ian high command
a task which made immediate victory impossible, and assigned to
Italy the useful but inglorious role of occupying some 400,000
Austrian troops, and thus contributing to the strain imposed upon
the Central Powers and to the hastening of the moment when
exhaustion might be expected to set in.

Had Italy decided to enter the war at the moment when Russia was
destroying Austrian armies in Galicia in September and October of
1914 she would almost unquestionably have supplied the necessary
numbers to bring a speedy and decisive defeat for the Central
Powers. Again, had she selected the moment when Russian armies were
at the crests of the Carpathians, and Przemysl had just fallen, she
would have probably made the German offense against Russia
impossible, brought Rumania in with her, and produced the collapse
of Austria. Bulgaria would not have enlisted with the Central
Powers, Greece would almost certainly have attacked Turkey, and the
Balkan campaign would not have taken place.

But German diplomacy averted the second peril, and Italian alignment
with Austria and with Germany in the Triple Alliance made an attack
at the opening of the war unthinkable. When Italy did come in, the
German victory in Galicia had been won, Russia was in retreat, the
allied defeat before the Dardanelles forts and the Russian disasters
had produced a profound effect in Balkan capitals, and Austria was
able to find the troops to meet and check the Italian advance almost
at the frontier. Since that time the Italian operations have been
merely trench conflicts, and Italy has nowhere penetrated a score of
miles into Austrian territory, nor has she taken Trieste, Trent, or
even Gorizia.

If one desires a parallel for the Italian operations it is to be
found in the later phases of the Peninsula War against Napoleon.
This field was never of decisive importance, but it did require the
attention of several of Napoleon's best marshals, and drew off
thousands of French soldiers needed by the great emperor in the
campaigns in eastern Germany, where his fortunes were finally
decided. What Wellington did, the Italians under Cadorna have been
imitating in their own peninsula, and their service to their allies
has thus been very considerable.

Nor is it necessary for the purposes of so rapid a review of the
main phases of the war to dwell upon the allied failure in the west
between the end of the battles of Flanders in November, 1914, and
Fe