i8 
LAND & WATER 
June 22, 1916 
alaadv conquered. Dining one evening in a valley base 
we waited a few minutes for a Colonel who had been 
" up " that day and whose return to camp had been 
announced bv telephone. He came in. a compact round- 
headc-d little "lighting man of forty-five or so with a fresh 
sunburn over his tan, and began to talk in animated 
Italian. 
•' It has been a quiet day up there." the Lieutenant 
translated, " and so he has performed a feat. He has 
climbed, for spwrt. to a point which no one else has been 
able to reach this winter." 
All their active hves, these Alpine r.flicers practice 
the sport as a part of business. So they learn the tricks 
of the treacherous mountains, such as avalanches, 
crevasses and hidden streams, against the time when such 
knowledge mav mean life or death for a whole company. 
They lo\e the mountains and they hate Austria. It is 
a Iwrder-hatred for one thing ; and the memory of old 
days of Austrian misrule remains a long memory to 
L'.'mbardv and Wneto. At Brescia they still show you 
with hate in their eyes the wall where the martyrs were 
shot durinK the abortive uprising, the false dawn of free- 
dom, in 1840. All through the \ alleys they will point out 
this or that village where Garibaldi drove back the 
Austrians in 1866, and will descnbe to you with much 
lire and many gestures how Germany made lu/ own 
peace and tricked them out of victory just when the 
Lion of Italy had Trent in his teeth. 
The Italian army stands perhaps next to the French 
for democracy, and in no corps is the relationship between 
men and officers more tine and democratic than among 
the Alpini. NN'hen. even in manceuvres, an Alpine officer 
goes on a piece of far and hard mountain service with his 
.nen, he must Uve as one of them for days at a time, 
wTappcd in the same blankets, sheltered by the same 
sliver of rock. Officers save the lives of men and men of 
otfici-rs with equal recklessness and gratitude on both 
sides. It is hard to hold yourself superior to men with 
whom you have shared such primitive hardships and 
valour, and the distinction among these mountain lighters, 
I think, is less between men and officers than between 
Alpini and other people. 
Now Italy holds a line of six hundred and fifty kilo- 
meters, as long as the present French line since the British 
extended their sector. Perhaps a bare third of it is 
merelv high-hill fighting. All the rest is Alpine work. 
The front of that Alpine line belongs to these born 
mountain fighters. The infantry of the plains supports 
or reinforces them ; the reservists feed them ; the terri- 
torials dig and delve for them, far back. The diagram 
of the human material in the Italian army is a pyramid, 
and its point is the Alpini, who have been wiggling for a 
year into Austrian territory peak by peak. 
When we went to bed in our sleeping-bags that Easter 
nipht, the stars were out. On the way to quarters we 
asked the Commander if we might go forward in the morn- 
ing ? He reserved his decision. When I woke next 
morning and looked out it had begun to thaw a little ; 
and at breakfast the Commander put his foot down on 
our project. " It is dangerous, it is most dangerous," 
he said. For a sudden thaw following a heavy snow, 
brings the avalanches ; and that, in the winter fighting, 
is the real enemy, taking toll from both sides. In these 
avalanche days the army transport service performs 
only the most necessary labour, leaving the heavy work 
for a less dangerous time. Just now, we could not in 
oj'Jinary prudence attack the glacier from this point. 
However, a party of officers and men was going forward 
that n»irning to a place where the most dangerous aval- 
anches began. We might accompany them, if we wished. 
It was a great place to study the ways and causes of 
avalanches. The rock-walls were cleft to their top with 
gigantic runways. A little way from the summit of these 
creases the snow began ; it had found a slope just low 
enough so that it might cling. Thence it spread down 
toward us in great funnels and half-cones. You realised 
how, at any time, it mi^ht Iwi^in to start and slide, as 
it slides from a mansard roof in town. 
At a certain point the (jffic(>rs stopped. 
" We had V '♦er go no further," said the Chaplain. 
" There are bra\e men buried under there," he added, 
pointing to a great domed drift in the distance, "and 
we shar.'t get the bodies until spring." We turned back. 
This trail had b<.cn carefully laid to avoid avalanches 
as much as possible. But no trail is entirely safe here 
in such weather. Alpini from further up passed us as 
we stood waiting to gather and go. When they enterccl 
the sector of the path below these funnels, they would 
glance cautiously over their shoulders at the runways 
above and then' scurry past the danger-point. And we 
scurried alter them. • . j 
Just before we turned back, one of the officers pointed 
upward to three crevasses widening out into funnels. 
" W hen one of them starts, they all go," he said. And, 
now, having learned the signs, we saw that there had beeu 
two or three avalanches that morning. None, however, 
had been great enough to cross our path. You could 
mark their course jjcrfectly by the break in the even 
white surface, by gigantic irregular snowballs, and even 
by rocks brought down from the crags. 
"Once more in the safe district, we took another climb. 
This brought us. to a natural platfoim in the mountain, 
and to the foot of a curious piece of military work, devised 
since the war and of immense use to these mountain 
fighters. The author of this enterprise is, I believe, a 
young engineer ol Milan. 
The Italians call it a " teleferica," and as we have no 
name for the device, I had better follow their tongue. 
A teleferica is nothing less than a gigantic cash-carrier, 
such as we use in department stores. A carriage periiaps 
four feet long by two or two and a-half feet wide, depends 
from two wheels on a wire cable. Another cable draws 
it up, the power being furnished by gangs of men or by 
motor engines. We stood on this platform and looked 
up to a perilous crag above. T"rom platform to crag, 
perhaps a third of a mile, ran the double thread of the 
teleferica— one for the upward journey, the other for the 
descent. That crag, however, was only the first landing- 
place. From it another double-wire stretched upward 
and lost itself in a cleft of the mountains. There were 
still other stages further up, they told us, and when the 
supplies had shot the last stage, they were within com- 
fortable reach, by man-back or sled, of the snow-covered 
advanced trenches. 
How useful the Italians make this device only their 
army engineers know. Later, and in another place, I saw 
a teleferica which makes the trip in seven or eight' minutes. 
F'rom its first stage to its second there is also a mule trail 
hewed out of the mountain side. The mules take two 
and a-half hours for the climb. In still another place I 
heard a Commander boast that his series of tclefericas 
did the work of thousands of men — and, what was more 
important, did it more quickly in emergency. 
This, however, was a small hand teleferica, the motive 
power the sturdy arms of three stout reservists. Piled 
in one of the scmi-cj'lindrical black sheds were supplies 
such as army never employed before this war, devices 
whose uses I did not understand until the Chaplain 
explained. For example, there were " trench boots " 
for the snow-huts of the glacier. Their soles were of 
thick wood, studded with sharp spikes. Their uppers 
rose above the knee, and they were lined with the thickest 
of rough wool. That tin bucket, as big as a ten-gallon 
oil can, was not a fircless cooker as I supposed, but a 
gigantic thermos bottle which would keep dinner for a 
squad warm all day. They cannot cook by ordinary 
means up there in the glacial trenches where the snow 
drifts high over the sand-bags, where one lives like an 
F2squimaux. That would betray the position. 
Not only supplies go up that perilous cash-carrier, but 
men. By this means the high officers save time, by it 
the surgeons ascend in case of emergency ; and by it 
they bring dowrt the wounded. An army surgeon, but 
a year ago a prosperous specialist in Milan, remarked to 
me one day that he did not bargain, when he enlisted, 
on being an acrobat. 
The Alpini, weather sharps all of them, squinted at the 
heavens and prophecied another fair day. Which gave 
our Lieutenant an idea. He had learned by telephone 
that a certain high officer from a jjosition far down the 
valley was going up to a \'ery liigii mountain base 
within easy touch of the glacier. Why not join him, 
and go along ? We could make the trip easily in a day 
because of the teleferica. 
Now I had best stop here and describe, in the general 
and hazy way permitted «o war correspondents, what 
we were about to do. 
iTn be continued.} 
