Italy vs. Austria-Hungary The Italian Invasion and Italo-Germanic Differences Official reviews of the first month, ending June 23, of Italy's war with Austria-Hungary are still lacking.* On May 24 it was officially reported in London that Italy had given her adhesion to the agreement, already signed by the allied powers, not to conclude a separate peace. Active war operations were begun by Austria on the same day; bombs were dropped on Venice and five other Adriatic ports, shelled from air and some from sea. The attackers were driven off. The rapid advance of the Italian armies which invaded Austria on the east had by May 27 carried part of the forces across the Isonzo River to Monfalcone, sixteen miles northwest of Trieste. Another force penetrated further to the north in the Crownland of Goritz and Gradisca. On June 4 the censored news from Udine, Italy, reported that encounters with the enemy thus far had been merely outpost skirmishes, but had allowed Italy to occupy advantageous positions in Austrian territory. The first important battle of the Italian campaign, for the possession of Tolmino, was reported on June 7. A general Italian advance took place on June 7 across the Isonzo River from Caporetto to the sea, a distance of about forty miles. On June 12 reports from the Trentino indicated an Italian advance on Rovereto in Tyrol, thirteen miles southwest of Trent, and upon Mori, near by. Monfalcone was taken by the Italians on June 10-the first serious blow against Trieste as Monfalcone is a railway junction and its electrical works operate the light and power of Trieste. In the extreme north, on the threshold of the Carnic Alps, after three days' fighting it was reported on June 10 that the Italians had swept the Austrians from Monte Croce and possessed themselves of Freikofel. The Austrian city of Gradisca was reported taken on June 11, as indicated in an official statement signed by Lieut. Gen. Count Cadorna, Chief of Staff of the Italian Army. The defenses of Goritz were shelled by the Italian artillery on June 13, and on June 14 the Italian eastern army had pushed forward along the Gulf of Trieste toward the town of Nabresina, nine miles from Trieste. The Italian advance was checked-but not until June 16, more than three weeks after the beginning of the war-by an elaborate system of intrenchments prepared by the Austrians along the Isonzo River. On June 17 the Italians in the Trentino had arrived at the town of Mori, where their forces were blocked by the fortifications between that town and Rovereto. On June 18 a dispatch of The Associated Press from Rome reported that the Austrians had then so strengthened their forces that they were taking the offensive both from Mori and Rovereto against the Italians, who were encamped at Brentanico at the foot of Mount Altissimo, at Serravale, situated in the Lagardina Valley, and also in the Arsa Valley. Tolmino, on Austria's battlefront to the north of Goritz, was being heavily fortified *In an Associated Press dispatch from Rome (via Paris) on June 23 one of the chief Generals in the Italian War Office was reported to have summarized the first month of the campaign about as follows: One month ago the Italians invaded Austrian territory, uprooted the yellow and black poles bearing the Austrian eagle, and occupied the enemy positions along a front of 500 miles. An Austrian squadron bombarded the Italian coast on the Adriatic, and Austrian aeroplanes dropped eleven bombs on Venice. During this month the Italians overran the whole of Friuli. The capture of Tolmino and Goritz, the two Austrian strongholds, is considered imminent, which would open the way to Trieste; while in the Alpine region in the province of Trent they have conquered peaks and passes, from which the picked Austro-Hungarian troops have been unable to dislodge them. Austrian activity has been chiefly displayed in bombarding the Italian Adriatic towns. From Vienna (via London) on June 23 the following Austro-Hungarian official résumé of the operations of the first month of war along the Italian frontier was issued: During the first month of the war the Italians have gained no great success. Our troops in the southwest maintain their positions as in the beginning, on or near the frontier. On the Isonzo front in the fortified frontier district from Flitsch to Malborgeth, on the Carinthian ridge, and on all the fronts of Tyrol, all enemy attempts at an advance have collapsed with heavy losses. by the Austrians with a garrison of some 30,000 men, this place being considered indispensable to their operations as the key to the Isonzo Valley. On June 20, the fourth week of the war, was reported by General Cadorna as marking a brilliant victory at Plava. But on the following day reports from Rome indicated that the Italians were encountering strong and better-organized resistance from the Austrians. On June 22 dispatches from the Italian front to Berlin declared that serious reverses had been experienced by the Italians in their attempts to storm the Austro-Hungarian line along the Isonzo River. Two things have puzzled the public: First, the status of Germany in regard to Italy declaring war against Austria-Hungary, arraying herself on the side of the Eentente powers, and pledging herself, in turn, as each of them had done, not to make a separate paece with the enemy, and, second, the apparent weakness of the Austrian defensive in the Trentino and on the eastern frontier of Venetia. Diplomatic relations between Rome and Berlin have been severed, but neither Chancellery has yet (June 23) found the other guilty of an aggression sufficiently grave to warrant a declaration of war. There is nothing astonishing in this situation. A similar situation obtained between Paris and Vienna and London and Vienna long after a state of war existed between Germany and Russia, France, and England. The Italian plan of campaign apparently consists (1) in neutralizing the Trentino by capturing or covering her defenses and cutting her two lines of communication with Austria proper-the railway which runs south from Innsbruck and that which runs southwest from Vienna and joins the former at Franzensfeste, and (2) in a movement in force from the eastern frontier, with Trieste captured or "covered on the right flank, in the direction of the Austrian fortress of Klagenfurt and Vienna, only 170 miles northeast from the present base of operations-a distance equal to that from New York City to Cape Cod. The initial weakness of the Austrian defensive, which will doubtless be strengthened as troops can be spared from the seat of war in Galicia, is due to the fact that the invaded regions are normally defended by the Fourteenth and Third Army Corps, which were, in August, sent with two reserve corps to defend the Austrian line in Galicia. To fill the casualties in these corps the drain on the population has been great, so that when Italy began her invasion the defenses of the country were chiefly in the hands of the hastily mobilized youths below the military age of 19 and men above the military age of 42. During the last six months, when Vienna gradually came to realize that war with Italy was inevitable, the Austro-Hungarian military authorities enrolled a new army of men who had already seen military service, but, for various reasons, had not been availed of in the present war. They were men of an unusually high mental and physical standard and had received additional training under German officers. Their ages were from 35 to 40, and they numbered from 700,000 to 800,000. On the desire of the German War Office this new army, which should have been sent to the Italian frontiers, was diverted to Galicia toward the last of April, and since then has been the backbone of the Teutonic drive against Russia in that region. Below are given a sketch of the Alpine frontier by G. H. Perris, appearing in The London Chronicle of May 29; Colonel Murray's article on Italy's armed strength, and the speeches of mutual defiance uttered by the German Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag or May 28 and the Italian Premier at the Capitol in Rome on June 2. The Armed Strength of Italy By Colonel A. M. Murray, C. B. The article presented below originally appeared in The London Daily News of May 21, 1915. The organization of the military forces of Italy is based upon the law of organization of 1887 and the recruiting law of 1888. Modifications have been made in these laws from time to time in regard to the strength of the annual contingent trained with the colors and the duration of the periods of training, but the original laws have not been altered in principle, and have now had time to completely materialize. Every man in Italy is liable to military service for a period of nineteen years from the age of 20 to 39. All young men on reaching the age of 20, if passed medically fit for military service, are divided into three categories—first, those who are taken by lot for color service; second, those for whom there is no room with the colors, and, third, those who are exempted from military service for family reasons specified by law. Men placed in the first category serve for two years with the colors, after which they go to the active army reserve for six years. Men in the second category are sent at once into the active army reserve for the period of eight years, after which both they and the men in the first category are passed into the mobile militia reserve for four years, and subsequently into the territorial militia for seven years, making nineteen years altogether. The men in the third category pass all their nineteen years' obligatory period of military service in the territorial militia, receiving no training whatever till they are called up to their depots when mobilization is ordered. The following table shows the periods of service of the men according to the categories in which they are placed by the recruiting authorities. The figures are years: In the above table the mobile militia corresponds to the German Landwehr, and the territorial militia to the Landsturm. After deducting emigrants, men put back for the following year, those who are medically unfit, and one-year volunteers, the average number of recruits placed each year in the first category is approximately 150,000, in the second category 36,000, and in the third category 28,000. All men in the first category are fully trained, while those in the second category, who correspond to the German Ersatz Reserve, are only partially trained, being called up at the discretion of the War Minister for one or more periods of training not exceeding twelve months altogether during their eight years' service. Last year's returns, which were published in the Italian press, gave the ap According to a calculation, which need not be given in detail here, the above number of total men available includes upward of 1,200,000 fully trained soldiers, who have been through the ranks, with perhaps another 800,000 partially trained men of the second category, the remaining million being completely untrained. men, who have passed all their nineteen years of obligatory service in the third category. The organization for putting the above numbers of men into the field is as follows: The fully trained men are organized in four armies, each army consisting of three corps, one cavalry division, and a number of troops for the lines of communication. The twelve corps are recruited and organized on a territorial basis, each corps having its allotted area, as shown in the sketch, which also indicates the locality of corps headquarters. The Italian army corps, which is larger than that in other European armies, is composed of two active army divisions, with thirty guns each, one mobile militia division, brought up to strength from the territorial militia, one regiment of Bersaglieri, or light infantry, one cavalry regiment, one field artillery regiment of six batteries, (corps artillery,) and other technical and administrative units. The strength of the corps amounts to 50,000 men, with 8,400 horses and 126 guns, and this gives each of the four armies a strength of 150,000 men, 25,200 horses, and 378 guns, with the addition of a cavalry division of 4,200 sabres. The first line Italian army, therefore, which can be put into the field seven days after mobilization is ordered amounts to 600,000 men, 100,800 horses, 1,512 guns, and 16,200 sabres. But these cadres only absorb half the fully trained men called out on mobilization; duplicate corps will with the 75-millimeter quick-firing Krupp gun, (1906,) and the mountain batteries, of which there are twenty-four, with a new 65-millimeter (2.56-inch) quickfiring gun of Italian construction. The heavy artillery is armed with a 149-millimeter field howitzer, also of Italian construction. The organization of the Italian Army and the quality of the troops composing it were both tested in the Tripoli campaign, (1911-12,) and all military judges agree that the results prove the army to have reached a high standard of efficiency. The mobilization was only partial, but it was well carried out, and between October and December, 1911, 90,000 men, with 12,000 horses, were transported to Tripoli and Benghasi without a single hitch. Italian officers are well educated, and the men are brave and disciplined. Unlike the Austro-Hungarian Army, which is composed of men split into a variety of racial sections, the Italian Army is absolutely homogeneous, and the troops will enter the European struggle with the moral consciousness that they are fighting, not with aggressive intentions, but for the principle of nationality, which is the keynote to that marvelous progress which Italy has made since she became a nation in 1860. The Italian Navy has ten up-to-date battleships in commission, all armed with twelve-inch guns, six of these being predreadnoughts and four quite recently built dreadnoughts. These four latter ships carry a more powerful primary armament than the battleships of any other European country, the Dante Alighieri, the first of the type built, carrying twelve and the Conte di Cavour, Leonardo-da-Vinci, and Giulio Cesare thirteen twelve-inch guns mounted on the triple-turret system. Two more ships of the same class-the Caio Duilio and Andrea Dorea-are due to be commissioned this Autumn, and their completion will doubtless now be accelerated. Then there are four more battleships under construction, known as the Dandolo classthe Dandolo, Morosini, Mazzini, and Mameli-two of which are due to be launched in 1916 and two others in 1917. When completed these ships will be equal in gun power and speed to the ships of the Queen Elizabeth class, for they will carry eight fifteen-inch guns paired in four turrets-the triple-turret system having been abandoned-twenty six-inch and twenty-two fourteen-pr. guns, their speed being 25 knots. Besides these ten, or practically twelve, completed battleships, Italy has ten armored cruisers in commission and three twenty-eight knot light cruisers, but no fastgoing battle cruisers corresponding to those in the British and German Navies. She has also twenty-seven completed destroyers and thirteen thirty-two knot destroyers laid down, along with fifty-one torpedo boats and sixteen submarines, with four others building. With this fleet, which is half as strong again as the Austrian fleet, Italy can secure complete control of the Adriatic Sea and lock up the Austrian ships in Pola. The Alpine Frontier By G. H. Perris. [This article appeared originally in The London Daily Chronicle of May 29, 1915.] We have all learned a good deal of French, Russian, and Austrian geography in the last ten months; and, in the same sad school, we shall now become better acquainted with the region of mountain and plain which, through and for 140 miles east of Lake Garda, is the Austro Italian borderland, and with the northeastern coast of the Adriatic, where there will be important side issues. There is this great difference, among others, between the Adriatic and the Alpine military problems: On the one side, the Germanic powers can now only assume |