SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR
HOW THE WAR ENTERED ITALY
Then, by one of the most vivid, if pathetic, of
the flashes as of lightning that have shown us
the drama of the past 365 days, we saw the
actual war come to Italy. It came in a profoundly
impressive form—the dead body of
young Bruno Garibaldi, grandson of the Liberator.
Fighting for France, Bruno had fallen
in a gallant charge at the front, and his brother,
who was by his side, had carried his body out
of the trenches and brought it home. We who
know Rome do not need to be told how it was
received there. We can see the dense mass of
uncovered heads in the Piazza delle Terme,
stretching from the doors of the railway station
to the bronze fountain at the top of the Via
Nazionale, and we can hear the deep swell of the
Garibaldian hymn, which comes like a challenge
as well as a moan from 50,000 throats. Not for
the first time was a dead Garibaldi being borne
through the streets of Rome, and those of us
who remembered the earlier day knew well that
with the body of this Italian boy the war had
entered Italy.
Then, at a crisis in Italy's internal government, our enemy, having failed to buy, bribe, or corrupt Italy, began to threaten her. Out of the delirium of his intoxicated conscience, which no longer shrank from crime, he told Italy that
