The Washington herald., 1916-01-02

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One day when these war clouds were
gathering above a world that yet dvelt
IN a FOOLS paradise Of armed peace,
saw an Italian airship Of the Zeppelin
type circle for a moment about the
campanile Of st. Marks IN Venice and
then sail away beyond the Lido and
over the Adriatic toward the Austrian
coast. But my companion had been quick
to press a camera button and had caught
for me a snapshot photograph Of that
interesting aerial maneuver in the i'm
pending conflict between Italy and
Austria.
For it is a fair suppostion now that
the aviator was starting on q recon-
noIssance Of the fallen nation of Italians
Italia Irridenta-which lies only fifty
or sixty miles away on the opposite
shore. At any rate, he steered the
course which soon was to become a path
OF war in the sky. And out Of the blue
horizon to which 1 watched him fly,
Venice lately has seen so many Austrian
Zeppelins' coming to pay return visits
that she has found 1t prudent to stable
the bronze horses Of st. Marks In bomb
proof quarters. Forewarned by her ex-
perience with Napoleon, who abducted
her prancing steeds and tsthered them
in his palace yard at Paris, she is not
going to let them be blown up now by
the hated Tedesco. And that Is almost
as unpleasant a name for the Austrian
in Italy as 'boche'' is for the German
IN France.
Those bronze horses are precious not
alone because they are the only horses
in a city whose streets are water. They
are the proud trophies Of an era when,
without a horse, the web-foot town con-
quered an Empire and when the Adriatic
was only q Venetian canal
But as the Islanders have sat all
summer about the little marble-top tables
in the great square Of St Marks won
dering over their coffee how much longer
it was going to take the Italian Army
to get into Trieste, they still saw three
reminders Of the old imperial days.
These are the graceful fiagstaffs before
the ancient church. from which once
foated the banners Of three distant and
glorious States in subsection to Venice
Greece, Cyprus and Crete.
But the most ardent irridentists do not
insist on reclairning the Greek kingdom
Their object and the object Of Italy in the
war is to deliver the~stalians Of the
TrentIno and the Adriatic from the
thraldom Of the Hapsburgs-
A Most Disputed Land.
venture to say that the northern coast
OF the Adriatic is the most disputed tract
Of land under the sun. There it lies on
the border Of the sea flowing between
Greece and Rome, the oldest centers of
European civilization. Yet today there is
not as clear a title to It as to the banks
Of the Nyanzas In darkest Africa After
$500 years of warning over II, the owner
ship Of It Is in question. And now again
this same old boundary quarrel has
brought on another war. This comes Of
writing title deeds with sword and
blood.
Even as an italian army at the top was
battling to establish the claim Of Italy
to the disputed territory, the Serbians
at the lower end were ip a death strug-
gle to make good the claim Of the Serbs.
Meanwhile Austria and Hungary divided
the actual possession Of It, and those
inveterate claim jumpers. the Hapsburgs,
played both ends toward the middle,
with nine points Of the game in their
favor.
It is a shore numbered with fallen
nations and strewn with the wrecks OF
empIree, which have been pounded to
pieces on its jagged rocks As your
steamer warfly lodges about on its
course among the 500 Islands which lit
ter the Adriatic and you gaze at the
daggerIlIke peaks and csstled capes Of
the mainland, you feel as IL the fury Of
nature had only been enulated by man
On the Dalmatian coast. where the pop
ulation forever has been torn to shreds
between nations and creeds as unrelent-
Ing and fierce In their mad strife an
the elements themselves.
At spslato, the palace which Diocis-
tian erected on his native shore recalls
the age when an Emperor ruled the Ro-
man world from Dalmatia- Everywhere
the still majestic wrecks OF Roman tsrn-
pies testify to havoc wrought By hu-
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