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General Cadorna, the Italian commander in chief, was also said to have established his headquarters on the Trentino front to take personal command of the defense. The special correspondent of the London "Times" describes the fighting in the Trentino at this period as follows: "It is the fifth day of the Austrian offensive. 'We have an action in progress, says the colonel.
Not a few Italian troops had succumbed to propaganda, and when the crisis came they imitated Russian examples in a way which provoked Cadorna in a censored message to speak of their "naked treason." The valour which other Italian troops had shown during the summer and their success on the Bainsizza plateau had not prepared Italy or her Allies for so great a reversal of fortune in the autumn.
Italy's allies at least were not surprised when during the latter half of June her armies regained the ground evacuated by the Austrians in a skilful retreat, including Posina, Monte Cimone, Arsiero, Asiago, and the whole of the Sette Communi. Having thus protected his flank, Cadorna reverted to his frontal attack along the Isonzo and on the Carso.
The plans of General Cadorna had involved three separate campaigns one in the Trentino, the other in the Carso, and a subsidiary campaign in the Carnic Alps to the north, along the main watershed of the mountains. A general offensive in the Trentino had been tested and found well-nigh impossible.
During this same period General Cadorna, then head of the Italian army, had been bringing that army up to date, working for high efficiency and piling up munitions. The Army of Italy was a formidable one. Every man in Italy is liable to military service for a period of nineteen years from the age of twenty to thirty-nine.
Cadorna received three pressing requests from the Pope to occupy the Leonine City, and the third he granted. The idea of leaving the part of Rome on which the Vatican stands under the Pope's jurisdiction had been long favoured by a certain class of politicians, and Lanza made a last effort to give it effect by excluding the Leonine City from the plebiscite which was ordered to take place in Rome and in the Roman province on the 2nd of October. It was in vain. The first voting urn to arrive at the Capitol on the appointed day was a glass receptacle borne by a huge Trasteverino, and preceded by a banner inscribed: 'Citt
The Jugo-Slav propaganda was at its height, and was being encouraged in Paris and London, at the very moment when Italy was being pressed by the French and British to enter the war. "We have made too many offensives on our own, unaided. Cadorna should have refused, but he went on and on. He sacrificed thousands of lives uselessly. He demanded too much of his troops. He did not understand them.
If they had surmounted that last mountain crest they would have come down to almost certain destruction in the plain. They could never have got back. For a time it was said that General Cadorna considered that possibility. From the point of view of purely military considerations, the Trentino offensive should perhaps have ended in the capitulation of Vicenza.
Finding, however, that the Austrians had been strongly reenforced, General Cadorna abandoned his storming tactics, and began advancing along the plateau by the slower methods of siege operations. From the beginning, both Italians and Austrians recognized the Carso Plateau as the key to Gorizia, and around it have been waged some of the bitterest conflicts of the war.
In another movement the troops of General Cadorna were successful in obtaining a firm footing on the western face of the Carso Plateau, occupying Sdraissima, Polazzo, Vermegbano, and Monte Sei Bussi, which overlooks Monfalcone.
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