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Caption: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 18
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Italy, since 1871, has looked forward to the completion of her unifi. cation on purely sentimental grounds; certainly it would be highly gratifying to her to feel that all the regions once a part of her ancient country, and at present inhabited by a majority Italian population, were incorporated forever in the motherland, Irredentism, however, has played its tremendously important role in modern Italian life not on sentimental, but on eminently practical grounds; these coveted bits of territory under alien control have left Italy with threatened frontiers in the north and north-east. A glance at a map, or a survey of Italian military operations in the war, will reveal the very real danger which the country has had to face because of Italia Irredenta. The Trentino is a powerful jut of most difficult mountainous country thrust into northern Italy,-almost inaccessible to attack from the south, as Italy's campaigns in that theatre demonstrated, while, on the other hand, the rich Lombard plain, the heart of Italy, lies practically at the mercy of better in the Julia possessors region, to the north-east, where again there is no satisfactory frontier. This unfortunate state of affairs dates from* 1871. Italy's unification between support—a process And what of the Adriatic? Italians have long been of the opinion country controlling Dalmatia, ipso facto, held their country likewise Mediterranean approximately five hundred miles long" with a mean breadth of one hundred and ten miles, narrowing down however, at its southern extremity across the Straits of Otranto, to a stretch of water some fortylthe\ best in Western V w - th* n ; w u Eumnp perfectly V m Wldth The eXCellent A I b a n i a n 1 ^ b o r•, _'• Valona,im- of one c ^_ Adriatic as it has been :. A J > the f This sea washes an Italian wind > while Venice, further- ^ t ^ ^ i zTr igular, more ha! £ 3 5 2 a * ** * d a s s haven tly impairedb c ue the ea s and Apennines, steadily b r ^ S o w n n o^t hT l T * *"** * t ^ g I t t ar^t «*.-*uu. „r .:,: 4., ° " ' head waters of the Adriatic great quantities of silt. harbo every mile of shore. 4 ir ll I I
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