The third of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s three pamphlets, the others being Trieste (1915) and Vienna (1918), to be stuffed inside silk bags embroidered with the Italian flag and thrown from biplanes into the then Austro-Hungarian Empire.

È venuto a guardarti … He [d’Annunzio] is come to look on you once more from above; and doesn’t dare to descend into you, so greatly does he fear his own love.

This leaflet comes out of “felicità troppo subitanea,” a too sudden happiness, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, liberating Trieste, the Empire’s main port, to the Italians. Calling for the people of Trieste to “Non disarma… e sta a buona guardia,” d’Annunzio strives here to affirm the liberation, using possibly for the first time (the other instance being 24 October 1918) the term Mutilated Victory (“Vittoria nostra, non sarai mutilata”) which would come to be used to describe the promises not kept to Italy regarding territories granted—differences between the 1915 Treaty of London and the 1919 Paris Peace Conference—which lead to d’Annunzio’s seizing of Fiume in 1919, and Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922.

One of an unknown number of copies, probably many thousands yet rare. A near fine example; short tear to the right edge, twice folded.