February 8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
II 
is, of course, no more tliaii sensible, for a shout, or a 
high pitched note of song, may set going just the 
vibrations of air needed to start a movement on the 
npper slopes of a mountain side that will culminate 
in launching a miUion tons of snow all the way across 
ihc lower valley. 
On the occasion I have in mind it was necessary for 
us, in order to reach a position I especially desired to 
visit, to climb diagonally across something hke three- 
quarters of a mile of the swath of one of the largest and 
most treacherous slides on the whole Alpini Front. 
There had been a great avalanche here every year from 
■•ime out of memory, usually preceded by a smaller one 
early in the winter. The preliminary slide had already 
occurred at the time of my visit, and, as the early w inter 
storms had been the heaviest in years, the accmiiulated 
snows made the major avalanche almost inevitable on 
tlie first day of a warm wind. Such a day, unluckily, 
chanced to be the only one available for my visit to the 
position in question. Although it was in the first 
\\eck in January the eaves of the houses in the little 
.Mpine village where the Colonel quartered had been 
dripping all night, and even in the early morning the 
liard packed snow of the trail was turning soft and 
shishy when we left our sledge on the main road and 
set out on foot. 
We passed two or three sections marked off bj' the 
" Pericoloso " signs without taking any especial pre- 
cautions, and even when we came to the big slide the 
young Major responsible for seeing the venture througlx 
merely directed that we M'ere to proceed by twos (there 
were four of us), with a 200 yards interval between, 
walking as rapidly as possible and not doing any un- 
necessary talking. That was all. There were no 
" dramatics " about it ; only the few simple directions 
that were calculated to minimise the chances of " total 
loss " in case the slide did become restive. How little 
this young officer had to learn about the ways' of aval- 
anches I did not learn till that evening, when his Colonel 
told me that he had been buried, with a company or two 
of his Alpini, not long previously, and only escaped the 
fate of most of the men througli having been dug out by 
his dog. 
The Major, with the Captain from tlie Conunando 
Supremo wiio liad been taking me about the front, went 
on ahead, leaving me to follow after five minutes had 
gone by with a young Alpini Lieutenant, a boy so full 
of bubbling mountain spirits that lie had been dancing 
all along the way and warbling " Rigoletto " to the tree; 
tops. Even as we waited he would burst into quick 
snatches of song, each of which was ended witii a gulp 
as renewed recollection that the time had come to 
clamp on the safety-valve flashed across his mind. 
When the time for us to follow on was up by his wrists 
watch, the lad clapped his eagle-feather hat firmly on his 
head, set his jaw with a sharp click of resolution, fixed 
his eyes grimly on the trail in front of him, and strode 
off into the narrow passage that had been cut through the 
towering bulk of the slide. From the do-or-die expression 
on his handsome young face one might well have imagined 
that it was the menace of that engulfing mass of poised 
snow that was weighing him down, and such, I am sure, 
would have been my own impression had this been my 
first day among the Alpini. But by now I liad seen 
enough of Italy's mountain soldiers to know that this 
one was as disdainful of the valanga as the valanga was of 
him ; and that the crushing burden on his mind at that 
moment was only the problem of how to negotiate 
that distance of beautiful snow-wallpd trail without 
telhng the world in one glad burst of song after another 
how wonderful it was to be alive and young, and climbing 
up nearer at every step to those glistening snow- peaks 
from whence his comrades had driven the eneiny head- 
long but a few months before, and from whence, per- 
chance, they would soon move again to take the next 
valley and the peaks beyond it in their turn. If he had 
been alone, slide or no slide, orders or no orders, he would 
have shouted his gladness to the high heavens, come 
what might ; but as it was, with a more or less helpless 
foreigner on his hands, and within hearing of his superior 
officer, it was quite another matter. 
(io bo continued) 
The Lieutenant 
By Centurion 
ON the day he was born his father wrote two letters. 
One was addressed to the head of a certain school 
of ancient foundation in a southern county; the 
other to the Dean of a college at Oxford. For, 
like some London clubs, they took a good deal of getting 
into and his father, whose name was on the registers 
of both of them, determined to leave nothing to chance. 
The boy grew and waxed strong in spirit. He lay for 
hours on his back cooing to himself and doing mighty 
Swedish exercises, breasting the air like a strong swimmer 
with his arms and kicking lustily with his legs. " Isn't 
he sweet ? " said his mother to the doctor for the 
thousandth time. 
" Hum ! his patellar reflexes seem all right," said the 
doctor who was used to such maternal ecstasies. 
They called him Anthony — Tony for short. He began 
life with a face of extraordinary solemnity that was almost 
senile, but it grew younger as he grew older. His eyes, 
which were at first a neutral colour inclining to mouse- 
grey, gradually changed till the irises revealed the deep 
brown tint of his mother's, so that looking into them she 
seemed to be looking into a niirror. But his nondescript 
nose took on the clear-cut Grecian profile of his father. 
You could see just that nose, slightly defaced by time, 
on the stone efligies of chain-mail knights in the village 
church, where they lay under the trefoil arches with their 
feet crossed and their hands folded, resting from the last 
crusade. The first discovery that he made was that his 
toes, which seemed to remain with him, were his own. 
The next thing he discovered M-as that in the immensity 
around him some things were near and others distant, and 
that sometimes, as he put out an exploring hand to grasp 
her breast, his mother was within reach and sometimes 
not— whereby he arrived at a distinction whicli has 
\exed the metaphysicians for centuries ; the difference 
between self and not-self. But in Hie i-.i-^c nf lii>~ niotlicr, 
unlike other of the big people who hovered round him 
from time to time, he never succeeded in completely 
establishing this chstinction, and all through his life 
distance only brought her more near, till one day — but 
that comes later. \ 
One night, when he was about three years old, he was 
lying asleep in his cot in the nursery when a log fell 
from the untended fire, and sending up a spurt of llamo 
threw a gigantic shadow on the wall by Ins bed. He 
woke with a start and a cry, for the sliadow was now 
leaping, now crouching, as though it were going to pounce 
upon him. And he cried lustily. The next moment there 
was a light footfall of bare feet, two soft arms were clasp- 
ing his neck, and a showier of auburn hair, soft as silk, 
fell around his face. " What is the matter with Mummy's 
boy ? Is he frightened then ? Where's the little man 
who was going to kill ApoUyon ? What will poor Mummy 
do when she meets Apollyon if her little man is afraid ? 
" I'se not afraid," he said stoutly, his lips qiiivering. And 
after that, although he sometimes knew fear he was never 
afraid. For he always remembered in the nick of time 
that some day Mummy would want him to fight Apollyon. 
But he had made a great discovery — almost as portentous 
as the discovery of Self and Not-self. He had discovered 
that he had two selves, the self which said " I am afraid " 
and the self which said " Go to ! I am not afraid." And 
from that dav he learnt to despise the former and respect 
the latter. The first he called " Mr. Feeble-Mind," 
and the second " Mr. Great-Heart. " And when hir was 
sure he was alone he often talked with the former, hurling 
the most derisi\-e epithets at it and bidding it get be- 
hind him. for it had an alias which was " Temptation." 
His early \\orld was bounded by a yew hedge which 
marked the end of the bowling green. The house, 
which was visited on one occasion by a party of grave 
L'cntlfmen in spectacles — he learnt afterwards that they 
