"Blimey, it was the riding wot did it"

[fpb]

The great Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, by profession an ocean-going shipmaster and self-taught both as a general and as a political leader, had one major fault: a complete lack of good taste. He wrote a few execrable novels (at least, I think they are execrable; I could never get beyond their first terrible few pages) and had a song written for his volunteers which, until now, I had found just as uninspired. However, I have now heard it sung by Enrico Caruso. It may be that this recording was made in the dark days of 1917 as Caruso's native country was fighting to survive against Austrian invaders (the flip side is George M.Cohan's Over there!, in English and French), but mostly it is just incredible musicality that can really turn lead into gold, and a voice that, even through the inadequate medium, comes through like the thunder of the gods. Have a listen:

This really gave me goosebumps. I once heard a story about a jockey condemned for murder on very thin evidence, who, referring to the formidable advocacy of the prosecuting attorney, said: "Blimey! It was the riding wot did it." In this case, it really is.

Comments

[nacktmull70.livejournal.com]

Just three points:

- As far as reliance on imports to run the war is concerned, Austro-Hungary was hardly better off than Italy.

- I did not put the word "Italian" in commas, but placed asterisks round it. In plain text, this is a way of emphasizing a word, or, in that particular case, emphasizing that it was the Italians (and not the Austrians) who declared war. Personally, I do not care all that much for the reasons of a fight that happened almost a century ago; it's historical inaccuracies that nettle me. In this particular case, it was a clear-cut case of Italy starting the fighting, with the express goal of conquering territories by force that it had failed to win by diplomacy or other means. Which, as the run of history goes, is fair enough, but please do not claim that it was Italy that was attacked by evil aggressors from the outside. That in 1917 things were not looking quite as rosy as the general staff had imagined them to be in 1915, well, such are the tides of war.

- What made the Italian territorial claims problematic was that the notion of ethnically pure nation state that was being pursued was severely at odds with the demographics of some (note the "some") of the claimed territories. Claiming South Tyrol up to the Brenner made strategic sense, but it overlooked the tiny detail of those pesky german speaking natives. The same goes for large parts of Dalmatia - even back then, there was a sizeable Italian minority, not more, in large areas there. Apart from strategic considerations, the presence of such a minority is hardly a compelling reason to claim a territory for a very uni-cultural nation state - especially if one attempts to take the moral high ground against entities like Austro-Hungary. And I'm saying that as someone with Italian Dalmation ancestry. My grandmother always referred to Dubrovnik (one of the places my ancestors come from, and of which she had childhood memories) as "Ragusa", a placename that has, of course gone extinct with the locals who used it. It was only as I grew up that I realised that the place had not been called that for many long years.

A.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am going to sleep, so this is the final response. From now on this thread is closed.

You insist on not mentioning the original Austro-German aggression. Italy, like America, like Brazil, Portugal, Roumania, China, Japan, went to war against an alliance that everyone regarded as an aggressor and a warmonger, and that had earned that reputation. It is as if you wanted to argue that France and Britain assaulted Germany in 1939 - neglecting the small matter of German aggression against Poland and of years of previous German aggressions. But sure, if it makes you feel better, do ignore that little fact. Wars are not provoked; they are not pursued by an aggressor, no, sir, wars are mysterious matters that just appear at the whim of invisible fates. And I am Chinese.

Austria had coal, iron, and other minerals aplenty. Italy had and has no mineral resources at all (except for mercury and sulphur). Her population was larger, her arable land far larger. That they did not know how to make use of their resources does not excuse them; as I said, being an incompetent bandit does not excuse a bandit.

Personally, I would be glad to tie a gold ribbon around the whole South Tyroler rabble and leave it under Austria's Christmas tree one fine December morning. The fact is that Austria does not want them all that much. As one Viennese lady told me, we have all the Tyrolers we need, thank you very much. She also called them "the South Prussians" - to Austrians and south Germans, the ultimate insult. Dalmatia, on the other hand, had been Venetian - and hence Italian - since the late Roman Empire. It is true that in the country they spoke Serbo-Croat, but as soon as they inurbated themselves and rose socially, they learned Italian or at least Venetian. Admiral Tegethoff addressed his ships' crews in Italian, because that was the common language of the eastern Adriatic all the way down to Corfu. It was only in 1945 that Italian ceased to be the language of the elites of Dalmatia. And nothing of this makes Salandra's claim "overbearing".

[nacktmull70.livejournal.com]

I suppose that it really is for the best, to close this thread. You and I live in very, very different worlds, and - sadly - it is not to be expected that we would reach some sort of understanding, even if we went on for a long time with this.