LAND & W.UKR 
l)iTeiiil>«^'r 
■ -<>, i\)i/ 
The Brenta-Piave Battle 
By Hilaire Belloc 
IX the midst of. an extmoidinarily and even suspiciously 
candid "drum fire" throughout" tlie enoniy Press, pru- 
plu'^ying great tilings upon the Western front in 1-" ranee, 
it is n-markable that the chief effort actually undertaken 
!'>■ the eneniv at the nionunt, and certainh' the one wliich 
l>romises him most innnediale results,[is not tlierc liut in Itah'. 
Thiri'lje has armio thished with \ery great recent victories : 
there he has a \ast concentration of guns : there he is spending 
men in great numbers and there, if he succeeds in his effort of 
reaching the Plains, which he is slowly approaching, a true 
>trategic result will follow immediateK . There also he 
liopi-s not onlv for a strategic but for a political result. 
It nuist be renieinlx red (looking- at it from the enenn's 
point of view) that his decisive successes hitlierto have been 
the political elimination of one factor after another, running 
from nortli-east to south ui>on what used to be the great siege 
ring aroinid him. Ho has occupied or brought into his alliance 
the Balkans ; he has caused what used to be the Russian 
Stati- to fall to pieces, and with this collapse he has made 
certain of an armistice along his Roumanian front also. 
Till' ne.xt logical step in such an order would be the attempted 
elimination of Italy. Sliould he achie\e that end he coidd 
tlien conci'utrate at once for his last throw with a superiority 
he would then have acquii'td against the West. 
\\'hether this be his plan or no, it is not onh' impossible to 
det<^nun<'. but if it were his plan for tht' moment there is no 
reason why it should contiiuu; to be so. All we can judge is 
the chances of the position, following fropi its known factors, 
and those in the first ]>lace lead one to believe in a special 
effort against Italy -and in the second place show-— as a 
matter of fact, that this effort is actually being made at tlie 
nfomcnt. 
Of the various sectors of the Italian front upon which he may 
act and has acted in the immediate past, one, that between the 
Ihcnta and the Piave. is the theatre of his present offensive. 
Between the- Brenta and the Piave is a distance of about 
12 miles. H is upon this sector that, in the ])ast week, the 
heaviest effort of the enemy has been madc^wards materially 
increasing his pre.-ient advantages in the war.- 
■ I propose to examine this sector and to explain the general 
lines upoji whicli the attack has taken place and its measure 
of succfss. 
'The so-called line of the Piavt- whicli our Italian Allies 
took up after their heavy defeat at the end of October is in 
reality concerned only in part with that insufficient river 
obstacle. The Italian Third Army does indeed run down the 
line of the" Lower Pia^•e from the point where the stream 
lca\es the mountain to the marshes and lagoons of the 
-Vdriatic coast. But the line continues eastward from tlie Upper 
Piave through the mountains, another 40 odd miles, to the Adige. 
These remaining 40 niiks are dearly divided by nature intf) 
two sectors, the common boundary of which is the deep 
valleTi- of the Brenta. The fictirr jjart of each of these sectors 
i"s much tile same in length, 12 miles separating the Brenta 
from the i)oint we.^t of Asi;tgo where the present pressure 
(•( a^ps, another 12 miles sejiarating the Hrenta from the 
These three sectors correspond exactly to the three main 
Italian bodies. 
The 1st Italian Army runs from the Adige to the Brenta ; 
the 4th from the Brenta to the Pia\'e, while along the Pia\'c 
itself lies the .^rd Italian Army. 
Let us first ]iremise what must be perfectly clear to anyone 
who knows the character of these ri\-ers or who even consults 
the ma)) alone! 
The line thus taken up was strategically weak as compared 
with the much stronger line of the .Adige. The reason of this 
coni])arati\e weakness being I-'iysf, that the line of the Piave 
was not per|)en(lictilar to its communications, but in more 
than half its length parallel to those c(jnimunications -.and 
\ery clo.se to them. When your line is perjKndicular to yoni 
communications as in tlie Sketcli (11) annexed any set back 
only makes you retreat along your communications, which 
remain intact. But when your communications are nearly 
l)arallel to your line— as in (11) — then any setback may cut 
your communications. That is the jxisition on the Italian 
. front. The main communications run along the plain under 
the mountains and the. Piave line for nearly two-tlyrds of 
its lengtli ])arallel to those communications and onlj- a few 
miles away from them. 
Second, that the Piave is no true inilitar\- obstacle save in 
(piite the last few miles of its course, whereas the Adige is a 
(ieep, broad and swift river with drflicnlt muddv banks. 
'riiirdly, that the whole line (not the jiart which follows 
the Pia\-e alone) is longer than the line of the Adige, if we 
mean h\ the line of the Adige a line following that river and 
cutting across to the Po, where the .Xdige turns to the sea 
at Kovigo. 
l-'oiirthly, that the line of the Adige repo.scd jecureh- upon 
two flanks, one on tlu' Po, a very broad and very rapid ri\(T 
exceedingly difficult r to cross under any reasonable measure 
of ojiposition proceeding from a modern defensi\e : tlie other 
S:Cured by the \-ery xHfficult mountain system to the west of 
f-ake Garda, withtinly one road pass, higli and easy of defence, 
by which it conld beiurned. 
In other words, the line of the Adige would compel the 
enemy to a frontal attack upon a short front, and that front 
defended by a. formidable obstacle. The so-called lines of the 
Piave give the defensive a longer front to hold, with only part 
of it defended by an obstacle and that obstacle an inferior 
obstacle, and above all it lays the defen.sivc under the peri! 
of being turned in flank and finding its commnnications- 
which run parallel to it— cut, if a push from thi' mountain- 
should succeed in reaching the main railways on the Plain. 
The reason that the worse of the two lines was taken up 
was a political reason, and at tliis stage of the war political 
reasons liave a much higher value than they had e\en some 
months ago. It was imperative in the judgment of those be.st 
fitted to weigh the circumstances that Venice should be pre- 
served, and also the rich towns and district lying on the Plain< 
east of the Adige. On this account were the" lines of the Piave 
taken up when the long-prepared lines of the Tagliamento. 
upon which it had been hoped to stand, were found untenable 
under the still tremendous momentum of the enemy's advanc e 
