Death of Diaz

"I am dying. . . . Quick! Bring the flag of Italy! . . . Let me be wrapped within its glorious folds."

Such were the heroic words gasped out by a desperately wounded Italian Colonel during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12. Death was, however, not quite ready to snatch away Armando Diaz, then 51, and quite unknown outside the Army. By a miracle he recovered from his battle wounds and lived to die, last week, in bed, of bronchial pneumonia, at 66. The 15 years of grace thus granted by Death had enabled Colonel Diaz to become Marshal Diaz, the nation's military idol, the first commander to lead United Italy from national defeat to national victory.

The defeat was Caporetto (1917). Never can the fact be lived down that on that field some 265,000 Italians were taken prisoner with more than 3,000 guns. Flushed with victory, the eagles of Habsburg and Hohenzollern screeched the impending doom of Italy.

At that moment, with Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna in desperate retreat, the Third Army was found to be masterfully holding its own. The successful Third Army General was Armando Diaz. Cadorna was brushed aside and Diaz became Commander-in-Chief on Nov. 9, 1917. Within 360 days he had not only retrieved the losses of Caporetto but shattered the Austro-Hungarian armies and forced the Dual Monarchy to sign an abject separate peace on Nov. 4, 1918.

The soldier who achieved these things was born in Naples, his father a commoner, his mother a baroness. Never rich, it was the fate of General Diaz to die possessed of almost nothing except a small house in Naples which was presented to him by popular subscription after the War. The house he left to his son, last week, bidding him not to sell it except in direst need. Such was the last request of one whom Italy created Duca della Victoria (Duke of Victory) and who chose for himself the motto: "Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."

All the pomp that Italy could muster was displayed at Marshal Diaz's state funeral, last week, but it paled before two simple scenes enacted while the dead hero yet lay in his own small room at Rome, with four tall candles at the corners of his iron bed.

The King enters, alone. He, Vittorio Emanuele III, is a little man, with sallow cheeks and greying temples. He kneels before the bed and tells his rosary, while great tears stream from his eyes. He prays softly to himself, and then, rising, steps down the stair and departs in a two-horse carriage.

Some few moments later a limousine with bullet-proof glass windows stops at the door. Up the stair stalks Il Duce. He enters the presence of the dead, alone. Like a soldier, like a ramrod, he stands at attention beside the bier. Minutes pass. No tears, no prayers, no rattling of beads. At last Signor Mussolini salutes the dead and strides away.

Later Il Duce informs the Chamber of Deputies, characteristically, that "Marshal Diaz's whole life might be summed up in the one word 'duty.' " As everyone knows, that is the one word which Il Duce never tires of dinning into weary Italian noodles.