To the left, caricatures of a fallen King Albert of Belgium, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, President Poincare of France, generic (?) caricatures of an English man and a Japanese soldier, Kings Peter of Serbia, and Nikola of Montenegro engaging in a tug of war, the rope being held on the right by a German (in gray) and an Austro-Hungarian soldier. Between the teams and behind the rope stands the diminutive caped figure of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, all hat, mustache, and chin.
Das Europaische Gleichgewicht 1914The European Equilibrium, 1914
"On March 2 [1915] our Minister at Bucharest telegraphed that the Roumanian Prime Minister had said that his conviction that Italy 'would move soon' had become stronger. 'My Russian colleague has twice seen the Italian Minister and while the latter had often before spoken to him about . . . Italy . . . joining us in the war, his language on the last two occasions was more precise than ever before and was indeed almost pressing. He spoke of acquisitions on the Adriatic coast, and a share in the eventual partition of Turkey. . . . Italy would have in a month's time an army of 1,800,000 men ready to move. . . .'"
An excerpt from Winston Churchill's history of the war. In early 1915 Italy was the greatest prize among the neutral European nations. The third member, with Germany and Austria-Hungary, of the Triple Alliance, it had declared neutrality on August 3, 1914 after concluding that Austria-Hungary's war on Serbia was not defensive, and therefore did not meet the terms of the alliance. The warring sides offered Italy territory for dropping its neutral stance, proposing Trentino and Trieste in Austria-Hungary, Piedmont in France, and Turkey's holdings including its Mediterranean islands. Romania was the largest of the neutral Balkan countries, and enjoyed close ties with Italy.
The World Crisis 1911-1918 by Winston Churchill, pp. 378, 379, copyright © by Charles Scribner's Sons 1931, renewed by Winston S. Churchill 1959, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 1931, 2007
Italy, neutral, 1915, March, 1915-03-02
