[Footnote 1:  From the outbreak of war in August 1914, Bissolati strongly advocated Italian intervention on the side of the Allies.  When Italy declared war, he enlisted in the ranks of the Alpini, although over military age, was decorated for valour and seriously wounded.  He then became Minister for Military Supplies, and acted as a connecting link between the Cabinet at Rome and the High Command.]

Addressing at Pec detachments from a number of British Batteries on the 29th of May, Bissolati had said:  “Officers and men of the British Force, I bring you the greetings of the Italian Government and the thanks of the Italian people.  I greet you not only as an Italian Minister, but as a comrade in arms, for I consider it the greatest privilege of my life to have been in this war a soldier like yourselves.  Our hearts beat with joy to see you here, because there is no Italian, however humble his station, who does not know how great is the debt of Italy to Britain for the brotherly help afforded her during the tragic vicissitudes of the glorious story of her Resurrection.  We all remember how your fathers helped to create the Italian nation....  To-day we find ourselves fighting side by side in the same campaign, we to redeem this territory from the Austrian yoke, you to maintain the liberty of your national existence from the German menace, both of us, moreover, to set the whole world free from the peril of falling under the dominion of that race, hard in temper as a granite rock, which finds in the Austro-Hungarian Empire a willing ally in its rapes and aggressions.  I am here, then, to thank you, not only as an Italian, but as a man, and I am filled with joy at the thought that the British, even as the Italians, are showing themselves to be, now as always, the champions of justice, and the defenders of liberty and right.  The sacrifices which we are making together, the mingling of our blood upon the battlefield, will render even stronger the agelong, traditional friendship between our two nations.

“Viva l’Inghilterra!  Viva l’Italia!”

CHAPTER V

PALMANOVA

During my first month in Italy I lived a nomadic life.  I was only “attached” to a Battery, and really nobody’s child.  July 17th to 22nd I spent at Palmanova in charge of an Artillery fatigue party which was helping the Ordnance to load and unload ammunition, and from August 2nd to 10th I was in charge of another working party of gunners at Versa, a fly-bitten, dusty little village, which our medical authorities had stupidly selected as a site for a Hospital, though there were many suitable villas in more accessible and agreeable places not far away.  But in this first month I was lucky in being able to multiply and vary my impressions of the Eastern Veneto.

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I rode down to Palmanova from Gradisca on a motor lorry.  What a country!  The white houses, the white roads, the masses of fresh green foliage, chiefly acacias, the tall dark cypresses, the cool blue water of the Isonzo, the blue-grey mountains in the distance, and on their summits the sunshine on the snow, which is hardly distinguishable from the low-lying cloud banks in an otherwise cloudless sky.