“The ocean is bridged”. The Italian Great War in the diary of Gino C. Speranza (1915-1919)
Abstract
Gino Speranza (1872-1927), a lawyer and journalist, second generation Italian American, left New York for Italy with his wife, Florence, as a correspondent for the newspapers New York Evening Post and The Outlook. Along with the work as a journalist, he soon started to collaborate with the American Embassy in Rome. When the United States joined the war, he volunteered to work in the office of the Military Attaché at the Embassy, becoming later, on a proposal by Ambassador Thomas Nelson Page, an Attaché on Political Intelligence. The diary he left us (published posthumously by his wife), still largely ignored by the historiography, represents an important source not only as an account of the life of the country during the Great War, for the accurate description of the morale of soldiers and civilians at the home front, for the description of cities of art, but also and above all for the study of diplomacy and relations between Italy and the United States.
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