In Italy, perhaps more than elsewhere, the advantages of the Macedonian expedition were doubted, and in many political and military circles, as well as among the mass of the public, the current of opinion was opposed to any Italian participation in the operations of that sector. Even when Italian participation had been decided upon, and the Italian expeditionary force was actually in Macedonia, it was not always possible for it to obtain all that it needed, and the command had to struggle hard to obtain the indispensable minimum of reinforcements and materials. Even among the officers of that force, many considered Italian intervention in the East useless and even harmful. Various reasons contributed to this opinion. In the first place, the fact that Italy’s war aims were at the gates of Italy and not in the Balkans influenced public feeling in general. Secondly, the fact that our expeditionary force was in a subordinate position seemed to many to be derogatory to Italian dignity; a feeling which may be compared with the one that the war with Austria was in a certain sense apart from the general World War. This attitude, which lasted to the end, has been very injurious to our interests in the Balkans and elsewhere, and those among us who really felt the inter-Allied character of the war have had to struggle without ceasing both to convince our dissident compatriots of their error, and to prove to the Allies that those who maintained the purely Italian character of the war only represented a part of Italian public opinion, and that part not the best informed.