Italy at War and the Allies in the West | Page 2

and from E. D. Ushaw's "Railways at the Front."
And, finally, I desire to thank Howard E. Coffin, Esq., of the Advisory
Board of the Council of National Defence, for his hospitality on his sea
island of Sapeloe, where most of this book was written.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
WASHINGTON,
April fifteenth, 1917.

TO

THEIR EXCELLENCIES
COUNT V. MACCHI DI CELLERE, AMBASSADOR OF ITALY,
AND JEAN JULES JUSSERAND, AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE
IN APPRECIATION OF THE MANY KINDNESSES THEY HAVE
SHOWN ME AND IN ADMIRATION OF THE TACT, SINCERITY,
AND ABILITY WHICH HAVE WON FOR THEM, AND FOR THE
COUNTRIES THEY REPRESENT, THE FRIENDSHIP AND
CONFIDENCE OF ALL AMERICANS

CONTENTS
PAGE I. THE WAY TO THE WAR 3
II. WHY ITALY WENT TO WAR 37
III. FIGHTING ON THE ROOF OF EUROPE 68
IV. THE ROAD TO TRIESTE 105
V. WITH THE RUSSIANS IN CHAMPAGNE 138
VI. "THEY SHALL NOT PASS!" 155
VII. "THAT CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY" 204
VIII. WITH THE BELGIANS ON THE YSER 253

ILLUSTRATIONS
The King of Italy and the Prince of Wales Frontispiece
FACING PAGE The Teleferica 4
An Italian Position in the Carnia 5

The King of Italy and General Cadorna at Castelnuovo 32
The Peril in the Clouds 33
Alpini Going Into Action 68
On the Roof of the World 69
A Heavy Howitzer in the High Alps 82
An Outpost in the Carnia 83
"Halt! Show Your Papers!" 160
A Nieuport Biplane About to Take the Air 161
Verdun's Mightiest Defender: a 400-mm. Gun 172
A Gun Painted to Escape the Observation of Enemy Airmen 173
Australians on the Way to the Trenches 196
The Fire Trench 197
A British "Heavy" Mounted on a Railway-Truck Shelling the German
Lines 238
Buried on the Field of Honor 239
These illustrations are from photographs taken by the Photographic
Sections of the Italian, French, British, and Belgian armies and by the
author.

ITALY AT WAR

I

THE WAY TO THE WAR
When I told my friends that I was going to the Italian front they smiled
disdainfully. "You will only be wasting your time," one of them warned
me. "There isn't anything doing there," said another. And when I came
back they greeted me with "You didn't see much, did you?" and "What
are the Italians doing, anyway?"
If I had time I told them that Italy is holding a front which is longer
than the French and British and Belgian fronts combined (trace it out
on the map and you will find that it measures more than four hundred
and fifty miles); that, alone among the Allies, she is doing most of her
fighting on the enemy's soil; that she is fighting an army which was
fourth in Europe in numbers, third in quality, and probably second in
equipment; that in a single battle she lost more men than fell on both
sides at Gettysburg; that she has taken 100,000 prisoners; that, to
oppose the Austrian offensive in the Trentino, she mobilized a new
army of half a million men, completely equipped it, and moved it to the
front, all in seven days; that, were her trench lines carefully ironed out,
they would extend as far as from New York to Salt Lake City; that,
instead of digging these trenches, she has had to blast most of them
from the solid rock; that she has mounted 8-inch guns on ice-ledges
nearly two miles above sea-level, in positions to which a skilled
mountaineer would find it perilous to climb; that in places the infantry
has advanced by driving iron pegs and rings into the perpendicular
walls of rock and swarming up the dizzy ladders thus constructed; that
many of the positions can be reached only in baskets slung from
sagging wires stretched across mile-deep chasms; that many of her
soldiers are living like arctic explorers, in caverns of ice and snow; that
on the sun-scorched floor of the Carso the bodies of the dead have
frequently been found baked hard and mummified, while in the
mountains they have been found stiff, too, but stiff from cold; that in
the lowlands of the Isonzo the soldiers have fought in water to their
waists, while the water for the armies fighting in the Trentino has had
to be brought up from thousands of feet below; and, most important of
all, that she has kept engaged some forty Austrian divisions (about
750,000 men)--a force sufficient to have turned the scale in favor of the

Central Powers on any of the other fronts. And I have usually added:
"After what I have seen over there, I feel like lifting my hat, in respect
and admiration, to the next Italian that I see."
[Illustration: The Teleferica. "Many of the Italian positions can be
reached only in baskets slung from sagging wires stretched