Doge of Venice wedded the sea in a mystic rite because he had saved Dalmatia from the pirates — civilization from barbarism. And I know how the cities have guarded the tricolor under their high altars these hundred years. Austria’s deliberate policy of denationalization has been a great crime. However, for my country’s good, I should resign all claim to Dalmatia.’
‘The structure of the two shores of the Adriatic,’ said the young professor of literalure at the officers’ mess, ‘ makes it essential for Italy’s strength that she hold them both. It is as clear as the lines on the map. There was a moment, to be sure, when we thought the whole question of defenses might soon be out of date. We hailed with joy America’s young idealism —the League of Nations, disarmament, universal peace. We hope still, but in the meantime we cannot take chances. We are the youngest of the Allies in national existence, but we are old — too old — in experience.’
‘You will observe,’ said the physician, whose military service had been at the front line throughout the war, ‘you will observe that it is not those who made the noblest contribution toward winning the victory who are prating loudest of revindication and a larger Italy. The moving spirits who have carried the country with them want a greater Italy, but greater in principle and power. They want a spirit among the peoples that will make future wars impossible, and they want to stand for progress before the world. As for Istria — I have made a study of Istria to its farthest corners, and, while it is foolish to claim that it is all Italian, yet so much of it is Italian, or friendly to Italy, that the most peaceful development of the country will result, I believe, if it is in Italian hands. That the same thing is true of Dalmatia, I am not convinced.’
The youthful marines, just returned from the waters of the Quarnero, all agreed that the matter is perfectly simple. ‘Give the coast to us,’ they said, ‘and in a generation the problem will be solved: and for the natural reason that the people like us. We Italians have many faults, but nobody will deny that we have big hearts. We shall not organize spy systems and terrorize the inhabitants. We shall open our hearts to them, and they know it. Why, the Croats around Fiume love us already. It is very simple.’
In the shadow of the Campanile of San Marco, while the great bell Marangona was pealing out its daily reminder of the victory, a simple, hard-working citizen, distinguished withal as a man of talents, made his declaration. ‘He is a coward who would argue against Dalmatia because of difficulties. No doubt there will be problems. But Italy never yet profited by choosing the easy path. Cost what it may, we must maintain our national rights. Our troops have faced the Jugo-Slavs in battle when they called themselves Austrian, — they were the most bitter foes we had to fight, — and we shall not be afraid of them when they hide in the mountains of Dalmatia. There will be hard days ahead for Venice. Trieste, Fiume, Pola will absorb her activities. But Venice has always been the first to hold out a hand to her sister cities. Their calls for help have come first to her across the waters, and she has transmitted them faithfully to Rome. She will never desert their cause. Let justice be done — what follows will follow.’
A young Triestin who had been wounded in seven battles for Italy, while his parents had suffered four years of martyrdom interned in Austria, pronounced against the acquisition of Dalmatia. ‘My heart aches,’ he said, ‘for the Italians of the cities. I know the intensity of their longing and their hatred for everything Austrian. It is an ideal hatred, deeper than any personal resentment could ever be. But I know Dalmatia, too, and I cannot wish that it should belong to Italy.’
We were three in the compartment of the Rome-Trieste express. My companions were a tall, strong-limbed officer of artillery, who, I had observed, was what the Italians call an ‘apostle,’ — one who is consumed with altruistic zeal, — and a gruff customer in civilian clothing, something more prosperous— and far less attractive — than a peasant.
‘I’ve been down along that coast,’ said the latter, addressing his compatriot, ‘and Italy would do well to get it. There is great wealth there. We must leave no stone unturned.’
The officer’s distress was visible, and I expected an outburst. But he held himself together and was silent. He was a North Italian and I knew by his silence the passion of his feeling.
When I talked with the Calabrian baron later, in Trieste, I suspected that his views were similar to those of the gruff customer, though he was less outspoken. He talked fluently of culture and intellectual advancement. The nations of Europe, he said, were ready to do anything for the salvation of France because they believed that the light of France must be preserved for civilization. Well, then, in settling a question like that of Dalmatia, the quality of a people, as well as their numbers, ought to count for something. He would be sorry to see the Bolshevists or the JugoSlavs rule the world. His opinion was strangely similar to that of a practical woman, the wife of a merchant, who thought that, if peace were our aim, ‘the choice of a people who could preserve harmony and conciliation among hybrid races might well fall on Italy. The rough stone monument to Dante erected by Austrian prisoners on the island of Asinara is one more tribute to Italy’s humaneness.’
An artist who was a private in the trenches refuses to discuss the subject. ‘The only aspiration I know,’ he declares, ‘is for the young men of Italy, who must shake themselves free from this military habit of obedience and learn to use their own creative minds. Many of my friends have been seven years in the army. One of the best musicians of Northern Italy has been nine years under arms. The best part of our lives. But we shall do something now. You will see. Already the movement has begun.’
If Mr. Wilson were to walk up and down a certain fondamenta and talk in their native tongue to this popolo Veneziano, he would not be so sure that what the laboring man wants is work and three meals a day. These people tell you a great deal about their poverty and suffering. They attribute everything that goes wrong to the government and everything that turns out well to chance or the Virgin Mary. And they show very little concern about work and three meals a day. What they want now is peace — that there shall be no more wars. That is the secret of their enthusiasm for Wilson. That is why they hailed him as a savior and burned candles before his portrait in the family shrine. He came to bring peace into the world. They never doubted that he held the secret of universal peace and the power to settle all questions wisely to that end.
My thoughts go back most often to the young officer of Trieste with the seven wound-stripes on his arm, because in him the noblest traits of a soldier seemed met with the gentlest qualities of his race. ‘The war has been won,’ he said, ‘because God is on the side of right. The people believe that now, and our highest task is to sustain them in that belief. I think we ought not to touch Dalmatia, not even for the sake of the patriots and the martyrs.’
No voices make so strong an appeal as those of the soldiers who have fought and won, except the voices of those who have fought and died. A redcoated Garibaldian of eighty years stood at the foot of Manin’s statue and declared, with a tremor in his voice, ‘Venezia Julia is written on our hearts.’ And one has only to read certain letters of the young volunteers who at the first call to arms went into battle to be thrown against that wall of rock and fire to their death, to understand how to them the driving of their hereditary enemy out of what they deemed to be Italy, whatever its extent, was as holy a motive as the guarding of the soil of France to the Frenchman.
‘My grandfathers,’ one of them wrote, ‘and my uncles risked their lives fighting for Italy. And I am ready to fight for the greater Italy, to sacrifice for her my hopes, my future, my love, my life.’
‘If I die, remember that my last thought and my last dream were for Italy, my Italy, my greater mother.’
‘It is sacrifice that consecrates love: without it, love is vanity. I climb the vast steps of the glorious altar of my country; clouds of smoke from the grenades rise up like incense; and I feel that my hour is come. I hasten to meet it, serene, with two names on my lips, with two convictions deep in my heart, God and my country. Italy! imperishable and great! May she fulfil her destiny.’
‘For the greatness, for the unity, for the honor of my country, for the liberty and independence of my oppressed brothers, in the sacred name of Italy, and for the love of everything Italian, I die happy.’
‘Teach my children that I was first of all an Italian, then a father, then a citizen.’
But this is not all.
‘I have loved my country in the intimate depths of her divine beauty. But above all things I have loved the human race and the triumph of ideals that can be won only by conflict.’
‘I offer my body, my soul’s prison, for the defeat of those who would put out the light.’
That which counts in the character of nations, as of men, is their motives.
We who are not of the Four or of the Ten are not obliged to weigh the claims of Italy in the nicely balanced scales of justice. If we were, no doubt our eyes would be blinded, as in the legend. What we want to understand, for the love of everything human, is the spirit that prompts her aspirations. And this we shall find deep in the hearts of her people.