Part 4 (1/2)
There are few lovelier spots on earth than the little square of the Campidolgio on the Capitoline Hill and none more laden with memories of a long past. Led by a sure instinct the people of Rome crowded up the steep pa.s.sages that led to the crest of the hill, by tens of thousands. In this hour of the New Resurrection of Italy, the people sought the hearthstone of ancient Rome on the Capitoline. About the pillars of the Cancelleria, which stands on Roman foundations, up the long flight of steps leading to the Aracoeli, even under the belly of the bronze horse in the center of the square, Italians thrust themselves.
Rome was never more beautiful than that afternoon. Little fleecy clouds were floating across the deep blue sky. The vivid green of the cypresses on the slope below were stained with the red and white of blooming roses.
In the distance swam the dome of St. Peter's, across the bend of the Tiber, and through the rift between the crowded palaces one might look down upon the peaceful Forum. The birthplace of the nation! Here it was that the people, the decision having been made to play their part in the destiny of the new world now in the making, came to rejoice. The spirit of the throng was entirely festal. And these were the people, working-men and their wives and mothers from the dark corners of old Rome, neither hoodlums nor aristocracy, the people whose men for the most part were already joining the colors.
The flags of the unredeemed provinces together with the Italian flag were borne through the crowd up the steps of the munic.i.p.al palace to wave beside Prince Colonna, as he appeared from within the palace.
Mayor of Rome, he had that afternoon resigned his position in order to join the army with his sons. Handsome, with a Roman face that reminded one of the portrait busts of his ancestors in the Capitoline Museum close by, he stood silent above the great mult.i.tude. The time for oratory had pa.s.sed. He raised his hands and shouted with a full voice--”_Viva Italia!_” and was silent. It was as if one of the conscript fathers had returned to his city to p.r.o.nounce a benediction upon the act of his descendants. The people repeated the cry again and again, then broke into the beautiful words of Mameli's ”L'Inno,”--”_Fratelli d' Italia._”
Then the gathering turned to cross the city to the Quirinal, where the King had promised to meet them. The way led past one of the two Austrian emba.s.sies in the Piazza Venezia--a danger spot throughout the agitation; but this afternoon the crowd streamed by without swerving, intent on better things. On the Quirinal Hill, between the royal palace and the Consulta, where the diplomatic conferences are held, the people packed in again. The roofs of the neighboring palaces were lined with spectators and every window except those of the royal palace was filled with faces.
On the balcony above the palace gate some footmen were arranging a red velvet hanging. Then the royal family stepped out from the room behind.
The King, with his little son at his side, stood bareheaded while the crowd cheered. On his other side were the Queen and her two daughters.
King Victor, whose face was very grave, bowed repeatedly to the cheering people, but said no word. The little prince stared out into the crowd with serious intensity, as if he already knew that what was being done these days might well cost him his father's throne. The people cried again and again,--_”Viva Italia, viva il re”_; also more rarely, _”Imperio Romano!”_ At the end the King spoke, merely,--_”Viva Italia, mi!”_
Perhaps the presence of the German and the Austrian Amba.s.sadors, who that very hour were at the Consulta vainly trying to arrange a bargain, restrained the King from saying more to his people then.
Possibly he felt that the occasion was beyond any words. His face was set and worn. The full pa.s.sion of the decision had pa.s.sed through him.
His people had desired war, and he had faithfully followed their will.
Yet he more than any one in that crowd must know the terrible risk, the awful cost of this war. Those national aspirations for which his country was to strive,--Trent and Trieste, Istraia and the Dalmatian coast, in all a few hundred miles of territory, a few millions of people,--the well informed were saying would cost one hundred and fifty thousand Italian soldiers a month, to pick the locks that Austria had put along her Alpine frontier! No wonder the King of Italy met his people after the great decision in solemn mood.
The crowd melted from the Quirinal Square in every direction, content.
Some stopped to cheer in front of the Ministry of War, which these days and nights was busy as a factory working overtime and night s.h.i.+fts.
People were reading the newspapers, which in default of more vivid news contained copious extracts from the ”Libro Verde.” Yet the ”Green Book”
was not even now completed!
The politician had spoken, the poet had said his fiery word to the people, the piazza had hurled its will, Parliament had acted and gone its way, the army staff was hastening north. Yet the Austrian Amba.s.sador and his German colleague had not taken the trains waiting for them outside the Porta Pia with steam up. It was a mystery why they were lingering on in a country on the verge of hostilities, where they were so obviously not wanted any longer. Daily since Parliament had voted they had been at the Consulta--were there now in this solemn hour of understanding between the King and his people! Singly and together they were conferring with Baron Sonnino and the Premier. What were they offering? We know now that at this last moment of the eleventh hour Austria had wakened to the real gravity of the situation, and with Teutonic pertinacity and Teutonic dullness of perception made her first real offer--the immediate cession and occupation of the ceded territories she had set as her maximum, a thing she had refused all along to consider, insisting that the transfer be deferred to the vague settlement time of the ”Peace.” I do not know that if she had frankly started the negotiations with this essential concession, it would have made any real difference. I think not. Her maximum was insufficient: it nowhere provided for that defensible frontier, and it was but a meager satisfaction of those other aspirations of nationality which she despised. It still left a good many Italians outside of the national fold, and it still left Italy exposed to whatever strong hand might gain control on the east sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic. At all events, in this last moment of the eleventh hour, if the amba.s.sadors had been authorized to yield all that Baron Sonnino had begun by asking, it would not have kept Italy from the war--now.
Elsewhere I have dealt with the legal and strategic questions involved in the ”Green Book.” These diplomatic briefs, White or Yellow or Orange or Green, seem more important at the moment than in perspective. They are all we observers have of definite reason to think upon. But nations do not go to war for the reasons a.s.signed in them--nothing is clearer than that. Like the lengthy briefs in some famous law case, they are but the intellectual counters that men use to mask their pa.s.sions, their instincts, their faiths. According to the briefs both sides should win and neither. And the blanks between the lines of these diplomatic briefs are often more significant than the printed words.
While Baron Macchio and Prince von Bulow, the Ballplatz and Friedrichstra.s.se, Baron Sonnino and his colleagues were making the substance of the ”Green Book,” the people of Italy were deciding the momentous question on their own grounds. The spirit of all Italy was roused. Italian patriotism gave the answer.
”_Viva Italia!_” the boy conscript shouted, leaning far out of the car window in a last look at the familiar fields and roof of his native village. ”_Viva Italia!_” the King of Italy cried, and his people responded with a mighty shout,--”_Viva Italia!_” What do they mean? In the simplest, the most primitive sense they mean literally the earth, the trees, the homes they have always known--the physical body of the mother country. And this primal love of the earth that has borne you and your ancestors seems to me infinitely stronger, more pa.s.sionate with the European than with the American. We roam: our frontiers are still horizons.... But even for the simple peasant lad, joining the colors to fight for his country, patriotism is something more complex than love of native soil. It is love of life as he has known it, its tongue, its customs, its aspects. It is love of the religion he has known, of the black or brown or yellow-haired mother he knows--of the women of his race, of the men of his race, and their kind.
Deeper yet, scarce conscious to the simple instinctive man, patriotism is belief in the tradition that has made you what you are, in the ideal that your ancestors have seeded in you of what life should be. Therefore, patriotism is the better part of man, his ideal of life woven in with his tissue. Men have always fought for these things,--for their own earth, for their own kind, for their own ideal,--and they will continue to give their blood for them as long as they are men, until wrong and unreason and aggression are effaced from the earth. The pale concept of internationalism, whether a cla.s.s interest of the worker or an intellectual ideal of total humanity, cannot maintain itself before the pa.s.sion of patriotism, as this year of fierce war has proved beyond discussion.
Italian patriotism, which in the last a.n.a.lysis Italy evinced in making war against Austria, was composed of all three elements. Italian patriotism is loyalty to the Italian tradition, hence to the Latin ideal which is fighting a death battle with the Teutonic tradition and ideal.
Teutonism--militaristic, efficient, materialistic, unimaginative, unindividual--has challenged openly the world. Italy responded n.o.bly to that challenge.
VI
_The Eve of the War_
Rome became still, so still as to be oppressive. Her heart was elsewhere,--in the north whither the King was about to go. Rome, like all the war capitals, having played her part must relapse more and more into a state of waiting and watching, stirred occasionally by rumors and rejoicings. The streets were empty, for all men of military age had gone and others had returned to their normal occupations. Officers hurried toward the station in cabs with their boxes piled before them. And the sound of marching troops also on the way to the station did not cease at once.
Sat.u.r.day, the 22d of May, I took the night express for Venice. The train of first- and second-cla.s.s coaches was longer than usual, filled with officers rejoining their regiments which had already gone north in the slower troop trains. There were also certain swarthy persons in civilian garb, whom it took no great divination to recognize as secret police agents. The spy mania had begun. Theirs was the hopeless task of sorting out civilian enemies from nationals, which, thanks to the complexity of modern international relations, is like picking needles from a haystack. My papers, however, were all in order, and so far there had been no restrictions on travel; in fact no military zone had been declared, because as yet there was no war! When would the declaration come? In another week? I settled myself comfortably in my corner opposite a stout captain who rolled himself in his gray cloak and went to sleep. Other officers wandered restlessly to and fro in the corridor outside, discussing the coming war. It was a heavenly summer night. The Umbrian Hills swam before us in the clear moonlight as the train pa.s.sed north over the familiar, beautiful route. If Germany should strike from behind at Milan, exposing the north of Italy? One shuddered. After Belgium Germany was capable of any attack, and Germany was expected then to go with her ally.
One thing was evident over and above the beauty of the moonlit country through which we were rus.h.i.+ng at a good pace, and that was the remarkable improvement in Italian railroading since my last visit to Italy a dozen years before. This was a modern rock-ballasted, double-tracked roadbed, which accounted in part for the rapidity and ease of the troop movements these last months. The ordinary pa.s.senger traffic had scarcely been interrupted even now on the eve of war. The terrors of the mobilization period, thanks to Italy's efficient preparation, were unfounded. It spoke well for Italy at war. It was a sign of her economic development, her modernization. Even Germany had not gone into the business of war more methodically, more efficiently. Italy, to be sure, had nine months for her preparation, but to one who remembered the country during the Abyssinian expedition, time alone would not explain the improvement.