Orlando becomes prime minister of Italy

On 29 October 1917 Italy had a new government. At its head stood Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, until then minister of the interior, who had been asked to form a government by King Victor Emmanuel III after the fall of Paolo Boselli’s cabinet. This date is given as the start of the government’s term by Italian sources, including the Treccani Biographical Dictionary, and by the British chronology of the war. According to the newspaper La Stampa, the new ministers were sworn in the following day, on the evening of 30 October, which is why some works date Orlando’s government from 30 October.

The new prime minister took power at the worst possible moment. The day before, the Germans had taken Udine, until recently the seat of the Italian army’s headquarters, and the Austrians had recovered Gorizia. The shattered Second Army and the hitherto intact Third Army were retreating behind the Tagliamento, the roads were choked with transport columns and refugees, and tens of thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns were falling into enemy hands. At home the question was growing whether the army could be halted at all.

Orlando was 57. He was born on 19 May 1860 in Palermo into a family of lawyers, and before becoming a politician he had won fame as a scholar, one of the founders of the Italian science of public law and from 1903 a professor at the University of Rome. He had been a deputy since 1897. In the government of Giovanni Giolitti, as minister of education, he carried out a reform that extended compulsory schooling to the age of 12, and he was later twice minister of justice. In 1915, in Antonio Salandra’s cabinet, he prepared the law on the government’s extraordinary powers for the duration of the war. From June 1916 he headed the ministry of the interior, and it was in this post that he came into sharp conflict with the commander-in-chief, Luigi Cadorna, who accused him of failing to suppress the defeatism of the extreme parties. Now the man Cadorna had accused of leniency was to lead the country through the consequences of a defeat for which many blamed Cadorna himself.

Continuity was provided by the foreign minister. Sidney Sonnino, who had directed Italian diplomacy since the autumn of 1914, remained in post. Orlando kept the ministry of the interior for himself. The treasury went to the Radical Francesco Saverio Nitti, General Vittorio Alfieri became minister of war, and the newly created ministry of arms and munitions was headed by General Alfredo Dallolio, who had been responsible for war production since 1915. In practice only the Socialists remained outside the government camp.

One of Orlando’s first decisions was a telegram to Cadorna expressing confidence in him, although according to some historians the prime minister was already determined to dismiss him. The outcome came quickly: at the beginning of November the Allies, who at the Rapallo conference had promised Italy British and French divisions, demanded a change in the high command, and on 8 November Cadorna was replaced by General Armando Diaz. The army halted on the Piave. On 22 December Orlando called in parliament for resistance with the words “Resistere! resistere! resistere!” (Resist! resist! resist!), which became the watchword of that winter. He governed until June 1919, and at the Paris Peace Conference he sat alongside Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau among the “Big Four”.