LAND & WATER 
September 6, loiy 
these guns have been in a position to roach a considerable 
part ot the citv of Trieste with their liif^h-angle hre. I was 
iiivendelinite assurance on this point during my last visit to 
this sector of the front, when 1 was also told tiiat the one reason 
whv such bombardment was not carried out was because 
distance and uncertain observation would militate so strongly 
against accurate lire that unnecessary uon-military damage 
might be wrought. 
Astonishing Perseverance 
Turning to the great and developing series of Italian attacks 
themselves, one is impressed with the fact that the astonishing 
p,'rseverance of them is, considering the nature of the ground 
being fought over, even more remarkable than the large area 
<,{ territory conquered and the large captures of prisoners, 
From 2S,6qo to 30,000 prisoners, and a six to eight mile 
advance" on a fifteen mile front, combine to make a success 
rather more striking than has yet fallen to any of the VVestern 
Allies at any point befwecn the North Sea and the Adriatic, 
l-lut. great as this preliminary success is, there has been no 
Allied action in the whole war in which " more to come 
•^tood out more plainly than it appears to from the one 111 
(|U,!stion. Although the attack has Ixrii more or less general 
along the front of something over forty miles, the great 
weight of it has only fallen on the from fifteen to twenty 
miles of front where the unprecedented advance has been 
made-. There are some reports of attacks and slight advances 
to the south (there has been some mention of gams at the 
base of the Hermada), but the impression the whole thing 
conveys is that Cadorna still has a good deal up his sleeve. 
One would have this impression, I say, just from the way 
the situation has developed since the initiation of the attack ; 
C.eneral Cadorna's own statement made to the Italian ex- 
jMiiiister Barzilai for publication in a Roman paper gives 
it ample contirmation. I do not know whether the English 
newspaper reader has come to appreciate vvhat models of 
lucid terseness, of succinct comprehensiveness. General 
Cadorna's daily bulletins are. He not only contrives to say 
what there is "to be said in the fewest words, but he very 
rarely fails to say it with telling effect. The same quality 
is evident in his "rare interviews. No military leader of the 
war has spoken for publication more seldom, and yet more 
to the point when he did speak, than has Cadorna. Special 
significance, therefore, attaches to this statement : 
" As the military' critics of the Allied countries have already 
fcivourably commented on the Italian plan." he said to Signore 
l^arzilai, '" 1 may say without boasting that the present manoeuvre, 
owing to its vast objectives and its daring, and its probable 
eifects on the whoVe war, is one of the most important in the his- 
tory of that war. , ,. 
" Our offensive comprises such an extensive front that it 
would be impossible, except for the simultaneous success at all 
points ; but the country may rest assured of our fmal success, 
towards which the magnificent tenacity and patriotism of the 
civilian population contribute almost equally with our glorious 
fighters. . . " 
" General Cadorna," the dispatch adds, " gave in calm mathe- 
matical terms facts and figures proving the immense military 
and moral superiority erf the Italians over their traditional 
enemies, and asserted' tliat the imminent and decisive success 
of Italy means the turning point of the whole war." 
IIow then, assuming tlsit the Italians are able to push the 
present offensive for an indefinite time yet, may the situa- 
tion be expected todeveilop ? Let us first glance hastily at 
what has been accomplislsed during the first week of the offen- 
sive, or up to about last Thursday. In addition to the spec- 
tacular crossing of the Upper Isonzo — an operation which, 
when we have the details, may well take rank with the blow- 
ing up of the Col di Laiia and Castelletto for fantastic dar- 
ing, the heights beyomltliat river were stormed and an advance 
over the broken Bainsizza Plateau made (at a couple of points) 
to a depth of over eight miles, and at no point, on a front 
nf but little short of fifteen miles, to a depth of less than five 
miles. The area of the conquered territory is computed at 
over 150 square kilometers. , 
In the tenuous strip of lowland along the left bank of the 
Iscmzo a dozen villages were taken, the largest of which was 
Canale. On the highland of Bainsizza fourteen or fifteen 
villages were occupied by tlie advancing Italians, in many of 
which, so far had they been behind the lines and so secure had 
the Austrians appeared to feel in their possession, the 
civilian population had not been evacuated. The seizure ot 
large stores of food and munitions — are solid evidence of the 
unexj^ectedness of the attack. 
An apparently firm foothold has been gained at the southern 
end of the deep Chiapovano Valley. It is the depth of the ad- 
vance at this point which may threaten the communications 
to the San Gabriele, with its south-western buttress, San 
Caterina, and induce the Austrians to abandon this cruci- 
ally important tnassif even I>eforc they ;'re blasted off it by 
the plunging fire ot the artillery the Italians will shortly b3 
bringing to bear from the still higher vantage of the newK'- 
captured Monte Santo. The fall of San Gabriele, which has 
been the principal instrument of torture in keeping the Italians 
upon the rack in Gorizia and almost entirely preventing their 
leaping anything but a barren " sentimental "■ victory in 
return for their heavy sacrifices in taking that bitterly-fought - 
for little city, will be one of the first fruits of the taking of Monte 
Santo. Not until San Gabriele and San Daniele have fallen 
will the Italians be able to gain any distinct military ad- 
vantage from the occupation of Gorizia. With the Austrians 
pushed off these commanding positions and back <nit of any- 
thing but heavy artillery fange, (iorizia will be on the way to 
becoming the first adequate advanced base the Italians have 
had beyond the Upper Isonzo. 
The "Italians appear to be playing a gigantic game of 
nine-pins with the dominating line of peaks, ranging in height 
from 1,700 to 2,300 fe<^t, which prevented their advancing 
beyond the Upper Isonzo during all their first two years of the 
war. .Monte Kuk, the most northerly, fell in the assaults of 
last May, as did also the \'odice, the slightly higlwr peak ne.xt 
in line to Ihe south. Now the \'odice has " pushed over" 
Monte Santo, the highest peak of the chain,. and Monte Santo 
in turn, should bo\vJ o\'er Monte San Gabriele. Monte 
San Daniele, next in line to the so.uth-east, cannot long sur- 
vive an attack from San Gabriele, while the former, to quote 
the words of an Italian despatch of a few days ago, " commands 
the Pannowitzer Forest and San Marco, and San Marco in 
turn enfilades Faiti and Stol, and these latter have their 
intimate bearing up6n the tenure of the Hermada." This 
suggests one very probable development of the Italian offensive 
The Number of Prisoners 
Even the casual reader of the daily bulletins will hardly 
have failed to remark the fact that the number of prisoners 
taken by the Italians in all of their great attacks of the last 
year appear to be considerably larger in proportion to the pro- 
bable number of troops engaged than in the operations on the 
Western Front. A military correspondent of one of the Lon- 
don papers explained this last week by saying it was due to the 
freedom with which^ the Austrian soldiers of Italian blood 
gave themselves up to their attacking brothers whenever oppor- 
tunity offered. This hardly conforms with the facts, I fear. 
The Austrians have done many stupid things, but hardly 
anything quite so stupid as to employ units from Italia 
Irredenta on any part of their Italian FVont. 
The real reason for the comparatively large hauls of prisoners 
is to be sought in the great underground rock galleries anil 
caverns which have become inevitable features of this rock 
mountain warfare. The labour of blasting sufficiently deep 
trenches to give any real protection is almost prohihitive in 
the first place, while in the second place the casualties in 
even the best of these from flying rock fragments are greater 
than those from pieces of shell and shrapnel bullets. The con- 
sequence has been that both Austrians and Italians have, 
between natural and artificial caverns (the former are especially 
abundant in the porous Carsic formation), sufficient under- 
ground shelter at most points for all the troops they ever need 
to throw into their advanced lines. 
Into these absolutely safe underground shelters the troops 
retire while a preparatory bombardment is on, to emerge 
when it is over to make the best defence possible against the 
infantry attack. It is the same kind, of thing the Germans 
have tried to do on the Western Front, only (because the 
natural conditions are better suited to it beyond the Isonzo) 
carried much further. The result is that the defence generally 
loses fewer in killed and wounded in this " cave-man " war- 
fare, and more in prisoners. The latter, reluctant to abandon 
the safety of their underground shelters, usually give them- 
selves up in large bodies as soon as the wave of Italian infantry 
has swept up to or beyond them. 
It may also have been noticed that the attack appears to 
relinquish a much larger proportion of prisoners to the enemy 
than on the Western Front. In the Italian offensive of last 
May the Austrians claimed that nearly 25,000 prisoners were 
left in their hands by the Italians, or a number almost equal to 
that the latter took from them, while up to the present moment 
in the offensive now on they are claiming that over 10,000 
Italians have remained with them. I was assured on un- 
questioned authority that the Austrian claims for May were 
ratlier more than double what they should have been, and, 
from the nature of the action, it is quite probable that the 
claims in connection with the present offensive are even more 
greatly exaggerated. But even so, the proportion of prisoners 
abandoned to the enemy is far and away greater than any 
attacking army on the vVcstcrn Front has ever ceded. This 
again is directly due to the" rock warfare," where the digging 
in of soldiers who have reached, or over- reached, some ex- 
posed objective is practically out of the question. 
