was the only possible field for an Italian offensive on a great scale,
and the possession of the Carso, of the Bainsizza and Ternova Plateaus
and of Monte Nero are as essential to the future security of the
Venetian Plain as the possession of the Trentino itself. The frontiers
of northern and north-eastern Italy were drawn according to the methods
of the old diplomacy after the war of 1866, when Bismarck, seeking to
keep Austria neutral in the next war on his schedule, that with France,
willingly sacrificed the interests of his Italian Allies. For half a
century Lombardy and Venetia have lived under the continual threat of an
Austrian descent from the mountains, both from the Trentino, thrust like
a wedge into the heart of Northern Italy, and across the Isonzo from the
east. Nor has this threat been remote. When Italy was plunged in grief
at the time of the Messina earthquake, the Austrian General Staff almost
persuaded their Government that the moment had come to strike her down
into the dust, and recover Lombardy and Venetia for Francis Joseph and
Rome for the Pope. And so to-day an Italian Army fighting on the Isonzo
Front fights in continual danger of having its line of communications
cut by an Austrian offensive from the Trentino.

The population of the Trentino is indisputably Italian. East of the
Isonzo the people are mainly Italian in the towns and mainly Slovene in
the country districts. It has been the deliberate policy of the Austrian
Government to plant new Slovene colonies here from time to time and to
render life intolerable for Italians. But, even so, the population is
still sparse, and all the country is infertile, except for the Vippacco
Valley, which, though wretchedly cultivated hitherto, would richly repay
the application of capital and modern methods. Here, I think, is a clear
case where strategic considerations, which are definite, must prevail
over racial considerations, which are dubious. These lands must be
Italian after the war, if, with even the dimmest possibility of war