CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 



Meran LEAVING Vienna, our first stop was Meran, a charm- 



to Piz • j^g resort in the Trentino, wholly Austrian so far as 



Languard ^^^^^ ^^^ ^ observed, but lately ceded to Italy by the 



Treaty of Versailles in order to insure a "strategic 



defense," a reason abhorrent to my mind. For 



security against war, if there be any, must lie not in 



indomitable fortresses but in the hearts of the people. 



From Meran we went over the majestic Stelvio Pass, 



where we saw and heard Austrian soldiers practicing 



their machine guns on the glaciers of the Ortler. 



Descending into Italy, we next crossed the beautiful 



Bernina over to scenes, to me familiar, around 



exquisite Pontresina, the heart of the Engadine. 



There we went up Piz Languard, climbed by me 



twenty-one years before, a superb viewpoint easy 



of access and most repaying. Stolz walked to the 



summit, and I halted at the end of the funiculaire, 



for the experience of a quarter century had left me 



stout and scant of breath as compared with the 



Matterhornbesteiger o^ iS^il^ 



From the Engadine we drove down the Maloja, 

 beloved of old, to the Lake of Como. Thence, on our 

 way westward, we stopped to see the old battlefields 

 Magenta of Magcuta and Novara. In Magenta the bullet 

 holes in the houses showed the course of the Austrian 

 troops driven from the bridge by the Italians and 

 French over the river Po and back through the city 

 streets. In an old church, in one of the basement 



» See Vol. I, Chapter xi, pages 258-269. 



n 312 3 



