The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the Ægean | Page 5

have certain Italian books in their
possession, the poor peasants of these mountain valleys remained
unswervingly loyal to Italy throughout a century of persecution. Little
did the thousands of American and British tourists who were wont to
make of the Trentino a summer playground, climbing its mountains,
fishing in its rivers, motoring over its superb highways, stopping in its
great hotels, realize the silent but desperate struggle which was in
progress between this handful of Italian exiles and the empire of the
Hapsburgs.
The attitude of the Austrian authorities toward their unwilling subjects
of the Trentino was characterized by a vindictiveness as savage as it
was shortsighted. Like the Germans in Alsace, they made the mistake
of thinking that they could secure the loyalty of the people by awing
and terrorizing them, whereas these methods had the effect of
hardening the determination of the Trentini to rid themselves of
Austrian rule. Cæsare Battisti was deputy from Trent to the parliament
in Vienna. When war was declared he escaped from Austria and
enlisted in the Italian army, precisely as hundreds of American
colonists joined the Continental Army upon the outbreak of the
Revolution. During the first Austrian offensive he was captured and
sentenced to death, being executed while still suffering from his
wounds. The fact that the rope parted twice beneath his weight added
the final touch to the brutality which marked every stage of the
proceeding. The execution of Battista provided a striking object-lesson
for the inhabitants of the Trentino and of Italy--but not the sort of
object-lesson which the Austrians had intended. Instead of terrifying
them, it but fired them in their determination to end that sort of thing
forever. From Lombardy to Sicily Battista was acclaimed a hero and a
martyr; photographs of him on his way to execution--an erect and
dignified figure, a dramatic contrast to the shambling, sullen-faced

soldiery who surrounded him--were displayed in every shop-window in
the kingdom; all over Italy streets and parks and schools were named to
perpetuate his memory.
Had there been in my mind a shadow of doubt as to the justice of Italy's
annexation of the Trentino, it would have been dissipated when, after
dinner, we stood on the balcony of the hotel in the moonlight, looking
down on the great crowd which filled to overflowing the brilliantly
lighted piazza. A military band was playing Garibaldi's Hymn and the
people stood in silence, as in a church, the faces of many of them wet
with tears, while the familiar strains, forbidden by the Austrian under
penalty of imprisonment, rose triumphantly on the evening air to be
echoed by the encircling mountains. At last the exiles had come home.
And from his marble pedestal, high above the multitude, the great
statue of Dante looked serenely out across the valleys and the
mountains which are "unredeemed" no longer.
[Illustration: HIS FIRST SIGHT OF THE TERRA IRRIDENTA
King Victor Emanuel arriving at Trieste on a destroyer after its
occupation by the Italians]
Though Italy's original claims in this region, as made at the beginning
of the war, included only the so-called Trentino (by which is generally
meant those Italian-speaking districts which used to belong to the
bishopric of Trent) together with those parts of South Tyrol which are
in population overwhelmingly Italian, she has since demanded, and by
the Peace Conference has been awarded, the territory known as the
upper Adige, which comprises all the districts lying within the basin of
the Adige and of its tributary, the Isarco, including the cities of Botzen
and Meran. By the annexation of this region Italy has pushed her
frontier as far north as the Brenner, thereby bringing within her borders
upwards of 180,000 German-speaking Tyrolese who have never been
Italian in any sense and who bitterly resent being transferred, without
their consent and without a plebiscite, to Italian rule.
The Italians defend their annexation of the Upper Adige by asserting
that Italy's true northern boundary, in the words of Eugène de

Beauharnais, written, when Viceroy of Italy, to his stepfather,
Napoleon, "is that traced by Nature on the summits of the mountains,
where the waters that flow into the Black Sea are divided from those
that flow into the Adriatic." Viewed from a purely geographical
standpoint, Italy's contention that the great semi-circular barrier of the
Alps forms a natural and clearly defined frontier, separating her by a
clean-cut line from the countries to the north, is unquestionably a sound
one. Any one who has entered Italy from the north must have
instinctively felt, as he reached the summit of this mighty mountain
wall and looked down on the warm and fertile slopes sweeping
southward to the plains, "Here Italy begins."
Italy further justifies her annexation of the German-speaking Upper
Adige on the ground of national security. She