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the territory would go anyway; the urgent thing was to disperse the ‘negative constellation’ looming over their heads. No, rejoined Conrad, this would not satisfy the ex-allies, who were planning a big offensive against the ‘heart of the monarchy’. He was right on both counts. Although unwilling to buy off the Italians, Conrad and his government were too disengaged and contemptuous to wonder what would happen if the traitors in Rome got a better offer elsewhere. Italy kept the illusion alive by not breaking off negotiations.
    The Russians finally accepted that Dalmatia south of Split might be neutralised under Serbian sovereignty. Grey announced the good news on 10 April. With the major issues resolved, the diplomats focused on the detail. Salandra, meanwhile, instructed Italy’s regional governors to prepare secret reports on popular attitudes to fighting Austria. The result was an extraordinary snapshot of public opinion. In general, people were only ready to accept the prospect of war if it was a struggle for national survival against foreign invaders. Most people’s neutralism was spontaneous and passive. Anti-war feeling was strongest among peasant farmers, for whom war was a calamity like famine or plague. Even for middle-class Italians, who provided most of the pro-war passion, strong feelings about Trento and Trieste were the exception. In most places, only the intellectuals were pro-war; business leaders were not.
    Neutralist opinion was strongest in the south, including Salandra’s home province of Puglia. In parts of Sardinia, the peasants and workers openly criticised the warmongers. In Naples, the governor reckoned that 90 per cent of all social classes were anti-war. As another governor pointed out, nobody had invaded their homeland, the south had no historic scores to settle, the previous year’s harvest had been poor, and the European war had blocked emigration – the traditional escape from poverty. The south was suffering already; why should anyone want an unnecessary war? In the north, the Socialists gave a backbone to neutralism, yet a broader vein of anti-Austrian feeling offset this. Only in Bologna did the governor warn that failure to intervene might create unrest. (So much for the danger of revolution.) At the same time, the governors reported high levels of trust in the government – thanks above all to the policy of neutrality which it was about to overturn! If war were declared, people would do their duty. This was the bottom line: the masses would fight.
    With the Allies piling pressure on Rome, the final wrinkles were ironed out. As signed on 26 April, the Treaty of London stated that, in exchange for committing all its resources to fighting the enemies of France, Great Britain and Russia within 30 days, Italy ‘will receive’ all of south Tyrol, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, Dalmatia down to Trogir, near Spalato, plus most of the islands further south to Dubrovnik. This unconditional promise, not to be found in the Allies’ other secret treaties, was a measure of Italy’s importance. 3
    These lands were home to some 230,000 German-speaking Austrians and up to 750,000 Slovenes and Croats, far outnumbering the 650,000 native Italians. Additionally, Italy would get Valona, giving her control over the Straits of Otranto, gateway to the Mediterranean; sovereignty over the Dodecanese Islands; and a guaranteed interest in a province of Turkey if the Ottoman Empire disintegrated. If Britain and France enlarged their African colonies, Italy would be ‘equitably compensated’ with territory for its own colonies: Libya, Eritrea and Somaliland. The loan of £50 million – later described by one of Sonnino’s advisors as ‘derisory’ – was reckoned enough to underwrite the short triumphant campaign that everyone expected.
    The treaty pledged its signatories to secrecy. On 1 May, Sonnino called on the cabinet to repudiate the Triple Alliance, so that Italy could seal an agreement with the