s 
LAND & WATER 
July 27, 1916. 
the FcUa Valley which the railway uses was left in 
Austrian hands. Further west in the Dolomite district 
of the Cadorc was the group of valleys and torrents which - 
combine to feed the Piavc. Here the opportunity of 
debouching from the mountains by the Ampezzo road 
was kept entirely Austrian. The easy pass between the 
Cortina \alley and the Pusterthal was Austrian upon 
both sides ; Cortina itself was kept Austrian, and tlie 
lateral communication between the two upper valleys of 
the C adore o\er the Trccroce was an Austrian road. 
Further west again in the great salient of the Trentino 
the anomaly was still more glaring, simply because that 
was the best approach of ail. TIk' purely Italian town 
of Trent, all the upper valley of the Brenta with the 
purely Italian town of Borgo" ; all the upper valley of 
the Adigc, e\en the top of Lake (iarda with Kiva and 
Kovereto, were kept under Austrian dominion to permit 
of a descent upon the Italian Plain. 
It was imagined imdoubtedly when this frontier was 
drawn up that the lirst phase of any war between Italy 
and Austria, or even between Italy and some ally against 
Austria, would take the form of an. immediate and rapid 
occupation by Austrian troops of the towns which lie 
at the mouths of these valleys, or upon the plain im- 
mediately in front of them and form the gates of Italy. 
Luckily for the Alliance the course of the war did not 
permit such a cata.strophe. By the time Italy entered in 
the arena the mass of the Austrian forces were hea\ily 
engaged elsewhere and it was possible for the Italians, 
if they organised with sufficient skill and acted with 
sufficient rapidity, to block each of those dangerour> 
avenues of approach wliich Austria had reserved. 
The Italian moment was well chosen. The organisa- 
tion was perfect, the rapidity remarkable ; and in the 
\ery first weeks of the Italian campaign not only had the 
mass of the Italian forces been brought on to the Isonzo, 
but every one of these valleys lying up in Hank and 
threatening the comnnmications of this main force upon 
the Isonzo was held and securely barred by the Italian 
troops and their guns. The Valley of the Adige vvas 
secured a few miles south of Kovereto, the Valley of the 
Brenta a few miles west of Borgo ; the great lateral 
communication, the road of the Dolomites, which was 
to ha\e put an Austrian column in the Cadore in touch 
with the Austrian columns in the Trentino, was cut by 
the Italian occujjation of Cortina, an operation which at 
the same time cut the other communication across the 
Trecroce, between the two main Dolomite valleys of 
the Cadore. And this occupation of the Dolomite region 
further prevented any Austrian incursion into the basin 
of the Tagliamento eastward. 
But successful as these initial operations were they 
did not form the hardest part of the task. 
The essential thing was to secure firmly the position 
so held, and for that in an Alpine country there were two 
great branches of effort necessary, superiority in either 
of which would determine the issue in the long run for the 
party that would secure it. These two branches of 
effort were the establishment of high gun positions at 
once secure and dominating the enemy's positipns, and 
the establishment of still higher observation posts from 
which fire could be permanently directed. 
Now in a country of high and precipitous mountains 
such as is all this Alpine land, both these branches of 
effort meant at once novel, quick discoveries and inven- 
tien> peculiar to the circumstances of the war, and an 
intense display of energy, for it was a race between the 
one side and the other. 
In that race the Italians w'on. The many stories wc 
have heard and the many pictures we have seen describing 
the difficulty and even the picture of this Alpine fighting, 
have leen thought by some beside the mark, because they 
had not appreciated what ultimate role such mountaineer- 
ing played in the general story of the European War as 
a whole. And yet that ultimate role is easy enough to 
understand when we appreciate that the whole thing was 
a manreuvring for gun position and for observation. 
Hut what a manceuvring I I will give a concrete example 
which will, I think, bring it home to my readers more 
than a general description could to. 
There stands in the Dolomites a great group of pre- 
cipitous rock rising to a height of over (),ooo feet above 
the sea and perhaps 6,000 feet above the surrounding 
valleys, one summit of which is called the Cristallo. 
It is the only point within the Italian lines from which 
direct and permanent observation can be had of the 
railw.ay line running through the Pusterthal, the strategic 
importance of which has been repeatedly explained in- 
these pages. In the mass of this mountain, up to heights 
of over 8,000 feet, in crannies of the rock, up steep couloirs 
and chimneys of snow, the batteries have been placed 
and hidden quite secure from the fire of the enemy, 
conunanding by the advantage of the observation po4s 
the enemy's line with their direct fire. One such observa- 
tion post 1 visited. 
A company of men divided into two half companies 
held, the one half, the base of the precipitous rock upon a 
sward of high valley, the other the summit itself, perhaps 
J, 000 feet higher ; and the communication from one to the 
other was a double wire swung through the air above the 
chasm, up and down which travelled shallow cradles of 
steel carrying men and food, mimitions and instru- 
ments. Such a device' alon'e made possible the establish- 
ment of these posts in such incredible places, and the 
perilous jinirney along the wire rope swung from pre- 
cipice to precipice and over intervening gulfs was the 
only condition of their continued survival. The 
post itself clung to the extreme summit of the moun- 
tain as a bird's nest clings to the cranny of rock 
in which it is built ; whilst huts devised to the exact 
and difiicult contours of the last crags and hidden 
as best they might be from direct observation and 
fire from the enemy below, stood here, perched in places 
the reaching of which during the old days of peace 
was thought a triumph of skill by the moimtaineers. 
.■\nd all this ingenuity, effort and strain stood, it must be 
remembered, under the conditions df war. The snow in 
the neighbourhood of this eyrie was pitted with the shell 
that had been aimed so often and had failed to reach 
this spot, and the men thus perilously clinging to an 
.extreme peak of bare rock up in the skies were clinging 
there subject to all the peril of war added to the common 
perils of the feat they had accomplished. 
Marvellous as it was, I saw here but one example of 
I know not how many of the same kind with which the 
Italians have made secure the whole mountain wall 
from the Brenta to the Isonzo and from Lale Garda 
to the Orther and the Swiss frontier. Every little 
gap in that wall is held. You find small posts of men that 
must have their food and water daily brought to them 
thus, slung by the wire ; you find them crouched upon 
the little dip where a collar of deep snow between bare 
rocks marks some almost impossible passage of the hills 
that must yet be held. You see a gun of 6 inches or even 
of 8 inches emplaced where had you been climbing for 
your pleasure, you would hardly have dared to pitch 
the smallest tent. You hear the story of how the piece 
was hoisted here by machinery first established upon 
the rock ; of the blasting for emplacement ; of the 
acciaents after which it was finally emplaced ; of the 
ingenious thought which has allowed for the chance of 
recoil or of displacement ; you have perhaps a month's- 
journeying from point to point of this sort over a matter 
of 250 miles. 
When the story of the great campaign comes to be told 
and its separate chapters separately dealt with, none will 
stand out, unless we except the few decisive actions, as 
will the story of this capturing and closing of the Alpine 
Wall. Hitherto the general opinion of Europe has 
remained almost ignorant of the thing or, where not 
ignorant, not grasping at all the scale of it and the im- 
mensity of its detail. By it the lateral communications 
of the main Isonzo front (conmiunications which alone 
of all those of the Allies ran right in front of a hostile 
army and were correspondingly imperilled), were scoured. 
But there was one region in which no efforts such as 
those I have described could mike quite certain the flank 
of these communications ; there was one broad gap where 
mountains of an easier character ran lower, and a 
plateau more open might permit, even after the Italian 
effort to bar all access had been completed, an enemy 
attcm]>t to cut the line by which the main army on the 
Isonzo lived. That gaj) lay between the .\dige and the 
Brenta and it was by this gap that, after months of 
effort, the great offensive of last May was delivered. 
I propose in my next article to describe how and why 
it failed, and to touch again upon the inevitable conse- 
quences of that failure. H. PuLLOC 
