ing months of hard fighting. An Austrian offensive in May-June 1916 took the Italians by surprise and captured two key points on the Asiago plateau, but the Austrians lacked the reserves to break through to the Piave River. The Italians hastily brought up reserves from the Isonzo front and launched a counterattack which recovered most of the territory, but it cost 150,000 men. The 6th through 9th battles of the Isonzo, fought during 1916, were equally barren of results. So were the 10th and 11th battles of the Isonzo, fought during the spring and summer of 1917. As a result of 2 years of combat the Italians had advanced only about 10 miles, or halfway to Trieste. General Cadorna, the Italian commander, begged his allies to send sufficient men, arms, and supplies to deliver a knockout blow, but the French and British were too involved in the long series of offensives on the Western Front. On the other side, General Ludendorff, having knocked Serbia and Rumania out of the war, was able to relieve the pressure on his war-weary Austrian allies. He reinforced the nine Austrian divisions on the Isonzo front with six veteran German divisions. On October 26, 1917, the AustroGerman forces attacked near Caporetto (12th Battle of the Isonzo) after a short bombardment but shielded by a heavy fog. The Italians broke at once; the enemy advanced 10 miles the first day and within 3 days had nearly cut the demoralized Italians off at the Tagliamento River. Fortunately the Italians made it across, then fell back to the Piave River line. French and British reinforcements were hurried to Italy (Nov. 3-4, 1917) and the Austro-German forces, having outrun their supply system, slowed down. The Italians lost 300,000 men taken prisoner and even more by desertion. However, the Piave line held. Cadorna was replaced by General Diaz, who concentrated on defensive warfare and restoration of morale. In June 1918 the Austrians made a last bid for victory. They crossed the Piave but could not hold their positions. They withdrew after losing 100,000 men. On October 24, 1918, Diaz, after much prodding from his allies, attacked the Austrians along the entire front from the Trentino to the Adriatic. The Austrians held out for a week on the key Monte Grappa position in the center, but they collapsed completely on the lower Piave line. The Italians advanced to Vittorio Veneto on October 30. Several hundred thousand Austrian troops, now thoroughly demoralized, surrendered. The Italians took Trieste on November 3 and Fiume on November 5, 1918. The Austrians offered "unconditional surrender" on October 29. Hungary seceded on November 1 and set up an independent government (the Czechs had already done the same on October 21). On November 3 Austria signed an armistice and was out of the war. Germany could only continue the war for another 8 days, before she too was forced to request an armistice. This is the general historical background of A Farewell to Arms. Frederic Henry, an American, is a lieutenant in the Italian Army, in charge of the motor ambulance section of a medical unit. The story presumably opens in late 1915, for Henry mentions in chapter 2 "next year there were many victories... (presumably the Italian recovery of the Asiago plateau in 1916). His unit is based in Gorizia, on the Isonzo front. Here he meets Catherine Barkley, a nurse attached to a British hospital unit and they fall in love. During a bombardment, Henry is wounded in the legs. America has just declared war on Germany (April 1917) and Henry is sent to an American hospital in Milan. Catherine leaves her own unit and comes to nurse him. During the summer of his convalescence they become lovers and in the autumn Catherine confesses that she is pregnant, but will not marry him, fearing she will be sent back to England. Henry finally must return to his unit in Gorizia, but his heart is back in Milan and he wishes he were out of the war. His opportunity comes during the Austro-German advance at Caporetto (October 26, 1917). His medical unit is ordered to retreat across the Tagliamento to the town of Pordenone. His ambulances bog down when he takes some back roads to avoid the retreating army units which are clogging the main roads. He is forced to abandon them and cross the river on foot. The Italian retreat becomes a panic-stricken rout. Military police arrest all officers and shoot some of them without trial. Henry escapes by jumping into the river and swimming to a deserted area. He removes his officer's insignia and makes his way to Milan, then to Stresa, where Catherine is stationed. They decide to flee to neutral Switzerland. They steal a rowboat and row up Lago Maggiore to Swiss territory, where they pose as man and wife. For a short time they have an idyllic life, but Catherine dies while delivering their child-which is born dead. The love idyl ends, leaving Henry alone and desolate in a strange land. Nonfiction Books About World War I The publishers listed in this Reader's Guide may not be the only publishers of titles mentioned herein. They are the only ones known to us at present. Publishers' names are included to assist the interested reader in obtaining titles from other sources, if they are not available in libraries. Baldwin, Hanson W. Clark, Alan Falls, Cyril Liddell-Hart, B. H. Moorehead, Alan Stallings, Laurence Wolff, Leon World War I (Harper & Row Publishers Incorporated; Grove Press Black Cat BC 47-paperback) The Donkeys (Wiliam Morrow & Company) Brief study of the British high command. The Great War 1914-1918 (G. P. Putnam's Sons; Capricorn #209 paperback) The Real War, 1914-1918 (Little, Brown Through the Fog of War (Random Reputations: Ten Years After (Little, Gallipoli (Harper & Brothers; Ballantine The Doughboys (Harper & Row) The Guns of August (The MacMillan In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign ZAA V Novels Between Two World Wars To some people the end of World War I was the dawn of a new age of reason, peace, and prosperity. The war had been a nightmare of violence and slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Surely, mankind could never be so stupid as to risk another war, which would inevitably result in the destruction of civilization. President Wilson's idealistic utterances of Allied war aims supported this optimistic view of a new age. The peace settlements which followed the armistice seemed to have given freedom to millions of subject nationalities and encouraged an enormous spread of democratic government. Poland, Austria, Hungary, Finland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, all adopted democratic constitutions. In Germany a discredited Emperor fled and the Weimar Republic, based on a democratic parliamentary system, took over by default. Even the Soviet regime in Russia, in its own peculiar fashion, professed adherence to the eventual establishment of a democratic regime. The peace treaties contained provisions for a new international organization, the League of Nations, whose primary object was to insure "peace with justice." On the other hand, the peace settlements also left a legacy of hatred and distrust, along with many unsettled problems: minorities, mandates, trade barriers between the new nations, disarmament to name only a few. Many realists knew that the Treaty of Versailles, which disarmed Germany, also redistributed the chips in the colonial game. The recognition of nationalist governments in Eastern Europe confirmed the transfer of territory from Imperial Russia begun by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The exploits of the Arab forces under Prince Feisal and Lawrence had not resulted in the establishment of an Arab national state. Instead, France and Britain split much of the dismembered Turkish Empire between them, under the guise of "mandates" sanctioned by the League of Nations. Promises of a new Israeli state, made in return for Zionist support of the Allies, were conveniently forgotten when the diplomats discovered that they had promised the same area to the Arabs. During the 1920's the "spirit of Locarno" dominated the minds of men. The leaders intoned praises of peace and prosperity. Briand of France and Streseman of Germany worked out a plan of reconciliation between their two nations, while the United States underwrote most of the reparations paid by Germany to the victorious Allies. At the same time the French built up a collective security alliance, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia an alliance which appeared much stronger than it really was. The French unilateral policy of alliance building annoyed Britain and made Anglo-French cooperation in the League of Nations and outside of it much more difficult than before with tragic results. The United States determined to "return to normalcy"—which meant rapid demobilization of its Armed Forces, unilateral disarmament, a policy of isolation from the quarrels of the outside world, preoccupation with the ways of peace and politics as usual. The Senate refused to ratify American membership in the League of Nations. The Harding administration sponsored the Washington naval disarmament conference by which the three major naval powers (Britain, the United States, and Japan) agreed to scrap most of their older ships and build new ones on a 5:5:3 ratio. France and Italy agreed to accept the status quo of 175,000 tons each. The conference failed to "outlaw" the submarine, but seemingly a new naval armaments race was halted before it could get underway. The United States and Britain also agreed to stabilize the status quo in naval bases in the Pacific. The United States could not build new naval bases in the Aleutians, Guam, or the Philippines; the British could not modernize Hong Kong; Japan could not build bases in the Kuriles, Ryukyus, Formosa, the Bonins, the Carolines, or the Marshalls. This agreement was as unsatisfactory to American naval strategists as the 5:5:3 ratio was to Japanese naval strategists. The Anglo-Japanese alliance was dissolved; the Great Powers agreed to respect each others' "insular possessions" and a Nine Power Pact reaffirmed the "Open Door" policy in China. With the signing of the various treaties and pacts, the United States settled back and let its Armed Forces wither away. Britain did likewise, after scattering its small land and sea forces at ་ |