Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna, having learnt of the Treaty of London, accepted the orders but declared that the army would not be ready before one month. This notwithstanding, morale was high; the general was convinced that within a month his army would have reached Trieste; upon being asked by Francesco Saverio Nitti in the summer of 1915 on the army's winter equipment, Salandra answered: "Do you believe that the war will last beyond winter?"(P. Melograni, Storia politica della Grande Guerra 1915-1918, cit. in Holger Afflerbach, Da alleato a nemico - Cause e conseguenze dell'entrata in guerra dell'Italia nel maggio 1915, in AA.VV, L'entrata in guerra dell'Italia nel 1915, Il Mulino, 2010, Bologna, page 90).
Both of them did not seem to have taken into consideration the several communications that were already in circulation regarding the new war. The military attaché in Berlin, Luigi Bongiovanni, had written for instance several reports on the conditions of this conflict and on how, after a few weeks of fighting, the struggle would be transformed into one based on positional warfare that would be intense, stationary, with the excavation of trenches and battlefronts that would be difficult to move.
The preparation of the Italian army envisaged both an offensive plan as well as a plan to contain the enemy across an area that covered from the Stelvio Pass (the border between Lombardy and Alto Adige) up to the eastern zone of theplains of Friuli for a total of some 600 kilometres. The front was divided in five segments: the westernmost segment was largely of a defensive nature whereas the other four segments, from Cadore right up to the zone of Cervignano del Friuli, were offensive.
On its part for several weeks Austria-Hungary had already understood what would happen. Military propaganda had already started to depict Italy as a State that was treacherous and that could be expected to undertake any kind of dishonourable action. On 20th May the Emperor ordered a state of alert and nominated Archduke Eugene as commander of the new front in the south-east. Three days later Vittorio Emanuele III sent to the Italian ambassador in Vienna the declaration of war. This declaration said that on the next day, 24th May 1915, the Italian army would start military operations along the border.
