LAND .\ WATLK 
Ulli. 
The Trentino Front 
liy Hilaire Bclloc 
THK interest of the war by land this wcfk (ix;ndin}; 
furthir dcvelcnTnient^ upon tlu* Nouthcin Kussiaii 
front) still ixmrca on the Trtntino ; and. what is 
more, it is prubiibly in tine pn-st-nt week, certaii^^ly 
in tin.' iinmctliati' fntnn\ tliat wt- shall know whether this 
nnjMftant otUnsivc u|K)n llu- rncmv's part has failed or 
>uri ceded. 
file threat news of the week, by sea, should not obscure 
for us the capital value at this loonu-nt of the Trentino 
Theatre ; nor slmnld the nevis of Ihe Knssian movement 
of which only the bepinnin{;s are apiwrcnt at the time 
these lines are written. 
Tlie i)tYen>ive will sueroed if it gels across, or even 
imperils, the communications feeding the main Italian 
front on the Isoii/.o. If it is dclinilely stopind short of 
buch an objective it will fail. 
^ fifninsnLar Italy 
AdriatLC 
Sea. 
The communications of the main Italian army are the 
two railway lines, the northern one through Vicenza and 
X'erona, the southern one through Padua, both leading to 
the Isonzo front. The southern is the main one and the 
more important one because it lias been from the begin- 
ning the one most remote from peril, and the one by which 
must shortly arrive the masses of recniitmcnt, while it also 
leads to the industrial areas of the north. 
But the northern one is also important. It is not a 
^ingle line, as I erroneously suggested last week, but a 
d(»uble one. and the enemy in possession of it would not 
only threaten within a few miles all the commimications 
of the main Italian arniv on the Isonzo, but would -.dready 
' ■ in possession of half those communications. 
This Verona-N'icenza line luns of comse on the edge 
ol the \enetian plain just under the mountain country ; 
but the en<my's immediate object is not to " reach the 
l)lain." but to secure otic of the lito, or preferably both. 
Of the great avenues of supply by u'hkh alone a large army 
can bf maintained if it is to attempt an advance across 
that plain, and meanuhik to secure a certain third inferior 
line of sHpplv uhich, as we shall see in a moment, exists 
hd-.c-cn thr /„ -. 
(ieiiing into the plain merely because it is a jjlain ; 
getting out of the mountains merely Ix-causc they are 
mountains, means under modern conditions hardly any- 
thing. A strong defensive line established across a plain 
at the mouth of a mountain valley is overlooked indeed 
from the hills, and to that extent suffers a disadvantage. 
Further, the points at which a line across a plain i an be 
attacked arc indelinile in ninnber, whereas the points upon 
which a mountain line can be attacked are limited in 
"imber. 
Ihese arc not the main things. You will get examples 
over and over again in this war of a strong defensive 
line well held in Hat country and even in flat cotmtry 
overlooked by neighbouring hills. What you never get 
in this war. what you cannot get in the nature of. things 
is an offensive pursued upon a sector behind which there 
is no proper avenue of supply. 
We all know b\' this time that the modern offensive 
consists, as against an entrenched line (not in a war of 
movement) of concentrated heavy artillery hrc followed 
by intimtry attack for which it is the preparation. 
\\\ offensive under siege conditions has always consisted 
of these elements since artillery was invented, but the 
l>eculiarlv novel character of the ])resent operations since' 
the spring of last year is the weight of .shell which it has 
been found necessary to deliver over a restricted sector 
and within a restricted timeifthat sector is 1o h- itijirkrd 
with success e\en by great masses of troojis. 
This great weight of shell nuist be brought up some- 
how. Mach missile weighs from 60 lbs. up to several 
hundredweight. The mere handling of such masses 
inx-supposes artificial <dnmumieation of .some sort. The 
nuiving of them in large bodies ])resupposes railways for 
general sujiply and good roads for petrol traflic between 
railhead and the guns. Short of such ample conuimnica- 
tion modern concentrated heavy artillery lire is physically 
imptissible. 
The reader is actpiainted with the conditions of com- 
inimication upon the sector, about 40 miles across as the 
crow flies, which is the scene of the Austrian offensive^ 
Von have two great divergent valleN's, the Val Sugana 
and the \'al Lagarina, valleys of the Krenta and' Adigc 
respectively. Between them you have only one really 
good road which runs from Ro\ereto up the \'allarsa 
and acniss the frontier by the l-"uga/.zc pass just behind 
the block of the Pasubio ^fountain. It runs doiftn on 
the south side of the Posina ridge to Schio, and then linds 
a single line of railway continuing the communication 
to Vicenza. 
North of this good road you only have two interrupted 
roads, not so gootl, one leading to.Asiero by the ravine 
(if the Astico, the other leading to Asiago. Neither could 
supply a large force advancing southwards. 
It the Austrians could have pushed down the 
Adige valley or the Brcnta valky, or both, that would 
have been {he tirst and most obvious thing for them to 
do. But they failed. For it was obviously at these two 
points that the Italians had to ])ut up their strongest 
resistance. In the Adige valley they only managed 
to carry the northern end of the Zugna ridge. They occu- 
pied the Zugnatorta but they have failed, after nearly a 
fortnight's effort to carry ("onizugna. On the further 
side of the Adige, between the Vul Lagarina and Lake 
(iarda, they have been held absolutely : the Hne still 
passing just south of Afarco and through Mori. 
In the Val Sngana it has been the same story. 
They have got the Italiaiis back a few thousand yards ; 
uncovering the rather open piece of valley at JBorgo. 
They have failed to dislodge the Italians from the natmal 
position lying just down streani east of that town. 
It has therefore been their business to try and get at 
the lower part of one or both of these two great avenues 
of approach, the Adige Valley and the Brenta Valley by 
going round through the wild country between, since 
they could not get at them by going straight forward. 
And going round meant attacking in all the central 
mf)uutain mass between the two rivers. Apart from 
the guns which they have spcciallv massed for their effort, 
they were helped by the fact " that they had long 
established works on the Folgaria plateau and in the 
La\arone district. They forced the frontier here, as we 
know, up to a salient in crescent formation (AAA) the 
most advanced points on which are the towns Asierf) 
and Asiago. 
What progress have they made or are they making 
towards jiroceeding from this saHent on to either the 
Lower Brenta valley or the Lower .\dige valley ? 
It will be remembered that I jKunted out last week the 
obviously critical pciut . f Valstagna, and .said that if an 
advance could be made by the Austrians from Asiago 
towards \'alstagna, so that the latter point should come 
under effective fue, the Italian positions on the Upper 
Brenta near Borgo would be turned. Towards this 
