There were strong reasons for the com parative inactivity on the Italian front during the early autumn. A number of troops had been loaned to Foch and the Austrians held the superiority in men and guns over the Italians. The Austro-Hungarian state was crumbling, and Diaz wisely stayed his hand until the process of internal decay had become accelerated. On 2.3 October— the anniversary of Caporetto — all was ready for the last great effort. Diaz now had at his disposal 51 Italian divisicms, three British, two French, one Czecho-Slovalc and one American regiment. According to the plan of campaign the battle was to bAgin with a feint by the 4th Army under General Giardino around Monte •Grappa, after which the nsain attack was to be delivered between Montello and the Ponte di Piave to cut the line cotmect ing the Austrians in the mountains with those in the plains. At 5 A.m. on 24 October the Italians opened fire and at 7:15 the infantry advanced. The ruse sncceeded, for the Austrians believed the Gmppa sector to be the main objective. Meanwhile some British troops had taken pos session of the island of Grave di Papadopoli in the middle of the Piave, and on the 26th the Italian artillery began to play on the real objective indicated above. Here immediate suc cess was obtained by the three armies on a 30-mile front — the 12th fought its way np the Piave Gorge and cut the Austrian communica tions with the Grappa massif ; the 8th Army, from Montello, passed over the bridges con structed by the British, and .the 10th Army crossed via the Papatlopoli Island. By 30 Octo ber the Austrian front had been cut in two. From this moment the gradual retirement of the Austrians became a rout; their resistance sveakened all along the line. Czech and Polish battalions surrendered wholesale, as also did many Hungarian units; only a few Austro German bodies maintained their discipline and resistance. By 31 October the enemy was flung back across the Livenza; the Dulce of Aosta's 11 Army was over the Piave everywhere down to the sea, while away up north Asiago had been retaken. The Grappa front collapsed on 1 Nov. 1918; on the 2d the British from the Asiago Plateau rested on Austrian soil; the roads to Trent and Trieste lay open. More than 300,000 prisoners and 5,000 guns had fallen to the victors. The Pope appealed to Great Britain (1 November) in behalf of Austria's plea for a separate peace. On 29 October an Austrian flag of truce party had approached the Italians in the Adige Valley, but as it could show no proper credentials it was sent back. Next day another white flag arrived with General von Weber and seven other plenipotentiaries. The terms of an armistice were presented by Gen eral Badoglio on 3 November; these were promptly accepted and on Monday, 4 Nov. 1918, hostilities ceased between Austria and Italy. The victory was decisive and overwhelming; Austria collapsed under military and internal pressure just as her ally followed a week later. Of all the Allies' enemies Germany alone re mained, and she was preparing to hoist die white flag. At the close of the war it was re vealed that Italy had mobilized 5,000,000 men out of a population of 35,000,000; she had lost nearly 470,000 killed and close to 1,000,000 vrounded, of whom more than half were crippled for life. Besides fighting her own battles with comparatively little material help from her Al lies, Italy sent 250,000 men to the French front, where they held part of the line between Rheims and Chateau-Thierry. Since early
1917 Italy lcept 100,000 men over military age building roads in France. An Italian brigade also co-operated with die British forces in Mesopotamia under General Allenby from the spring of 1917. During the last year of the war Italy had youths of 19 in the fighting line; early in 1918 boys of 18 and 17 had been called up and enrolled for the army and navy. Aus tro-Germans holding the invaded provinces of Italy after Caporetto damaged 431 industrial plants, causing a loss of over $57,000,000. While the Italian navy had no opportunity to fight any great sea battle, it performed an enormous service to the Allied cause and displayed bril liant examples of individual valor. On 9 June 1917 Commander Luigi Rizzo with two small torpedo boats forced his way by night into the port of Trieste after cutting the big steel haw sers at its entrance, sank the battleship Wien, damaged the Budapest and got safely aviray. On 9 June 1918 Rizzo perfornted an amazing feat of audacity in attacicing two Austrian dreadnoughts and three destroyers with two submarine chasers off Premuda, an island bor dering the Dalmation Coast. In the gray dawn he slipped through between the destroyers and' sank the 20,000 ton dreadnought Ssest Istvas, badly damaged the other dreadnought and got away again in 20 minutes. The enemy squad ron•was making for the Italian shore when the unexpected meeting occurred. In the eariy hours of 14 May 1918 Lieut-Coimnander Mario Pellegrini led a raiding party escorted by de stroyers into the strongly-fortified Austrian military port of Pola, eluding the observation. of the scouts and searchlights. Here lay Aus tria's fleet of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, fenced off by a chain of mines and a heavy steel net from bank to bank, and encircled by a terrace of land-batteries. After penetrating these obstacles, Pellegrini torpedoed a super dreadnought, sank his own boat, as arranged beforehand, and with his comrades swam ashore to be taken prisoners. On 1 Nov. 1918 Commander Rossetti and one companion en tered Pola with a animal tank') and sank the Austrian super-dreadnought Viribus Usitis, then already in the hands of the Jugo-Slavs, who had seized the Austrian fleet in that har bor a few days previously, and now protested strongly against the battleship being destroyed. That vessel had carried the Archduke Francis Ferdinand to the Dahnatian Coast on the way to his death at Serajevo and had conveyed the bodies of himself and his wife back to Trieste. In all the sea and land engagements the Italian aviators—of whom one of the most daring was D'Annunzio, the soldier-poet — played a conspicuous rOle with a courage excelled by none of the belligerents. The mercantile marine, also, kept the flag of Italy flying over sub manne and mine-infested waters, transporting the necessary war material and troops without which victory would have been impossible. The terms of the armistice laid Austria-Hungary open to the Allies for military operations; all the outworks of the Teutonic League had fallen; the central keep of Germatry alone remained, and that too, was destined sooti to fall.
In February 1919 the Italian delegates pre sented before the Reparations Committee of the Peace Conference a statement of Italy's naval losses in the war. These consisted of etght capi tal ships, eight submarines, and 25 smaller craft The Italian merchant marine lost 880,000 tons of shipping, or 57.5 per cent of its total tonnage.