Week 57

 

Last week we wandered off the main road in an attempt to investigate the ideas and reasons that inspired the formulation of the Treaty of London of 1915, the Italian diplomatic efforts during the Great War, and the impact of those ideas and formulation on the post war politics of Italy. This week we'll attempt to conclude that investigation – at least for the time being – as well as try to cut back to the old path somewhere ahead of where we left it.

After a general examination of a few contemporary accounts of the Treaty of London, we had begun with the detailed exposition of Mario Toscano's arguments in his Il Patto di Londra, published in 1931. There Toscano had anchored the formulation of the Italian political lines to the foundations of Italian diplomacy: those “geographical, historical and economical factors”, that were the constants behind the “Mediterranean policy” of Italy. A policy which, in the mind of the author, the Italian Foreign Office had correctly followed since the beginning of the Crispi Era around 1885.

It had been on those lines that the first Italian Foreign Ministry of the Great War – the Marquis of San Giuliano, up until his death in October 1914 – had moved, while taking into account the contingent needs, dangers and opportunities created by the conflict, to draft his early plan for a diplomatic agreement with the Entente Powers.

On September 25^th San Giuliano had submitted a secret telegram to the Italian Ambassador in Russia, Carlotti briefly detailing his arguments and reasoning:

The King's Government intends to maintain the Italian neutrality, since it considers this to be the best way to protect its fundamental interests. But, once Austria proved unable to maintain the balance of the Adriatic region, then Italy, in light of her vital interests, would have to make an agreement with the enemies of Austria and to side with them. Under which circumstances I ask your excellence of relating his opinion on the following points:

1. […] Italy will have the direction of the operations of the allied fleets within the Adriatic to stress the prominence of the Adriatic interests of Italy

2. Commitment not to conclude a separate peace

3. Military convention

4. Naval convention

5. In case of military intervention of Italy, we will receive the Italian provinces of Austria, with a frontier following the Alpine watershed to the Quarnaro. To which end our entrance in Dalmatia will be necessary.

6. Italy will not oppose the partition of Albania between Montenegro, Serbia and Greece, after a previous neutralization of that coast. Valona will remain under full Italian sovereignty.

7. I wonder if and which parts of Dalmatia should we occupy.

12. Demand a part of the war compensation, proportional to our efforts and expenses.

13. Demand France and Great Britain compensation in Africa for the advantages they'll gain from taking German colonies.

Point seven especially seems to reveal that San Giuliano – in agreement with the general impression at the time – was considering a short term Italian intervention; as detailed in other communications that we discussed in last week, an occupation of the contested lands with the Entente preemptive approval, to secure and defend the Italian interests as well as restoring order in the aftermath of the Austrian defeat. The Italian action had to come at the right time to be the decisive strike against Austria-Hungary, as San Giuliano was well aware of the limitations of the Italian military and the difficulties connected with the ongoing mobilization (Italy could hardly fully mobilize while remained committed to neutrality, since for the mobilization it required both materials and a secure line of credit – which were hard to obtain without the promise of an Italian intervention).

For this reason, the Italian Foreign Ministry had developed a second thread of diplomatic talks, with another power that had something to gain from a timely intervention against Austria-Hungary: the Kingdom of Romania. By itself neither of the two nations was strong enough to provoke the desired collapse of Austria-Hungary (as facts indeed would prove); but a coordinated, simultaneous intervention might have forced the old Empire to seek immediate peace terms, for the simple inability to defend its over extended borders – even better if the Russians were providing a sufficient pressure on the Galician region; and perhaps, as the Entente Powers themselves believed, the Italian intervention could cause the other Balkan powers, Bulgaria and Greece to follow suit immediately.

With these factors taken into considerations – regardless of the facts proving much different, with the Austrians holding together until the best part of 1918 – it is easy to understand how the idea of Austria-Hungary being forced to call for a separate peace by 1915 could hold some appeal among the interventionist-to-be lesser European powers.

Following the testimony of the Romanian Ambassador in Russia, Constantin Diamandy, Toscano lists two secret Italo-Romanian agreements on September 23^th 1914 and February 6^th 1915, with the purpose not only of coordinating the intervention of the two nations but also to bolster their negotiation power,

since their simultaneous intervention would have been considered more valuable by the Entente, giving more strength to the parallel demands of the two governments.

The existence of the agreement was known to some extent to the other Entente Powers, as showcased for instance by a reference to it made by French President R. Poincare, that briefly confirmed the agreement as summarized by Diamandy. According to which the Treaty of September 1914 consisted of:

a secret agreement by which each of the two governments committed not to abandon their neutrality without a preemptive communication of eight days. With that same agreement, they elected to maintain constant relations to evaluate the situation time by time in its evolution, and to contact each other if the circumstances demanded a more precise agreement. Furthermore they committed to maintain the same attitude, in so far as the decision to hold to their neutrality, either in case of modification [of the neutrality terms], or of intervention.

The reasoning behind the agreement was confirmed by Italian Ambassador in Paris, Tommaso Tittoni, who replied to an inquiry of San Giuliano on October 4^th 1914 that

an agreement with the Triple [Entente] would be a good thing, [but] an agreement with Romania would be better, since I persist in my belief that it would not be beneficial for us to abandon our neutrality if Romania doesn't do the same.

Again, according to Diamandy, the agreement would have served the contemporary purpose of preventing a territorial reduction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was too favorable to its Slavic components (that is Croatia and Bohemia)

The Marquis Carlotti […] has informed me that […] besides the welcome agreement between Italy and Romania, in order to secure those territories of the Dual Monarchy that pertain to each nation […] it is our common interest to prevent the reduction of Austria-Hungary and the definitive break up of the balance [that is, more or less a dissolution of the Empire] with Slavism [sic.] and the formation of the Duchies of Croatia and Bohemia. There is a solid interest to contain the Balkan Slavism with a counterbalance action of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, with our predominant presence (Italo-Romanian).

This thread of relations between Italy and Romania seems to have been lost to some extent with San Giuliano's death on October 16^th 1914. Since the next initiative came at the Romanian Prime Minister, Ion Bratianu's direct solicitation (January 23^rd 1915) to “better define the common action, that could not remain indifferent to the problem of a dismembering of the Austrian Empire, posed by the ongoing conflict”. Continued Toscano:

Perhaps, if Sonnino […] had paid more attention to and better understood this factor, the intervention of Romania, that we wanted simultaneous to our own, would not have taken place so late and with such disastrous consequences […] And we would have been stronger in Versailles if our actions had been coordinated to resist the overbearing Slav flood.

Regardless of Toscano's arguments, it should be noted that a strengthening of the Italo-Romanian relations would have inevitably compromised the Italian hopes to take advantage of the supposed Hungarian opposition (we do know now that Tizsa's government was much more coherent in its action of support of the Dual Monarchy than the Italians believed at the time) to pressure the Austrian government to make those concessions – and those exactly – that the Italians wanted, while leaving substantially intact the Empire in its eastern and southern borders, as a more effective barrier against the Russian influence. On the other hand – as argued for instance by L. Valiani – giving in to both the Italian and Romanian demands would have caused the inevitable collapse of the Empire.