United States or Singapore ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Italian front, I might add, divides itself into four sectors: the Isonzo, the Carnia and Cadore, the Trentino, and the Alpine. Directly below us, not more than a kilometre away, was a village which the Austrians were shelling. Through our glasses we could see the effects of the bombardment as plainly as though we had been watching a football game from the upper tier of seats in the Yale Bowl.
Well, there they are, great eight and nine inch monsters, high above the highest of the wire roads, one of them that I know of at a height of ten thousand feet above the sea. There is no doubting it, incredible as it may seem, for they speak for themselves as the Austrians have found to their cost. The most advanced positions in the Carnia, as in the Trentino, are amid the eternal snows.
These included disarmament of the nations, mutual condonation of damages, the establishment of the principle of arbitration for the future, the evacuation of Belgian and French territory by the Germans, reciprocal restoration of the German colonies, and a peace-table agreement as to Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, the Trentino, Armenia and the Balkan states.
Accordingly in the month of May they set out, and journeying north made their way along the shore of the lake now called the Lago di Guarda, and, crossing by the pass of the Trentino, came down on the northern side of the Alps, and, after journeying for some weeks among the great forests which covered the country, reached the part inhabited by the tribe of the Cherusei, to which Brunilda belonged.
They comprehended the cession of the Trentino, including the frontiers established for the kingdom of Italy by the Treaty of Paris of 1810; a rectification of Italy's eastern boundaries, taking in the cities of Gradisca and Gorizia; the transformation of Trieste and its territory into an autonomous State, internationally independent; the transfer to the kingdom of Italy of the Curzolari group of islands; all these territories to be delivered up on the ratification of the Treaty.
For this purpose it was necessary to strike together, and strike at the enemy's heart. The world knew what Italians wanted, and meant to get the Italian Trentino and Trieste; but frontal attacks were costly, as General Cadorna had discovered, and the Italian strategist had not yet said his last word. The fate of Trieste might perhaps be more quickly decided on the Danube than on the Isonzo.
By such an arrangement Austria would have retained nearly the whole of the Istrian Peninsula, the cities of Pola and Fiume, the entire Dalmatian coast, and the majority of the Dalmatian Islands. But she refused to even consider Italy's proposed changes in the Adriatic, or to do more than slightly increase her offer in the Trentino.
The Trentino and the Tyrol have about as much in common as Cuba and Maine. The possession of the Trentino by Austria is not alone a geographical and ethnological anomaly: it is a pistol held at the head of Italy. Glance once more at the map, if you please, and you will see what I mean. The Trentino is, you will note, nothing but a prolongation of the valleys of Lombardy and Venetia.
The concessions thus unofficially promised consisted of the offer of a new frontier in the Trentino, and for Trieste an administrative but not a political autonomy. The Adriatic, it seems, was to remain as before. And these concessions were all hedged about by impossible restrictions, or were not to come into effect until after the war.
Brussilov's onslaught in June had trod on the tail on* the Austrian invasion from the Trentino, and it was patriotic pride which led an Italian journal to describe Cadorna's recovery as the quickest and greatest reaction of the war.
Word Of The Day