http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4742559.ece
The whole Italian Front engaged
May 17, 1916
Most stubborn was the fighting in the Monfalcone zone, where, after an alternating struggle, the enemy were counter-attacked with success and left in our hands 254 prisoners
The Austrians have made a general attack on the Italian front, and they claim numerous successes, chiefly in Southern Tirol, where over 2,500 prisoners are said to have been taken. The Italian communique reports heavy fighting at several parts of the front and admits a retirement in the Trentino, between the Adige and Astico Valleys.
Rome, May 16. The following official communique is issued here On the Trentino frontier the enemy followed up an intense bombardment which they carried out on the 14th with an attack by masses of infantry against the part of our front between the Adige Valley and the Upper Astico. After our first resistance, during which we inflicted on the enemy very serious losses, our troops from their most advanced positions fell back upon their principal lines of defence.
Along the whole rest of the front to the sea the enemy’s activity did not deploy their artillery fire and infantry attacks having the character of a diversion. Such were the actions which developed in the Val Sugana, between Monte Collo and Santanna, in the Upper Seebach, on the heights north-west of Gorizia, on the slopes north of Monte San Michele. Everywhere the enemy were promptly repulsed.
Most stubborn was the fighting in the Monfalcone zone, where, after an alternating struggle, the enemy were counter-attacked with success and left in our hands 254 prisoners, including some officers and two machine-guns.
A raid by enemy aeroplanes upon places on the Lower Isonzo is reported to have taken place on the night of the 15th, upon Venice and Mestre the same evening, and upon Udine and Treviso at dawn on the 16th. There were few victims and the damage was very slight.
A squadron of our Caproni aeroplanes at dawn this morning bombarded the railway station of Ovcia Draga, and the enemy cantonments at Kostarievica, Lohvica, and Segeti on the Carso. Fifty bombs were thrown with very effective results.
Our squadron, though the object of fire from many batteries and assailed by very many enemy aeroplanes, returned undamaged, after having brought down two enemy aeroplanes which fell in their territory near Gorizia. Reuter.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4742554.ece
The Part of Italy
May 23, 1916
On the greatness of the service which Italy has rendered, and is rendering, the common cause we need not dwell. It may be measured by the fury with which the enemy has abused her.
It is just a year today since Italy took her stand with the Western Powers in the great cause of European liberty. The anniversary finds her gallantly defending the first line of her conquests in the Trentino against a heavy and determined Austrian attack. She has been forced back a few miles in the pronounced salient which she had seized between the valleys of the Terragnola and the Astico, but by Saturday the costly advance of the enemy appears to have been stayed. Strong Italian counter-attacks were in progress, and there is every reason to expect that the initial success of the Austrians at Zugna Torta may prove as illusory as the first German gains before Verdun.
The movement is evidently intended to be of the most serious character, and to be part of some large strategical design of which the scope and nature are not yet fully disclosed. Immense preparations have been made to execute this plan, and an Italian semi-official note states that the hostile forces on the frontier have been increased from twenty to thirty-eight divisions since November, of which sixteen were told off for operations between the Adige and the Brenta, while quantities of heavy artillery, withdrawn from the Russian front, have been massed in the same sector.
But General Cadorna has not been taken by surprise. He has withdrawn his troops after a desperate resistance from some advanced positions, but withdrawn them only to more defensible lines. His troops are still fighting upon part of that Austrian soil which they and all their countrymen feel it is their mission to redeem. The Italians may fairly boast that, at the end of a year of war, they alone of our Continental Allies have carried the war on all fronts into the territories of the enemy.
When it is remembered that the frontier forced upon Italy in 1866 was specially designed to facilitate invasion from Austria, that this frontier extends for 500 miles, that Austria has been fortifying it for years, that she was fully prepared for the struggle, and that pacifists and pro-Germans in high place had left Italy unprepared, the greatness of the effort which has achieved this result may in some degree be gauged. Italy has practically reversed the situation which existed a year ago. It is she, and not Austria, who now holds the key to the passes through which the Teutonic barbari have so often poured to devastate and to plunder her.
On the greatness of the service which Italy has rendered, and is rendering, the common cause we need not dwell. It may be measured by the fury with which the enemy has abused her. The Austrian Emperor, the German Chancellor, and the North-German Gazette have rivalled each other in the bitterness of their invective. The mere refusal of Italy to be dragged into the war as the accomplice of the Central Powers relieved the Allies from anxieties and dangers of the gravest kind in the first weeks of the war. By drawing the sword against, her hereditary oppressors and enemies twelve months ago she gave the progressive Powers very valuable military support, and immensely strengthened their moral position. It is true that she has never issued a formal declaration of war against Germany, even after she found German soldiers fighting in the Austrian ranks, but that is an omission which it is not difficult to understand.
There are internal situations in each of the Allied countries which it would be injudicious for other members of the Alliance to probe too curiously, even did they possess all the knowledge needful for the operation. The attitude of Italy towards Germany - and that of Germany towards Italy - are not the less clear because they have refrained from declaring war. Italy’s adhesion last winter to the Agreement of September, 1914 is conclusive upon that. She is pledged to make no separate peace with the enemy, and by that pledge, given with full knowledge of what the Allies had declared their general terms to be, she has bound herself with them to see that these terms are enforced. Prominent amongst them are certain conditions directly and exclusively, affecting Germany to which Germany will never assent except at the point of the sword.
Italian feeling is stronger and more united in the cause of the Allies than it was when she resolved to throw in her lot with them. The war has clarified and deepened it. The sincerity of Italy in the cause of right and freedom is shown in a remarkable way by the date at which she finally broke with Austria. A year ago Mackensen was driving the Russians before him in Galicia, and the month which the English had spent in Gallipoli without making progress had revealed something of the task that lay before us there and of its probable result. This was the moment at which Italy came in - not on the crest but in the trough of the wave of our fortunes. The diversion was doubly valuable by reason of its timeliness, and particularly welcome as an indication of the high and chivalrous spirit of Italy. The Western peoples felt from the first that, sooner or later, they must find her by their side. She could not have opposed them, she could not even have remained neutral, without being untrue to the principles from which she draws her life. She is essentially liberal, progressive, democratic, and humane. She is the splendid creation of the rights of nationalities. It was not conceivable that with such a past - and, as we all believe, with such a future - Italy should help the military despotisms of Central Europe to stifle all to which she owes her greatness and her rebirth. Was she to stand aloof while the independent civilization which Europe first learned from her was crushed under the burdea of Teutonic Kultur, imposed upon all peoples by German pedants and German soldiers “for their good”? So great an apostasy was inconceivable to anything but to German arrogance.
Italy made her choice. She decided at all costs to be faithful to her traditions and to her generous heart. We are confident that her courage, her sacrifices, her chivalry, and her fidelity will not be without their rich reward in the present and in the memories of this tremendous war.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4742548.ece
The Austrian Thrust at Venetia
May 26, 1916
The Austrians have two conspicuous advantages. They have managed to cram a tremendous weight of heavy artillery upon a small front, and it may be said broadly that they are now moving downhill
The vigorous Austrian advance in the Trentino has now been in progress for nearly a fortnight, and is gradually concentrating upon one particular area. The attacks of the enemy grow steadily more intense in the mountainous country between the Terragnolo and the Astico Valleys, though the main advance extends across the tableland of Bette Comuni as far as the upper portion of the Val Sugana.
The reasons why the Austrians chose to deliver their thrust in this region are sufficiently obvious. It is on the whole the easiest and the shortest way to the Venetian plain, and is the nearest approach to the Italian line of communications with the main army on the Isonzo. It would be foolish to disguise the fact that the Austrian advance has met with considerable success. The Italians have had to withdraw from several hardly-won positions, and are now fighting on their own territory.
The Austrians have two conspicuous advantages. They have managed to cram a tremendous weight of heavy artillery upon a small front, and it may be said broadly that they are now moving downhill. Their local superiority in guns over the Italians is not denied, and requires the prompt attention of the Allies. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the Austrians are scarcely in touch yet with the Italian main positions, which appear to be on the Arsiero-Asiago line; but five miles below Arsiero lies the open plain which leads to Vicenza, and that is why the outlook is not free from anxiety.
The Italians, like General Petain at Verdun, have demanded a high price for each mile of ground yielded. They have withdrawn in good order, and remain calm and confident. The Austrian claims in the matter of prisoners and captured guns are denounced as greatly exaggerated, and this is specially true of the guns.
Our Milan Correspondent tells us that Italian reinforcements are pouring up to the mountains, and we do not expect to see Austrian columns debouching on the plain. At the same time, the position needs vigilant attention in a war in which all the Allies are fighting as one. The Corriere della Sera reminds us - though we have already noted the point this week - that when Italy entered the war a year ago she drew part of the Austrian pressure away from Galicia, and she again helped to relieve the Eastern front by her strenuous attacks on Gorizia and the Carso plateau last October and November. The Milan journal says with marked emphasis that “there is only one antidote to Austro-German action, and that is solidarity and cooperation between the Allies.”
The Austrian menace from the Trentino concerns us all, and we are sure it will be so regarded. It is really one more proof of the growing desperation of the Germanic Powers, and if rightly dealt with it should yield no better results than the prolonged German onslaughts around Verdun.
The whole Italian Front engaged
May 17, 1916
Most stubborn was the fighting in the Monfalcone zone, where, after an alternating struggle, the enemy were counter-attacked with success and left in our hands 254 prisoners
The Austrians have made a general attack on the Italian front, and they claim numerous successes, chiefly in Southern Tirol, where over 2,500 prisoners are said to have been taken. The Italian communique reports heavy fighting at several parts of the front and admits a retirement in the Trentino, between the Adige and Astico Valleys.
Rome, May 16. The following official communique is issued here On the Trentino frontier the enemy followed up an intense bombardment which they carried out on the 14th with an attack by masses of infantry against the part of our front between the Adige Valley and the Upper Astico. After our first resistance, during which we inflicted on the enemy very serious losses, our troops from their most advanced positions fell back upon their principal lines of defence.
Along the whole rest of the front to the sea the enemy’s activity did not deploy their artillery fire and infantry attacks having the character of a diversion. Such were the actions which developed in the Val Sugana, between Monte Collo and Santanna, in the Upper Seebach, on the heights north-west of Gorizia, on the slopes north of Monte San Michele. Everywhere the enemy were promptly repulsed.
Most stubborn was the fighting in the Monfalcone zone, where, after an alternating struggle, the enemy were counter-attacked with success and left in our hands 254 prisoners, including some officers and two machine-guns.
A raid by enemy aeroplanes upon places on the Lower Isonzo is reported to have taken place on the night of the 15th, upon Venice and Mestre the same evening, and upon Udine and Treviso at dawn on the 16th. There were few victims and the damage was very slight.
A squadron of our Caproni aeroplanes at dawn this morning bombarded the railway station of Ovcia Draga, and the enemy cantonments at Kostarievica, Lohvica, and Segeti on the Carso. Fifty bombs were thrown with very effective results.
Our squadron, though the object of fire from many batteries and assailed by very many enemy aeroplanes, returned undamaged, after having brought down two enemy aeroplanes which fell in their territory near Gorizia. Reuter.
The Part of Italy
May 23, 1916
On the greatness of the service which Italy has rendered, and is rendering, the common cause we need not dwell. It may be measured by the fury with which the enemy has abused her.
It is just a year today since Italy took her stand with the Western Powers in the great cause of European liberty. The anniversary finds her gallantly defending the first line of her conquests in the Trentino against a heavy and determined Austrian attack. She has been forced back a few miles in the pronounced salient which she had seized between the valleys of the Terragnola and the Astico, but by Saturday the costly advance of the enemy appears to have been stayed. Strong Italian counter-attacks were in progress, and there is every reason to expect that the initial success of the Austrians at Zugna Torta may prove as illusory as the first German gains before Verdun.
The movement is evidently intended to be of the most serious character, and to be part of some large strategical design of which the scope and nature are not yet fully disclosed. Immense preparations have been made to execute this plan, and an Italian semi-official note states that the hostile forces on the frontier have been increased from twenty to thirty-eight divisions since November, of which sixteen were told off for operations between the Adige and the Brenta, while quantities of heavy artillery, withdrawn from the Russian front, have been massed in the same sector.
But General Cadorna has not been taken by surprise. He has withdrawn his troops after a desperate resistance from some advanced positions, but withdrawn them only to more defensible lines. His troops are still fighting upon part of that Austrian soil which they and all their countrymen feel it is their mission to redeem. The Italians may fairly boast that, at the end of a year of war, they alone of our Continental Allies have carried the war on all fronts into the territories of the enemy.
When it is remembered that the frontier forced upon Italy in 1866 was specially designed to facilitate invasion from Austria, that this frontier extends for 500 miles, that Austria has been fortifying it for years, that she was fully prepared for the struggle, and that pacifists and pro-Germans in high place had left Italy unprepared, the greatness of the effort which has achieved this result may in some degree be gauged. Italy has practically reversed the situation which existed a year ago. It is she, and not Austria, who now holds the key to the passes through which the Teutonic barbari have so often poured to devastate and to plunder her.
On the greatness of the service which Italy has rendered, and is rendering, the common cause we need not dwell. It may be measured by the fury with which the enemy has abused her. The Austrian Emperor, the German Chancellor, and the North-German Gazette have rivalled each other in the bitterness of their invective. The mere refusal of Italy to be dragged into the war as the accomplice of the Central Powers relieved the Allies from anxieties and dangers of the gravest kind in the first weeks of the war. By drawing the sword against, her hereditary oppressors and enemies twelve months ago she gave the progressive Powers very valuable military support, and immensely strengthened their moral position. It is true that she has never issued a formal declaration of war against Germany, even after she found German soldiers fighting in the Austrian ranks, but that is an omission which it is not difficult to understand.
There are internal situations in each of the Allied countries which it would be injudicious for other members of the Alliance to probe too curiously, even did they possess all the knowledge needful for the operation. The attitude of Italy towards Germany - and that of Germany towards Italy - are not the less clear because they have refrained from declaring war. Italy’s adhesion last winter to the Agreement of September, 1914 is conclusive upon that. She is pledged to make no separate peace with the enemy, and by that pledge, given with full knowledge of what the Allies had declared their general terms to be, she has bound herself with them to see that these terms are enforced. Prominent amongst them are certain conditions directly and exclusively, affecting Germany to which Germany will never assent except at the point of the sword.
Italian feeling is stronger and more united in the cause of the Allies than it was when she resolved to throw in her lot with them. The war has clarified and deepened it. The sincerity of Italy in the cause of right and freedom is shown in a remarkable way by the date at which she finally broke with Austria. A year ago Mackensen was driving the Russians before him in Galicia, and the month which the English had spent in Gallipoli without making progress had revealed something of the task that lay before us there and of its probable result. This was the moment at which Italy came in - not on the crest but in the trough of the wave of our fortunes. The diversion was doubly valuable by reason of its timeliness, and particularly welcome as an indication of the high and chivalrous spirit of Italy. The Western peoples felt from the first that, sooner or later, they must find her by their side. She could not have opposed them, she could not even have remained neutral, without being untrue to the principles from which she draws her life. She is essentially liberal, progressive, democratic, and humane. She is the splendid creation of the rights of nationalities. It was not conceivable that with such a past - and, as we all believe, with such a future - Italy should help the military despotisms of Central Europe to stifle all to which she owes her greatness and her rebirth. Was she to stand aloof while the independent civilization which Europe first learned from her was crushed under the burdea of Teutonic Kultur, imposed upon all peoples by German pedants and German soldiers “for their good”? So great an apostasy was inconceivable to anything but to German arrogance.
Italy made her choice. She decided at all costs to be faithful to her traditions and to her generous heart. We are confident that her courage, her sacrifices, her chivalry, and her fidelity will not be without their rich reward in the present and in the memories of this tremendous war.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4742548.ece
The Austrian Thrust at Venetia
May 26, 1916
The Austrians have two conspicuous advantages. They have managed to cram a tremendous weight of heavy artillery upon a small front, and it may be said broadly that they are now moving downhill
The vigorous Austrian advance in the Trentino has now been in progress for nearly a fortnight, and is gradually concentrating upon one particular area. The attacks of the enemy grow steadily more intense in the mountainous country between the Terragnolo and the Astico Valleys, though the main advance extends across the tableland of Bette Comuni as far as the upper portion of the Val Sugana.
The reasons why the Austrians chose to deliver their thrust in this region are sufficiently obvious. It is on the whole the easiest and the shortest way to the Venetian plain, and is the nearest approach to the Italian line of communications with the main army on the Isonzo. It would be foolish to disguise the fact that the Austrian advance has met with considerable success. The Italians have had to withdraw from several hardly-won positions, and are now fighting on their own territory.
The Austrians have two conspicuous advantages. They have managed to cram a tremendous weight of heavy artillery upon a small front, and it may be said broadly that they are now moving downhill. Their local superiority in guns over the Italians is not denied, and requires the prompt attention of the Allies. It must be remembered, on the other hand, that the Austrians are scarcely in touch yet with the Italian main positions, which appear to be on the Arsiero-Asiago line; but five miles below Arsiero lies the open plain which leads to Vicenza, and that is why the outlook is not free from anxiety.
The Italians, like General Petain at Verdun, have demanded a high price for each mile of ground yielded. They have withdrawn in good order, and remain calm and confident. The Austrian claims in the matter of prisoners and captured guns are denounced as greatly exaggerated, and this is specially true of the guns.
Our Milan Correspondent tells us that Italian reinforcements are pouring up to the mountains, and we do not expect to see Austrian columns debouching on the plain. At the same time, the position needs vigilant attention in a war in which all the Allies are fighting as one. The Corriere della Sera reminds us - though we have already noted the point this week - that when Italy entered the war a year ago she drew part of the Austrian pressure away from Galicia, and she again helped to relieve the Eastern front by her strenuous attacks on Gorizia and the Carso plateau last October and November. The Milan journal says with marked emphasis that “there is only one antidote to Austro-German action, and that is solidarity and cooperation between the Allies.”
The Austrian menace from the Trentino concerns us all, and we are sure it will be so regarded. It is really one more proof of the growing desperation of the Germanic Powers, and if rightly dealt with it should yield no better results than the prolonged German onslaughts around Verdun.
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