reproaches, had maintained her neutrality. Be it remembered, however,
that it was from the first a neutrality benevolent to the Allies. Even
those who consider themselves well informed have apparently failed to
recognize how decisive a factor that neutrality was. Italy's action in
promptly withdrawing her forces from the French border relieved
France's fears of an Italian invasion, and left her free to use the
half million troops which had been guarding her southern frontier to
oppose the German advance on Paris. It is not overstating the facts to
assert that, had Italy's attitude toward France been less frank and
honest, had the Republic not felt safe in stripping its southern
border of troops, von Kluck would have broken through to Paris--he
came perilously near to doing so as it was--and the whole course of
the war would have been changed. It is to be hoped that, when the
diplomatic history of the war comes to be written, the attitude of
Italy during those critical days will receive the recognition which it
deserves.
III
FIGHTING ON THE ROOF OF EUROPE
The sun had scarcely shown itself above the snowy rampart of the
Julian Alps when the hoarse throbbing of the big gray staff-car awoke
the echoes of the narrow street on which fronts the Hotel Croce di
Malta in Udine. Despite a leather coat, a fur-lined cap, and a great
fleecy muffler which swathed me to the eyes, I shivered in the damp
chill of the winter dawn. We adjusted our goggles and settled down
into the heavy rugs, the soldier-driver threw in his clutch, the
sergeant sitting beside him let out a vicious snarl from the horn, the
little group of curious onlookers scattered hastily, and the powerful
car leaped forward like a race-horse that feels the spur. With the
horn sounding its hoarse warning, we thundered through the narrow,
tortuous, cobble-paved streets, between rows of old, old houses
with faded frescoes on their plastered walls and with dim, echoing
arcades. And so into the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele--there is no more
charming little square in Italy--with its fountain and its two stone
giants and the pompous statue of an incredibly ugly King astride a
prancing horse and a monument to Peace set up by Napoleon to
commemorate a treaty which was the cause of many wars. At the back of
the piazza, like the back-drop on a stage, rises a towering sugar-loaf
mound, thrown up, so they say, by Attila, that from it he might
conveniently watch the siege and burning of Aquileia. Perched atop
this mound, and looking for all the world like one of Maxfield
Parrish's painted castles, is the Castello, once the residence of the
Venetian and Austrian governors, and, rising above it, a white and
slender tower. If you will take the trouble to climb to the summit of
this tower you will find that the earth you left behind is now laid
out at your feet like one of those putty maps you used to make in
school. Below you, like a vast tessellated floor, is the Friulian
plain, dotted with red-roofed villages, checkerboarded with fields of
green and brown, stretching away, away to where, beyond the blue
Isonzo, the Julian and Carnic Alps leap skyward in a mighty, curving,
mile-high wall. You have the war before you, for amid those distant
mountains snakes the Austro-Italian battle-line. Just as Attila and
his Hunnish warriors looked down from the summit of this very mound,
fourteen hundred years ago, upon the destruction of the Italian
plain-towns, so to-day, from the same vantage-point, the Italians can
see their artillery methodically pounding to pieces the defenses of
the modern Huns. A strange reversal of history, is it not?
[Illustration: Alpini Going Into Action.
Their white uniforms make them almost indistinguishable against the
blinding expanses of snow.]
[Illustration: On the Roof of the World.
It not infrequently happens that the outposts on the higher peaks
are cut off by a heavy fall of snow and cannot be relieved until
the spring.]
Leaving on our right the Palazzo Civico, built two-score years before
Columbus set foot on the beach of San Salvador, we rolled through the
gateway in the ancient city wall, acknowledging the salute of the
steel-helmeted sentry just as the mail-clad knights who rode through
that same gateway to the fighting on the plain, long centuries ago,
doubtless acknowledged the salute of the steel-capped men-at-arms.
Down the straight white road we sped, between rows of cropped and
stunted willows, which line the highway on either side like soldiers
with bowed heads. It is a storied and romantic region, this Venetia,
whose fertile farm-lands, crisscrossed with watercourses, stretch
away, flat and brown as an oaken floor, to the snowy crescent of the
Alps. Scenes of past wars it still bears upon its face, in its
farm-houses clustered together for common protection, in the stout
walls and loopholed watch-towers of its towns, record of its warlike
and eventful past. One must be prosaic indeed whose imagination
remains unstirred by a journey across this historic plain, which has
been invaded by Celts, Istrians, and Romans; Huns, Goths, and
Lombards; Franks, Germans, and Austrians in turn. Over there, a dozen
miles to the southward, lie the ruins of Aquileia, once one of the
great cities of the western world, the chief outpost fortress of the
Roman Empire, visited by King Herod of Judea, and the favorite
residence of Augustus and Diocletian. These fertile lowlands were
devastated by Alaric and his Visigoths and by Attila and his Huns--the
original Huns, I mean. Down this very highroad tramped the legions of
Tiberius on their way to give battle to the Illyrians and Pannonians.
Here were waged the savage conflicts of the Guelphs, the Ghibellines,
and the Scaligers. Here fought the great adventurer, Bartolommeo
Colleoni; in the whitewashed village inn of Campo Formio, a far
greater adventurer signed a treaty whereby he gave away the whole of
this region as he would have given away a gold-piece; half a century
later Garibaldi and his ragged redshirts fought to win it back.
For mile after mile we sped through a countryside which bore no
suggestion of the bloody business which had brought me. So far as war
was concerned, I might as well have been motoring through New England.
But, though an atmosphere of tranquillity and security prevailed down
here amid the villages and farm-steads of the plain, I knew that up
there among those snow-crowned peaks ahead of us, musketry was
crackling, cannon were belching, men were dying. But as we approached
the front--though still miles and miles behind the fighting-line--the
signs of war became increasingly apparent: base camps, remount depots,
automobile parks, aviation schools, aerodromes, hospitals,
machine-shops, ammunition-dumps, railway sidings chock-a-block with
freight-cars and railway platforms piled high with supplies of every
description. Moving closer, we came upon endless lines of motor-trucks
moving ammunition and supplies to the front and other lines of
motor-trucks and ambulances moving injured machinery and injured men
to the repair-depots and hospitals at the rear. We passed Sicilian
mule-carts, hundreds upon hundreds of them, two-wheeled, painted
bright yellow or bright red and covered with gay little paintings such
as one sees on ice cream venders' carts and hurdy-gurdies, the harness
of the mules studded with brass and hung with scarlet tassels. Then
long strings of donkeys, so heavily laden with wine-skins, with bales
of hay, with ammunition-boxes, that all that could be seen of the
animals themselves were their swinging tails and wagging ears. We met
convoys of Austrian prisoners, guarded by cavalry or territorials, on
their way to the rear. They looked tired and dirty and depressed, but
most prisoners look that. A man who has spent days or even weeks amid
the mud and blood of a trench, with no opportunity to bathe or even to
wash his hands and face, with none too much food, with many of his
comrades dead or wounded, with a shell-storm shrieking and howling
about him, and has then had to surrender, could hardly be expected to
appear high-spirited and optimistic. Yet it has long been the custom
of the Allied correspondents and observers to base their assertions
that the morale of the enemy is weakening and that the quality of his
troops is deteriorating on the demeanor of prisoners fresh from the
firing-line. Ambulances passed us, travelling toward the hospitals at
the base, and sometimes wounded men, limping along on foot. The heads
of some were swathed in blood-stained bandages, some carried their
arms in slings, others hobbled by with the aid of sticks, for the
Italian army is none too well supplied with ambulances and those who
are able to walk must do so in order that the places in the ambulances
may be taken by their more seriously wounded fellows. They were
dog-tired, dirty, caked with mud and blood, but they grinned at us
cheerfully--for were they not beating the Austrians? Indeed, one
cannot look at Italian troops without seeing that the spirit of the
men is high and that they are confident of victory.
Now the roads became crowded, but never blocked, with troops on the
march: infantry of the line, short, sturdily built fellows wearing
short capes of greenish gray and trench-helmets of painted steel;
Alpini, hardy and active as the goats of their own mountains, their
tight-fitting breeches and their green felt hats with the slanting
eagle's feather making them look like the chorus of _Robin Hood_;
Bersaglieri, the flower of the Italian army, who have preserved the
traditions of their famous corps by still clinging to the
flat-brimmed, rakish hat with its huge bunch of drooping feathers;
engineers, laden like donkeys with intrenching, bridging, and mining
tools; motor-cycle despatch riders, leather-jacketed and
mud-bespattered, the light-horsemen of modern war; and, very
occasionally, for their hour for action has not yet come, detachments
of cavalry, usually armed with lances, their helmets and busbies
linen-covered to match the businesslike simplicity of their uniform.
About the Italian army there is not much of the pomp and circumstance
of war. It is as businesslike as a blued-steel revolver. In its total
absence of swagger and display it is characteristic of a nation whose
instincts are essentially democratic. Everything considered, the
Italian troops compare very favorably with any in Europe. The men are
for the most part shortish, very thick-set, and burned by the sun to
the color of a much-used saddle. I rather expected to see bearded,
unkempt fellows, but I found them clean-shaven and extraordinarily
neat. The Italian military authorities do not approve of the _poilu_.
Though the men are laden like pack-mules, they cover the ground at a
surprisingly smart pace, while special corps, such as the Bersaglieri
and the Alpini, are famous for the fashion in which they take even the
steepest acclivities at the double. I was told that, though the troops
recruited in the North possess the most stamina and endurance, the
Neapolitans and Sicilians have the most _élan_ and make the best
fighters, these sons of the South having again and again advanced to
the assault through storms of fire which the colder-blooded
Piedmontese refused to face.
It is claimed for the Italian uniform that it is at once the ugliest
and the least visible of any worn in Europe. "Its wearer doesn't even
make a shadow," a friend of mine remarked. The Italian military
authorities were among the first to make a scientific study of colors
for uniforms. They did not select, for example, the "horizon blue"
adopted by the French because, while this is less visible on the roads
and plains of a flat, open, sunlit region, it would prove fatally
distinct on the tree-clad mountain slopes where the Italians are
fighting. The color is officially described as gray-green, but the
best description of it is that given by a British officer: "Take some
mud from the Blue Nile, carefully rub into it two pounds of ship-rat's
hair, paint a roan horse with the composition, and then you will
understand why the Austrians can't see the Italian soldiers in broad
daylight at fifty yards." Its quality of invisibility is, indeed,
positively uncanny. While motoring in the war zone I have repeatedly
come upon bodies of troops resting beside the road, yet, so
marvellously do their uniforms merge into the landscape that, had not
my attention been called to them, I should have passed them by
unnoticed. The uniform of the Italian officer is of precisely the
same cut and apparently of the same material as that of the men, and
as the former not infrequently dispenses with the badges of rank, it
is often difficult to distinguish an officer from a private. The
Italian officers, particularly those of the cavalry regiments, have
always been among the smartest in Europe, but the gorgeous uniforms
which, in the happy, carefree days before the war, added such
brilliant notes of color to the scenes on the Corso and in the
Cascine, have been replaced by a dress which is as simple as it is
serviceable.
The Italian Government has a stern objection to wasteful or unnecessary
expenditure, and all the costly and superfluous trimmings so dear to
the heart of the military have been ruthlessly pruned. But economy is
not insisted upon at the expense of efficiency. Nothing is refused or
stinted that is necessary to keep the soldiers in good health or that
will add to the efficiency of the great fighting-machine. But the war
is proving a heavy financial strain for Italy and she is determined not
to waste on it a single soldo more than she can possibly help. On the
French and British fronts staff-officers are constantly dashing to and
fro in motor-cars on errands of more or less importance. But you see
nothing of that sort in the Italian war zone. The Comando Supremo can,
of course, have all the motor-cars it wants, but it discourages their
use except in cases of necessity. The officers are instructed that,
whenever they can travel by railway without detriment to the interests
of the service, they are expected to do so, for the trains are in
operation to within a few miles of the front and with astonishing
regularity, whereas tires and gasolene cost money. Returning at
nightfall from the front to Udine, we were nearly always stopped by
officers--majors, colonels, and once by a general--who would ask us to
give them a lift into town. It has long been the fashion among
foreigners to think of Italians, particularly those of the upper class,
as late-rising, easy-going, and not particularly in love with work--a
sort of _dolce far niente_ people. But the war has shown how unsafe
are such generalizations. There is no harder worker on any front than
the Italian officer. Even the highest staff-officers are at their desks
by eight and frequently by seven. Though it is easier to get from the
Italian front to Milan or Florence than it is to get from Verdun to
Paris, or from the Somme to London, one sees little of the week-end
travelling so common on the British front. Officers in the war zone are
entitled to fifteen days' leave of absence a year, and from this rule
there are no deviations.
Through the mud we came to the Judrio, which marked the line of the
old frontier. We crossed the river by a pontoon bridge, for the
Austrians had destroyed the other in their retreat.
"We are in Austria now, I suppose?" I remarked. "In Italia Redenta,"
my companion corrected me. "This region has always been Italian in
everything but name, and now it is Italian in name also." The
occupation by the Italian troops, at the very outset of the war, of
this wedge of territory between the Judrio and the Isonzo, with
Monfalcone, Cervignano, Cormons, Gradisca--old Italian towns all--did
much to give the Italian people confidence in the efficiency of their
armies and the ability of their generals.
Now the roads were filled with the enormous equipment of an army
advancing. Every village swarmed with gray soldiers. We passed
interminable processions of motor-lorries, mule-carts, trucks, and
wagons piled high with hay,[A] lumber, wine-casks, flour, shells,
barbed wire; boxes of ammunition; pontoon-trains, balloon outfits,
searchlights mounted on motor-trucks, wheeled blacksmith shops,
wheeled post-offices, field-kitchens; beef and mutton on the hoof;
mammoth howitzers and siege guns hauled by panting tractors; creaking,
clanking field-batteries, and bright-eyed, brown-skinned, green-caped
infantry, battalions, regiments, brigades of them plodding along
under slanting lines of steel. All the resources of Italy seemed
crowding up to make good the recent gains and to make ready for the
next push. One has to see a great army on the march to appreciate how
stupendous is the task of supplying with food the hungry men and the
hungrier guns, and how it taxes to the utmost all the industrial
resources of a nation.
[Illustration: A Heavy Howitzer in the High Alps.
Nowadays guns "command" nothing. Instead of frowning down on the
enemy from an eminence, they stare blindly skyward from behind a
wall of mountains.]
[Illustration: An Outpost in the Carnia.
"On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in
the Masurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders, does
the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the
roof of the world."]
Under all this traffic the roads remained hard and smooth, for gangs
of men, with scrapers and steam-rollers were at work everywhere
repairing the wear and tear. This work is done by peasants, who are
too old for the army, middle-aged, sturdily built fellows who perform
their prosaic task with the resignation and inexhaustible patience of
the lower-class Italian. They are organized in companies of a hundred
men each, called _centurias_, and the company commanders are called
(shades of the Roman legions!) _centurions_. Italy owes much to these
gray-haired soldiers of the pick and shovel who, working in heat and
cold, in snow and rain, and frequently under Austrian fire, have made
it possible for the armies to advance and for food to be sent forward
for the men and ammunition for the guns.
When this war is over Italy will find herself with better roads, and
more of them, than she ever had before. The hundreds of miles of
splendid highways which have been built by the army in the Trentino,
in the Carnia, and in Cadore will open up districts of extraordinary
beauty which have hitherto been inaccessible to the touring motorist.
The Italians have been fortunate in having an inexhaustible supply of
road-building material close at hand, for the mountains are solid road
metal and in the plains one has only to scratch the soil to find
gravel. The work of the road-builders on the Upper Isonzo resembles a
vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag
in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the
inside by stone-paved gutters and on the outside, where the precipice
falls sheer away, by cut stone guard-posts. So extensive and
substantial are these improvements that one instinctively looks for a
real-estate dealer's sign: "This beautiful lot can be yours for
twenty-five dollars down and ten dollars a month for a year." Climbing
higher, the roads become steeper and narrower and, because of the
heavy rains, very highly crowned, with frequent right-angle and
hair-pin turns. Here a skid or a side-slip or the failure of your
brakes is quite likely to bring your career to an abrupt and
unpleasant termination. To motor along one of these military mountain
highways when it is slippery from rain is as nerve-trying as walking
on a shingled roof with smooth-soled shoes. At one point on the Upper
Isonzo there wasn't enough room between our outer wheels and the edge
of the precipice for a starved cat to pass.
* * * * *
Now we were well within the danger zone. I knew it by the screens of
woven reeds and grass matting which had been erected along one side of
the road in order to protect the troops and transport using that road
from being seen by the Austrian observers and shelled by the Austrian
guns. Practically all of the roads on the Italian side of the front
are, remember, under direct observation by the Austrians. In fact,
they command everything. Everywhere they are above the Italians. From
the observatories which they have established on every peak they can
see through their powerful telescopes what is transpiring down on the
plain as readily as though they were circling above it in an airplane.
As a result of the extraordinary advantage which the Austrians enjoy
in this respect, it has been found necessary to screen certain of the
roads not only on both sides but above, so that in places the traffic
passes for miles through literal tunnels of matting. This road masking
is a simple form of the art of concealment to which the French have
given the name "_camouflage_," which has been developed to an
extraordinary degree on the Western Front. That the Italians have not
made a greater use of it is due, no doubt, to the wholly different
conditions under which they are fighting.
Now the crowded road that we were following turned sharply into a
narrow valley, down which a small river twisted and turned on its way
to the sea. Though the Italian positions ran along the top of the hill
slope just above us, and though less than a thousand yards away were
the Austrian trenches, that valley, for many miles, was literally
crawling with men and horses and guns. Indeed it was difficult to make
myself believe that we were within easy range of the enemy and that at
any instant a shell might fall upon that teeming hillside and burst
with the crash that scatters death.
Despite the champagne-cork popping of the rifles and the basso profundo
of the guns, it was a scene of ordered, yes, almost peaceful industry
which in no way suggested war but reminded me, rather, of the Panama
Canal at the busiest period of its construction (I have used the simile
before, but I use it again because I know none better), of the digging
of the New York subway, of the laying of a transcontinental railway,
of the building of the dam at Assuan. Trenches which had recently been
captured from the Austrians were being cleared and renovated and new
trenches were being dug, roads were being repaired, a battery of
monster howitzers was being moved into ingeniously concealed positions,
a whole system of narrow-gauge railway was being laid down, enormous
quantities of stores were being unloaded from wagons and lorries and
neatly stacked, soldiers were building great water-tanks on stilts,
like those at railway sidings, giant shells were being lowered from
trucks and flat-cars by means of cranes; to the accompaniment of saws
and hammers a city of wooden huts was springing up on the reverse slope
of the hill as though at the wave of a magician's wand.
As I watched with fascinated eyes this scene of activity, as city
idlers watch the laborers at work in a cellar excavation, a shell
burst on the crowded hillside, perhaps five hundred yards away. There
was a crash like the explosion of a giant cannon-cracker; the ground
leaped into flame and dust. A few minutes afterward I saw an ambulance
go tearing up the road.
"Just a chance shot," said the staff-officer who accompanied me. "This
valley is one of the few places on our front which is invisible to the
Austrian observers. That's why we have so many troops in here. The
Austrian aviators could spot what is going on here, of course, but our
fliers and our anti-aircraft batteries have been making things so hot
for them lately that they're not troubling us much. That's the great
thing in this game--to keep control of the air. If the Austrian airmen
were able to get over this valley and direct the fire of their guns we
wouldn't be able to stay here an hour."