Straf expedition, which, with the forces at their disposal, they could not conduct to a successful issue. Gen. Brusati cer- tainly appears to deserve censure, in spite of the whitewashing he afterwards got from the Caporetto commission. Gen. Ca- dorna's counter-offensive succeeded in holding back the enemy before Gen. Brussilov's offensive in Galicia had begun. By June 24 most of the lost territory had been regained.
Undoubtedly the Trentino-Asiago offensive weakened the Cabinet's position; the hostility of the Democratic Alliance,
composed of the interventionist groups, turned the
scale, and on June 10 the Salandra Ministry was
defeated on a vote of confidence by 197 to 158; the next day it resigned. It had never had a majority of its own, but had been accepted on sufferance by the Giolittians. But while the latter regarded this result as a success of their own, they were to be disappointed in the outcome, for instead of a new Cabinet being formed from their ranks, the general feeling of the Chamber indicated the veteran statesman, Paolo Boselli, as the obvious successor to Salandra; as he was outside and above the militant factions of the Chamber, he alone could hope to form a national ministry representing all parties. After a laborious crisis he succeeded in his task by June 19. The new premier remained without a portfolio; Baron Sonnino, Gen. Morrone, Adml. Corsi and Sig. Carcano retained their departments; Sig. Orlando passed from the Ministry of Justice to the Interior; the Radicals, Sacchi and Fera, became Ministers of Justice and of Posts and Telegraphs; Meda, the Catholic leader, Minister of Finance; the Reformist Socialist Bonimi Minister of Public Works; Giovanni Raineri Minister of Agriculture; the new Ministries of Industry and Labour and of Transport were assigned to Giuseppe de Nava and Enrico Arlotta; the Giolittian Colosimo obtained the Colonies; while the Reformist Socialist Bissolati, the Republican Comandini, Leonardo Bianchi and Vittorio Scialoja were made ministers without portfolio.
The Austrian spring offensive had delayed Gen. Cadorna's main operations, the objectives of which were Gorizia and
Trieste. The attack on Gorizia was begun on Aug. 4, %%%"' and after n days of strenuous fighting the town Qorizia. and the formidable positions to the W., N.W., S. and
S.E. were captured. Gen. Cadorna and his lieutenants, among whom the young Col. (later Gen.) Badoglio deserves es- pecial mention, conducted the whole offensive with consummate skill, while the troops behaved with great gallantry. But there were other lines of defence E. and N.E. of Gorizia still in enemy hands, and there were not enough reserves to complete the action. The victory, however, revived public confidence. Italy now decided to participate in the expedition to Macedonia, where a mixed force of French, British, Serbs and Russians had been fighting in very difficult conditions for nearly a year. The Italian Supreme Command was not very favourable to such a dispersion of forces. But the Government thought that Italy should be represented. On Aug. n the first detachments, commanded by Gen. Petitti di Roreto, landed at Salonika; the expeditionary force eventually reached the total of 55,000 men, and was commanded from June 19^ by Gen. Mombelli. After taking-part in the operations for the capture of Monastir (Nov. 1916), it was entrusted with one of the most dangerous sectors of the whole front. The Italian force in Albania, commanded by Gen. Ferrero, extended its occupation northward to the banks of the Voyusa in Aug. 1916, and then eastward, so that by the end of the year contact with the French army of the east had been established at Ersek. In June 1917 Gen. Ferrero at Argyrokastro proclaimed an Italian protectorate over Albania.
On Aug. 1916 Italy declared war against Germany. Many reasons have been assigned for the delay in taking this decision.
Germany had no reason to declare war against Italy, War and in fact she always hoped that at the future peace
Germany- conference she would have in Italy, if not a friend,
at least a friendly enemy among the Entente Powers. The Italian Government believed that, while public opinion fully realized the necessity for war with Austria, it did not see that Germany was the predominant partner in the hostile coali-
tion, and that, as Italian forces were not in direct contact with those of Germany, except for a few detachments in the Trentino at the beginning of the war, there was no need to pre- cipitate matters. In view of later events, and especially of the Allies' attitude towards Italy, the delayed declaration of war is now generally regarded as a mistake. The immediate cause of the declaration of Aug. 27 1916 was the assistance afforded by Germany to Austria in the recent operations and the seizure of Italian property by the German Government. On the same day Rumania declared war against Austria. The Italian military attache in the former country, alone of the Allied representatives, had deprecated Rumanian intervention at that moment and disapproved of the plan of invading Transylvania while neglect- ing the Bulgarian front. The course of events was to prove his judgment only too accurate. In Jan. I9i7'a conference of Allied premiers and commanders-in-chief met in Rome. Gen Cadorna, supported by Mr. Lloyd George, advocated an inter-Allied offensive on the Austrian front. But the French view that the western front alone was decisive prevailed. In April 1917 the British, French and Italian premiers and foreign ministers met at St. Jean de Maurienne, in Savoy, to discuss the future settle- ment of the Eastern problem. The meeting was the result of Baron Sonnino's insistence that the previous agreements between Britain, France and Russia concerning the same questions, and especially the fate of Constantinople and Asia Minor, were invalid as Italy was not a party to them. At St. Jean it was agreed that, in a future partition of Asia Minor, Smyrna Was to be assigned to Italy, an undertaking subsequently broken.
During the autumn of 1916, and again in the spring and sum- mer of 1917, operations on the Carso-Isonzo front were carried out. Many thousands of prisoners were captured and! some important positions conquered, especially on the Bainsitsa plateau. But no decisive victory was achieved, and the losses were terrible. What the Italian public only half realized, and that of the other Allied countries hardly at all, was that by these frightfully costly operations the Italian army was pinning down Austria's best troops and after the Russian revolution practically all her troops and preventing her from sending any reinforcements to the Germans on the western front.
It now became known that the Austrians, free of all danger on the Russian side, and aided by several German divisions and by the advice of Marshal von Ludendorff, were preparing an offensive on a large scale against Italy. Their preparations were not limited to the accumu- 1917. lation of reserves and artillery, but comprised an ac- tive and subtle propaganda among the Italian troops and, above all, in the interior of the country. The protracted struggle, the slow progress achieved, the serious defeats on many Allied fronts, the fearful losses, the grave privations of the civil population and, above all, the collapse of Russia, had accentuated the sense of depression which had begun to be felt in Italy more than a year before. Among the troops themselves the discomfort of life in the trenches, as well as the constant danger, the too- long periods at the front which each unit had to undergo, and the absence or inadequacy of the arrangements for providing amuse- ments in the rest camps, began to react on the men who had fought for over two years. The more extreme Sociah'sts were not slow to profit by this state of feeling; some of them were no doubt in the enemy's pay, others hoped to reestablish their influence over the masses by provoking a military mutiny which would bring about peace, and all were influenced by the example of the Russian revolution and by the prospects of unlimited plunder which a similar movement in Italy would offer. An immense number of people, both civilians and soldiers, were simply war-weary, and there were other influences at work besides that of the Socialists. A " defeatist " campaign had already been started in Giolitti's organ La Stampa of Turin. The Clericals, who had never approved of the war, were ever suggesting that peace might be obtained by agreement, and the Pope's Encyclical about the " useless carnage " made a con- siderable impression, although it must be added that many individual Catholics, including nearly all the army chaplains,
