With British Guns in Italy | Page 4

of the theatres of war. On countless occasions Italian
heroes went forth on forlorn hopes to scale and capture impossible
precipices, and sometimes they succeeded. Through that bloody series
of offensives the Italians slowly but steadily gained ground, and drew
ever nearer to Trento and Trieste. Only those who went out to the
Italian Front before Caporetto, and saw with their own eyes what the
Italian Army had accomplished on the Carso and among the Julian
Alps, can fully realise the greatness of the Italian effort.
It must never be forgotten that Italy is both the youngest and the
poorest of the Great Powers of Europe. Barely half a century has passed
since United Italy was born, and the political and economic difficulties
of her national childhood were enormous. For many years, as one of
her own historians says, she was "not a state, but only the outward
appearance of a state." Her natural resources are poor and limited. She
possesses neither coal nor iron, and is still partially dependent on

imported food and foreign shipping. She is still very poor in
accumulated capital, and the burden of her taxation is very heavy.
From the moment of her entry into the war her economic problems
became very difficult, especially that of the provision of guns and
munitions in sufficient quantities, and the extent to which she solved
this last problem is deserving of the greatest admiration. Her position
grew even more difficult in 1917. After the military collapse of Russia
she had to face practically the whole Austrian Army, instead of only a
part of it, and a greatly increased weight of guns. The Austrians had 53
millions of population to draw from, the Italians only 35. Moreover,
just before Caporetto, a number of German Divisions, with a powerful
mass of artillery and aircraft, were thrown into the Austrian scale, while
from the Italian was withdrawn the majority of that tiny handful of
French and British Batteries, which were all the armed support which,
up to that time, her Allies had ever lent her. Only five British Batteries
and a few French were left on the Italian Front. By the defeat of
Caporetto she lost a great quantity of guns and stores and practically
the whole of her Second Army, while half of Venetia fell into the hands
of the enemy, and remained in his possession for a year. The inferiority
of the Italian Army to its enemies, both in numbers and in material, was
thus sharply increased.
But the Italians held grimly on; they turned at bay on the Piave and in
the mountains, and checked the onrush of Austrians and Germans.
Then, supported by French and British reinforcements, but still inferior
in numbers, they continued for a year longer to hold up almost the
whole strength of Austria. That winter the poor were very near
starvation in the cities of Italy, and the peasants had to cut down their
olive groves for fuel. The following spring part of the French and
British reinforcements were withdrawn to France, together with an
Italian contingent which numerically balanced the French and British
who remained in Italy.
The Austrians also lost their German support and sent some of their
own troops to France, but they retained their numerical superiority on
the Italian Front. In June they launched a great attack on a seventy-mile

front, which was to have made an end of Italy; but the Italians beat
them back. Then four months later, after an intense effort of preparation,
Italy, still inferior in numbers and material, struck for the last time and
utterly destroyed the Austrian Army in the great battle which will be
known to history as Vittorio Veneto. The Austrians lost twice as many
prisoners and four times as many guns at Vittorio Veneto as they had
taken at Caporetto.
The war on the Italian Front was over, the Austrian Army was broken
beyond recovery, the Austrian State was dissolving into its national
elements, which only tradition, corruption and brute force had for so
long held together. Italy, heroic and constant, had endured to the end,
and with her last great gesture had both completed her own freedom,
and given their freedom to those who had been the instruments of her
enemies.


PART II
SOME EARLY IMPRESSIONS

CHAPTER II
FROM FOLKESTONE TO VENICE
On the 6th July, 1917, I arrived at Folkestone armed with a War Office
letter ordering my "passage to France for reinforcements for Siege
Artillery Batteries in Italy." I had a millpond crossing in the afternoon,
and that evening left Boulogne for Modane.
Next morning at 2 a.m. I was awakened from frowsy sleep by a French
soldier, laden with baggage, who stumbled headlong into the railway
carriage which I was sharing with three other British