HAPPENED TODAY – On 24 May 1915 Italy entered the war and the Piave whispered

''The Piave murmured/ calmly and placidly as the first infantrymen passed by/ on May 24/ the army marched to reach the frontier/ to build a barrier against the enemy''. Thus begins ''La canzone del Piave'' destined to become the anthem of the Great War (for a short time, after the liberation of 1945, it was also used as the national anthem, before the Mameli anthem was adopted). The author was a well-known Neapolitan songwriter, Giovanni Ermete Gaeta, aka EA Mario, lyricist and musician of many more recent songs (in fact he died in 1961), who composed that piece in 1918, in a fit of patriotism in a single Night. After all, many other famous hymns were born this way. The ''Marseillaise'' was performed on a pianola and brought to the front by troops from Marseilles. Today it is a kind of universal hymn to the principles of freedom, equality and fraternity. The casus belli was determined by the assassination, on June 28, 1914, of theArchduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife during a state visit to Sarajevo by a young Bosnian Serb nationalist student, Gavrilo Princip.

Austria took the opportunity to carry out its aggressive plans against Serbia (protected by Russia) which it declared war on a month later. The Pavlovian reflex of the system of alliances was immediately set in motion: on August 1st Germany declared war on Russia, on the 3rd on France; on August 4 it was the turn of Great Britain to declare war on Germany. On August 25, Japan sided with Great Britain. The old world was thus in jeopardy and the most paradoxical aspect was the following: the English sovereign, the Kaiser, the Tsar were first cousins. La belle époque ended, without even realizing it, in a bloodbath that would have opened Pandora's box of nationalisms, of chauvinisms that overwhelmed the liberal order and paved the way for warmongering totalitarian regimes that transformed the interval between the first and second world wars of the last century into an armistice. Italy was allied with Germany and Austria, but remained neutral at the outbreak of hostilities. Against entering the war were the socialists, the Catholic Church, Giolitti and a large part of the liberals, sectors of industry (while other sectors urged an armaments policy).

To solicit a different orientation - also supported by a reversal of alliances - were active minorities who - as Massimo L. Salvadori writes in the Storia d'Italia - were interventionists each in their own way, starting from different political positions. Basically, the combination of anti-Giolittian liberals, irredentists, republicans, so-called democratic interventionists and nationalists ended up dragging Italy into the war in 1915. At the time of its entry into the war, the Italian army could count on 35 infantry divisions. The supreme commander was Luigi Cadorna, the son of that Raffaele who in 1870 had conquered Rome from the breach of Porta Pia. Of the 5,7 million recalled, 2,6 million were illiterate farmers. There was a shortage of officers so much that they resorted to complementary young men. But above all there was no vision of modern warfare in the general staffs. Armies established themselves for years on the front lines reached in the first offensives and remained to macerate in the trenches for years, carrying out assaults on the enemy trenches which allowed at most - with a hecatomb of dead and wounded - the conquest of a few hundred meters, which would have been lost a few days later following the counterattack enemy.

Asphyxiating gases were used which suddenly seized the enemy trenches sowing destruction and death. The discipline – consisting in imposing absurd military operations where it was evident that the soldiers were going to die for no reason – was maintained with decimations. In his book ''The war of our grandparents'' (Mondadori) Aldo Cazzullo narrates – in the incipit – an episode that describes the cruelty and contempt for human life that constituted the rule of command. There are protests in a regiment (there were many reasons). The colonel orders decimation by lot. They ask him if they should also enter the names of those soldiers who had arrived the day after the protests (and who were therefore unable to take part). The colonel authorizes and two of these are drawn by lot and they meet their fate in disbelief in front of a firing squad for a fault (if it was) to which they were totally extraneous, because they weren't there. The rout of Caporetto in 1917 it was not produced only by the reinforcements that the Austrians were able to transfer from the Russian front, but also by the discontent that circulated among the troops for an idiotic conduct of hostilities that made soldiers cannon fodder. Cadorna was removed and replaced with Armando Diaz who inaugurated a less inhuman line.

Fu the heroic resistance on the Piave river to resolve the tide of the conflict. The war ended on November 4, 1918 (see the bulletin signed by Diaz), with the tragic count of 650 dead (among the millions who fell on the other fronts). It must be said that without American intervention the Allies would not have been able to win. US President Woodrow Wilson was the real protagonist of the Treaty of Versailles, where, under pressure from France, harsh conditions were imposed on Germany (which were not unrelated to the instability of the Weimar Republic). The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered and the geography of Europe redesigned. Consider that these operations caused as many as 8 million stateless people and communities of different nationalities, cultures and religions were forced to coexist within the new borders (especially in the Balkans and in central Europe). Wilson also managed to define a new world order with supranational bodies dedicated to preventing and settling conflicts (The League of Nations). Unfortunately he was not a prophet at home, because the US Congress did not ratify the treaty.