JSovember 8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
At any rate, whatever was the concentration in men on the 
Upper Isonzo, there was a great concentration in guns, and 
these in their turn must mainly have come from the East, 
where in the enemy's judgment tliey were no longer needed. 
After a very heavy but short preliminary bombardment the 
attack was launched in the small Iiours of Wednesday moniing. 
October 24th, three blows being delivered by tluee picked 
bodies of two divisions each — exactly assat Verdun. .Ml 
these si.\ divisions were German. It is perhap the fact that the 
spear heads to the attack consisted of these six divisioas that 
has led to the idea that only six extra German divisions were 
present. The three points of attack were, leading from south 
to north: (i) That launched from the bridgehead of St. 
Lucia , just south of Tolmeno, which bridgehead over the river 
the Austrians had consistently held througliont the recent 
operations. At this point there is amj)le supply behind the 
enemy down the Baca valley, which has an o.xcellent main 
road and a railway, and a second road coming in from Idria. 
(2) The second attack was opposite Caporetto in the very 
heart of the Isonzo gorge, and was delivert-d with the object of 
establishing a bridge there, because Caporetto is the door to 
the onlv easy pass tlvroughthe mountains to the Italian Plain. 
(3) The third attack took i>lace at Plezzo also with t\vi> 
divisions, and took j)lace there because Plezzo is the first stop 
north of Caporetto, where you get elbow room in the shape 
of a plain down which the mountains recede from the river. 
Of these three attacks that from St. Lucia was the decisive 
one, corresponding to the launching two divisions against 
Douaumont in the X'erdun business. It cut off the second 
army front the third and at once threatened Caporetto and 
made the crossing there possible, for the enemy moved north- 
word from St. Lucia up the river bank. The twin attack 
corresponding to that from St. Lucia was the attack at Plezzo ; 
Caporetto, the third and central point, was but the conse- 
quence of the other two. From Plezzo in the north and St. 
Lucia in the south Caporetto was threatened, and a contem- 
poraneous direct attack on it rushed the moutii of the pass. 
The next task of the enemy was to master tlie heights 
immediately above the Isonzo tt) the west, dominating the 
pass to the plains. The long spur running down the Monte 
Maggiore called the Stol. and the great mass of the Mattajur 
are of the same height within 100 feet (that height about 
5,000 feet above the river), and stand like guards above 
the Isonzo and the Caporetto-Cividale Road. They were 
mastered 28 hours after the first blow had fallen. That is, 
in the early morning after daybreak of Thursday the 25th, 
and after that the success was complete. The centre of the 
Italian second army was thoroughly liroken and this centre 
corresponded to the easy road through the mountains to the 
Plain, the first town on the edge of which is Cividale. 
This sweeping through the Second'Army involved immediate 
retirement of the Third Army to the south. The remnants of 
the Second Army, the Headquarters Stall, and all its machinery 
situated at Udirte : the Third Army as yet intact between 
Gorizia and the Sea, fell back upon the line of the Tagliamento. 
There are two permanent established avenues of retirement 
through the l-'riuli Plain. Lacit is marked by a great higii 
road ; each is marked by a railway, and each has a [wrmanent 
bridge across the Tagliamento. The first is .the avenue from 
Udine to Pordenone : the second is the avenue from Mon- 
falcone to Portogniaro. For the withdrawal of sucli an 
immense numtx-r of men, such an exiguity of communications, 
especially in the matter of bridges, was a great drawback. 
For between the old front and the Tagliamento (a distance of 
from 20 to 30 miles, according to tiie point from which the 
retreat of each unit began) there are a numlier of parallel 
streams cutting the roads and adding to the diflficulties of 
retirement. It is true that apart from these main roads and 
railways there are a number of ccnmtry by-roads and that 
temporary bridges must (one ho]X's) -have been established 
across the Tagliamento itself and the smaller streams parallel 
to it to the east. But the main of the wheeled trafhc, all the 
heavy guns, and pretty well all the petrol traffic must hav<i 
gone by the two roads and the two railways. 
The northern or Pordenone road crosses the Tagliamento 
by the long wooden bridge Napoleon establi.shed, and this 
bridge is called from the name of the nearest village (two or 
three miles off) the Bridge of Codroipo. To the south of it 
an equally long railway viaduct leads from one bank to the 
other of the enormously broad and usually three-quarter 
dry bed of the Tagliamento. The southern road and railway 
crosses the I^wer Tagliamento at the point of Latisana, a 
village standing upon the eastern bank. 
When the retreat of the Third Army (still intact) began, 
the advanced bodies of the enemy were at tlie same distance 
from the crossings of the Tagliamento as was the main bulk of 
the Third Army. It was the obvious manrjeuvre of the enemy 
to wheel round .southward, that is to the left, and cutoff the 
Third Army if he could, before it had made good its escape 
by the bridge of Latisana ; and for three critical days, during 
X'XLAiidja 
GmtKtrsaCiooo/eet 
to IC 
which we heard not a word from either side upon this e,s.sentia! 
matter the thing hung in the balance. It seemed from the map 
even chances either way. But in the event those chances 
went, upon the whole, against the enemy. Not that the Third 
Army got away intact ; the last divisions were cnt off and it 
lost a very large proportion of its guns ; 60,000 men and no less 
than .500 pieces fell into tlie enemy's hands. By the fifth 
day enougii of the remnant of the Second and of the bulk of 
the Third Armies, formerly constituting the Isonzo front, 
had got away behind the Tagliamento to re-form a line while 
reinforcement was coming up from behind, and while the 
enemy, who had pushed forward advanced units at great si)ee(l, 
was more slowly bringing up his main forces and his heavy 
material. When the full tale of his captures was announced 
' by the enemy at this close of the first phase inthe new Italian 
business, the figures he gave were 200,000 men and no leSs 
than i.Soo guns. 
The Tagliamento is, as was pointed out in these columns 
last week, an insufficient military obstacle. It fills with 
water only after heavy rains or during the thaws of the 
snows in the mountains, and all its middle and upper course it is 
no more than"a very broad torrent lied "cut up" (as the name 
suggests) into a network Of tiny .shallow rills. It so happened, 
however, that during the retreat of our Allies there fell for 
"36 hours continuous and heavy rain and the whole bed of the 
river was filled with a flooding torrent. We cannot expect 
it to last long, and the fue defence of the Tagliamento 
line will lie, not in ftis value as an obstacle, but in the number 
and quality of the troops which will hold the long prepared 
trenches upon its eastern bank. 
It is clear from the map that the Tagliamento line can 
casilv be turned from the north. But what has not been per- 
haps sufficiently emphasised is th.e advantage the enemy here 
has through his main railway across the Pontebba Pass. If, 
in the Italian retirement, there was time for a proper destruc- 
tion, of works upon this mountain line, these may take some 
few days to repair. But we may take it that either immediate- 
ly or in a short time this railway can amply supply the enemy 
in the lower foothills of the Alps upon the Upper Tagliamento, 
that is in the region of Tolmezzo. Wnzone and Gemona. 
Where the valley of the l"'ella falls into the Tagliamento there 
is an oj5en space quite large enough for the manoeuvring of 
considerable troops and a blow struck there successfully, or 
just on the edge of the foothills where the railway crosses 
the river, would turn the Tagliamento liiie. Now if the 
Tagliamento line is lost — and for an army pressed hard after 
a heavy blow, it is an insufficient oljstacle to defend— there 
is no really good short and strong natural line to hold till one 
reaches the Adige — the historic barrier of the Italian plain 
against the north-east. But the line of the -.Adige uncovers 
Venice— and we are in the fourth year of the war. The line 
of the Piave is in its upper part a mere torrent, and in its 
whole contour lengthy and imsuitable. Of course trenches 
can be dug anywhere, but so far as natural obstructions are 
concerned, the Piave is a bad line. 
There is no need to say more. There lies before the Allies, 
before Western civilisation and its fortunes, a more severe 
ordeal than any it has yet had to face. To face it the civilian 
populations of all the Allied nations will need to call upon 
all their tenacity, and above all upon all their clearness of 
vision- and the test may be upon us very soon, because 
there may be restored in the \cnctian plain the changing 
and rapidly decisive factors of a war of movement. 
That other military news of the week consists in the slight 
