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to enter the war in 1914, and declared that it would remain neutral. Meanwhile they prepared the terrain for intervention.

      Initially the majority of members of Parliament had declared themselves against the war, unlike their counterparts in the belligerent countries. Neither Giolitti’s liberals, the dominant faction in Parliament, nor the socialists had been in a mood for entering the conflict. They argued that the Italian economy was much too weak, and too delicately balanced between the need to import raw materials and the need to export food (mainly to central Europe) in order to pay for imports. The labouring masses had only recently seen their conditions of life improve, and were not yet ready to feel part of a single nation. Besides, the war was seen as a struggle between two empires, the British (and/or the French) and the Germans, and there was no reason to shed Italian blood. The Church tried to maintain a degree of neutrality, since there were Catholics on both sides (in France, much of Austria–Hungary and southern Germany).

      Interventionism, however, was not just supported by the military and the arms lobby, but also by a significant section of public opinion. It is unlikely that this was representative of the country as whole, since the rural masses were not in a position to express a choice, and few Italians participated in any pro–war demonstrations. The pro–war elements of the nation, however, were vociferous, and connected their inter–ventionism to a widespread lack of confidence in the existing institutions of the state, above all in Parliament, widely seen as the repository of corrupt practices and dominated by untrustworthy politicians.

      Salandra and Sonnino were in tune with such sentiments, since they negotiated Italy’s entry into the war in the spring of 1915 without consulting Parliament. They thought the war would not last long, even though by then such views had less foundation than they appeared to have in 1914. It was widely held – and not only in Paris and London, but also in Rome –that one more push along the southern flank of the Central Powers and Germany would have to send troops to help its Austrian allies (outnumbered by the Italians), and would end up fighting on three fronts.¹⁹

      Italian foreign policy had been auctioned off to the highest bidder. Germany and Austria had been prepared to concede Italy significant gains as long as she kept out of the war. The French and the British promised more: not just the Trentino with its Italian–speaking majority, but also the south Tyrol (Alto Adige) all the way to the alpine pass of the Brennero (Cisalpine Tyrol’s geographical and natural frontier); Trieste, Venetia–Giulia, Dalmatia and various Adriatic islands (but not Fiume); recognition of Italian sovereignty over the Dodecanese islands; a part of the Turkish region of Adalia (now Antalya) in the event of a partition of Turkey in Asia; a share of any eventual war indemnity; and, ‘in the event of France and Great Britain increasing their colonial territories in Africa at the expense of Germany, those two Powers agree in principle that Italy may claim some equitable compensation’. This, plus the promise of a loan of £50 million, sealed the deal. Article 16 of the Treaty of London, signed in April 1915, which sanctioned Italy’s intervention, stated quite simply: ‘The present arrangement shall be held secret.’²⁰ Italy entered the conflict on 24 May, declaring war on Austria. The hope that Italy’s intervention on the southern flank of the Central Powers would lead to the quick collapse of Austria turned out to be unfounded.

      In Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium and Austria, the war united the population until the end of the conflict. Afterwards the inevitable recriminations, at least among the victors, remained relatively muted. Even in Germany, where the image of ‘the stab in the back’ was used by nationalists and later by the Nazis to berate social–democrats and pacifists, the war did not engender permanent divisions. Not so in Italy. Neutralists and interventionists existed in all parties, and remained bitterly at odds after the war. The weeks preceding Italy’s entry into the war had been characterised by a climate on the verge of civil war. As participation in the conflict seemed increasingly inevitable, the neutralists virtually gave up the fight. There was a general strike against the war on 17–18 May. Then there was an eerie calm. The socialists adopted the slogan of nè aderire nè sabotare (‘neither supporting the war nor sabotaging it’). The Catholics declared that they would be loyal to the state – though the Italian state had been created in the face of opposition from the Catholic Church.²¹ As the troops marched off to war, it became difficult to preach an anti–war message. The pull of national unity was almost irresistible.

      Later, as the war turned sour, anti–interventionists could declare that ‘our boys’ were dying in a useless conflict for the benefit of arms manufacturers, while interventionists maintained that divisions on the home front demoralised the troops and encouraged the enemy. But when the war started, patriotic pressures were difficult to resist and opposition was muted. Few had the courage to appear disloyal. The formula nè aderire nè sabotare was an invitation to do nothing. Giolitti, who had opposed the war, announced, from his self–imposed quasi–retirement in his constituency in Piedmont, that he would support King and country. Some notable neutralists, such as the literary critic Cesare De Lollis, head of the anti–war ‘Italia Nostra’, volunteered for the front. Yet the events leading to the war confirm that Italy had entered it in a less exalted mood than other participants. War fever was confined to the more active part of the population: politicians, journalists, students, the urban middle classes. Various reports, including some from foreign diplomats, suggest that most Italians chose to remain silent, apathetic or indifferent. Those who supported the war found it easy to express their views. Those who did not found it preferable to remain silent. As for the apathetic many … How does one voice apathy? How does one measure it?

      In 1914 Europeans were not used to expressing their opinions. There were, after all, hardly any channels through which to do so. Demonstrations needed to be called and organised by the politically active. Opinion polls were in their infancy. Writing letters to newspapers was confined to an elite. Confiding to one’s elected representatives was a prerogative used by very few. Italians were less inclined than many other Europeans to participate. Not only was illiteracy very high, but so was electoral abstentionism, even when the suffrage increased from less than two million in 1909 to over five million in 1913. The division between neutralists and interventionists was confined to a relatively narrow section of the population. But this was the section that mattered: the opinion–formers, the intellectuals, the army officers, the students – above all those in the north.²²

      The interventionists were by no means all nationalistic right–wingers. They included some belonging to the left – the so–called ‘democratic interventionists’ such as Leonida Bissolati and Gaetano Salvemini – both of whom volunteered. Bissolati had been the first editor of the socialist paper Avantil (1896–1904), then the leader of the reformist faction of the PSI. Expelled from the party in 1912, he founded, with Ivanoè Bonomi, the Partito socialista riformista. By 1916 he was in the government. Salvemini, who had left the Socialist Party in 1911 because it had not opposed the adventure in Libya energetically enough, had urged Italy’s entry into the war on the side of the Entente. Like the other democratic interventionists he hoped that Italy would be able to complete the programme of the Risorgimento: the union of all Italians under a single flag, with the ‘return’ of the Trentino to Italy, as well as Trieste and all territories on the Dalmatia coast where the Italian language prevailed.

      The position of democratic interventionism could be traced back to Mazzini and his desire to remove from the map of Europe a ‘reactionary’ empire such as that of Austria, which many felt would pave the way for a series of revolutions throughout central Europe. This seemed to justify joining the side in the conflict which included both the Tsarist and the Ottoman Empires, arguably more ‘reactionary’ than that of the Austrians.

      Interventionists did not hesitate in advocating firm measures against the pacifists and the neutralists. In some cases democratic interventionists turned out to be even more authoritarian than right–wing nationalists. Thus Bissolati, in December 1916, thought that Avanti! should have been suspended, and complained

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