When war broke out in August 1914, Italy declared her neutrality, on the
ground that the war was aggressive on the part of the Central Powers,
and that, therefore, the Triple Alliance no longer bound her. By her
declaration of neutrality, she liberated the whole French Army to fight
in Belgium and North-Eastern France, and rendered our sea communications
with the East substantially secure. Bismarck used to say that, under the
Triple Alliance, an Italian bugler and drummer boy posted on the
Franco-Italian frontier would immobilise four French Army Corps. The
Alliance disappointed the expectations of Bismarck's successors.

But if Italy had come in at this time on the German side, she might well
have tilted swiftly and irremediably against us that awful equipoise of
forces which, once established, lasted for more than four years. There
would have been small hope that France, supported only by our small
Expeditionary Force and faced with an Italian invasion in the
South-East, in addition to a German invasion in the North-East, could
have prevented the fall of Paris and the Channel Ports, while Austria,
freed from all fear on the Italian frontier, perhaps even reinforced by
part of the Italian Army, could have turned all her forces against
Russia. Or alternatively, part of the Italian Army might have attacked
Serbia through Austrian territory, with the probable result that Rumania
and Greece, as well as Bulgaria and Turkey, would have been brought in
against us in the first month of the war.

At sea our naval supremacy would have been strained to breaking point by
the many heavy tasks imposed upon it simultaneously in widely-separated
seas. Our communications through the Mediterranean would, indeed, have
been almost impossible to maintain.