Some two years before the beginning of the war we
attempted to show what that danger was by describing the view seen by the tourist who looks out from the railway carriage window at the bridge of Peschiera. That passage we may now quote :—
" Let any traveller between Milan and Venice put his head out of the window at Peschiera railway station, and he will understand why Italy is in the Triple Alliance. The answer to the riddle is straight before him. Looking north, his eyes rest urn what is perhaps the most beautiful, certainly the most scenic, view in Southern Europe. In front are spread the steel-blue waters of the Lake of Garda, now lashed in foam by the periodic and diurnal storm, now sleeping in azure security, a mere mirror for the hills. The ample bay is flanked by precipitous mountains which make the lake seem like some Norwegian fjord transported from the Arctic seas to be endowed with all the en- chantments of the south On the left lie the lemon groves of Gardone. Nearer at hand Catullus's peninsula. olive silvery Sirmio,' takes its sickle sweep of green and grey ; while on the foreshore, where ' the almost islet' joins the land, stands in sombre magnificence the noblest of mediaeval castles. But though the scene is so magical and so Italian, one is looking not into Italy, but out of Italy, into the land of the Teuton and the invader, out of the great gate through which Italy's conquerors have always come. Down the Brenner Attila led his Scythian cavalry, and down it passed the endless stream of Landsknechts and men-at- arms, soldiers of that Empire which usurped so crudely the Caesarean name and yet was neither Holy nor Roman. It is true that no poet need now address Italy as Clough did in his ' Bridge of Pcschiera'-
` I see the Croat soldier stand Upon the grass of your redoubts, The eagle with his broad wing flouts The breadth and beauty of your land.'
Still at Peschiera, now as before, the gate stands open into Italy, a gate which the Italians cannot shut. Look at tho map and see how the great wedge of Austria-Hungary runs down to Lake Garda and renders vain the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, with all their ditches, raveling, outworks, star forts, and salients and re-entrants. They could when in the hands of the foreigner make it easier to enter Italy, but they cannot close the door."
