LAND & WATER 
Novcinbci 15, 1917 
The Line of the Piave 
By Hilaire Belloc 
Wi: have all licaid liow tin- Italian Army is ivtirinK 
iiDon the lino of the Piav.- The line of the 
Piavc means, howover, somefhing very different 
from the general course of that river. Let us 
see what it means and what are its opportunities lor defence. 
It may liave been put to the test before tiicse lines iire 
jniblished. 
\\ hat we sav lieri- rclt-rs of course only to flie geographical 
< onditions. and conunents based upon these are subject to two 
very imiKjrtant mnditicalions : 1-irst. the strength or weak- 
ness of a line is dearly conditioned by the nature and number 
ol the /orce>. defending it as well as b\ its geograjjhical nature 
But as the strengtii of a modern defensivi' lies in such elements 
as coun(ei--batt<-ry work, numbers of machine guns and skill 
in handling the same, ample munitionment. etc., we do 
not really know tlie strength of any line until or unless we 
have those details before us, and such details, in the case of 
the Piave line, we necessarily lacki 
The second important unknown is the strength of fortifica- 
tion which it has been possible to erect within the time at the 
disposal of the forces which jiropose to stand upon a new line. 
During all the Battle of the Somme, for instance, and every 
other battle of the Western front, there has been a sort of race 
bet\icen the preparation of lines behind the front and the 
ilriving in of the enemy towards those lines. Preparation of 
lines takes time ; the security of the defence is larj^ely 
measured in terms of tfie time available for such preparation. 
With these provisos, which are. of course, all-important. 
and which leave us with but little re;^ material for judgment. 
let us turn to that little we have — the geographical conditions 
— and consider them. 
The Piave is a stream rising as a mountain torrent in the 
Dolomites and collecting the water of a considerable 
mountain basin — all that district of fantastic j)caks known in 
Italian as the (.adore. It was (he l>irtli-])liu e i)y the way uf 
the great Leonardo. With the frontier which was here drawn 
arbitrarily and left a whole district south of the watershed in 
Austrian hands, we are not concernwl. Our' main point is 
that the Piave is not, in its mountain , coui.se. a very con- 
siderable obstacle. If the defence upon the further side of 
its narrow valley or gorge could not ])revent the ohensi\e 
from coming down the opi)osing slope, it certainly could 
not prevent its crossing tjie rocky waterway at the Ix/toiu. 
These mountain conditions continue to the ])oint called the 
Bridge of the Alps just above Belhiiid. .\\ydn from the fact 
that the obstacle is insignificant. I he great length of this 
mountain part of the valley, something like 40 mi'es with iis 
windings, forbids any attemi)t to usi: it by a diminished lUmy. 
It has as a tact been abandoned ! and unfortunately in tlie 
retirement from it a portion tif a division has been cut oil- - 
with a loss of lo.ouo men. The upper mountain part of the 
Piave valley, then, forms no part of tlw Piave line. 
Below Belluno the Piave runs through ooujitry either flat 
or marked with low heights that are the last foothills of the 
Alps. It is now a more considerable stream, though still 
subject to great differences of level like all mountain rivers, 
but it is still far too shallow on the average to act as an obstacle 
and, further, is unsuitable as a line of defence from its trace. 
It makes a very wide bend westward, greatly increasing the 
line that the defence would have to hold, and this bend may 
be said to continue to the point of Nervesa, a village standing 
just above the right bank at the entry of the river into the 
Plains. It is from this point that the true line of the Piave 
begins and from this point that an attempt to stand de- 
fensively upon it must be continued by as short a line as pos- 
sible up to the high mountains where attack in force is difficult 
or impossible. To exactly what point in the mountains the 
line is continued we have no information, but the straightest 
