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