An Unsuspected Witness (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

We read not altogether with surprise what an unsuspected witness, the intervenist painter Sartorio, back from two years' imprisonment in Austria, declared to the “Giornale d’Italia: ”

“Sartorio, crossing various regions of Austria, saw everywhere the camps in perfect order and overflowing with kitchens. That, he said, proves that this year’s harvest is very abundant, and therefore we must put aside the idea of defeating Austria by starvation.”

He is said to have seen in the railway stations wherever he passed, large quantities of war material and well-equipped troops of excellent aspect, which, in his opinion, reveals that there is not that depression in the men and things of Austria which Italian newspapers like to speak of frequently. He added to this: "Regarding Austria, you have in Italy inexact news. If the existing conditions in Austria are not happy, they are very far from being desperate. I deny that the population is on the eve of a revolution. They suffer, but with resignation. Even the soldiers do not at all suffer the privations of which the Italian newspapers have spoken. I have seen that the soldiers have even better bread to-day than was distributed to them some time ago.”

“A perfectly white bread,” literally exclaimed Sartorio.

Then what about all that has been told us by the truthful Italian newspapers on the tremendous food crisis in the Central Empires?

—From “La Romagna Socialista” by A. Bagnari