June 2 0, 1918 
Land & Water 
The Offensive against Italy : By H. Belloc 
THE present Austrian offensive upon tlie Italian 
front is following a course of which the plan was, 
so to speak, inevitable. Ever since the Itahans 
entered the war, seized defensive positions in the 
north-east of their country, and occupied the 
slopes of the Alps all along the north up to the Swiss frontier, 
the object of the enemy in any main offensive was necessarily 
an effort to come down from the north and cut the Italian 
communications. This alone could give him a complete 
decision. It is true that his great victory at Caporetto was 
due to a direct frontal attack against the main defensive 
position ; but though he broke the front, took an enormous 
number of prisoners and guns, and compelled the Italians 
to a rapid and terribly expensive retirement, he did not 
obtain a decision because he was only driving his opponent 
back along communications which were still intact. 
The position may be familiar to most of my leadiers, but 
I will explain it once more in a simple diagram. 
B[ 
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Supposing the front you have to . hold is of the shape 
shown in the diagram, Uke part of a hook, or the letter "J," 
with secured flanks at B and at A. Suppose your main hne 
communications run like the barred arrow on that diagram — 
that is, parallel with a part of your front B-C. Then it is 
obvious that the success of your enemy against you between 
A and C, cornpelling you to retire, for instance, to D-E, 
though it may involve the loss of prisoners and of guns, 
does not merely through his' advance affect the vitals of 
your army, for, as you fall back, you still have your com- 
munications intact behind you by which to receive supphes, 
to evacuate wounded, etc. But if your enemy can bring 
pressure between B and D, then, even without badly damaging 
you, if it only presses you back a little way, and [imme- 
diately your communications are in danger, everything 
lying beyond the point where he ci/ts the communications 
will be destroyed, and the nearer to B he effects his cut, the 
more thorough his victory will be. If he can cut the com- 
munications right back close to B, he will scoop in the whole 
army and achieve a complete decision. 
Now, the Italian front has been from the begimjing obviously 
of this kind. There was always a peril from the north — 
a peril which was greater in proportion as the attack from 
the north came from more and more westward. 
This unstable state of affairs was imposed by nature 
herself. It is the great curve of the Central and Eastern 
Alpine chain, the direction of the rivers flowing down from 
that chain to the sea, and the consequent sites of great 
towns, all lying in a row underneath the Alps, these in their 
turn determining the main roads and the railways which 
have produced the situation just described. 
If you compare the actual map between Lake Garda and 
the mouth of the Piave — that is, along the lines held by the 
Italians at the present moment^you will see that it exactly 
corresponds to this scheme. The secured flanks at B and A 
are Lake Garda and the high mountain region west of it and 
the Adriatic Sea. The main line of communications is the 
railway, Hnking up Verona and Vicenza, and leading up to the 
front on the Piave River. It is clear that an attack from 
the north — that is, from the mountains between B and C — 
even if it does not break the front, but only succeeds in 
pressing it back up to the line of communications, would 
give the enemy a complete decision, the more complete 
as his successful" effort lay more to the west — that is, nearer B. 
It was a stroke of this kind from the north, to cut the 
communications, which was planned in 1916 and failed. Of 
necessity, exactly the same plan has had to be repeated this 
time. The enemy has had to make his main effort from 
the north— that is, against the left flank presented by the 
Allied line and covering the dangerously parallel line of 
communications. He has been compelled, as we shall see 
in a moment, to strike at one particular sector of this northern 
front in special force, to wit, both sides of the Brenta Valley, 
because only there can he mass in sufficient strength. The 
only difference between this offensive and that of two years 
ago is that his much greater numerical superiority to-day, 
both in guns and in men, has allowed him to attack all along 
the line, instead of confining himself to the left flank alone. 
But the left flank still remains the touch-stone of the whole 
affair. Either he will get' down to the communications on 
the plain, and so obtain his decision, or he will fail to inter- 
rupt them, in which case he will suffer serious strategic defeat. 
The numerical preponderance of the enemy here, as else- 
where in the West, must always be kept in mind ; and, upon 
a later page, where I discuss ''the general character of the 
whole enemy movement from the Adriatic to the North Sea, 
I give the causes and the extent of that preponderance more 
in detail. Here, in a preliminary study of the present action, 
it is sufficient to point out that the Austro-Hungarian armies, 
with certain German contingents, can and have put into line 
no less than 60 divisions between the Adriatic and Lake 
Garda. Their superiority in artillery is unfortunately 
beyond question. It is due to two factors : the very great 
captures of pieces made since the first great offensive of last 
autumn and the enormous amount of material provided by 
the betrayal of the Allies in Russia. We shall discugs later 
how far this preponderance of men is modified by a loss in 
miUtary spirit and value ; but the preponderance in artillery, 
especially in heavy artillery work very far behind the line 
of shock and contact, is, unfortunately, a mechanical thing 
which is susceptible of calculation, and a superiority here is 
not only undeniable, but little affected by the moral of the 
attacking troops. 
Before describing in detail the accounts of the actions so 
far as it can be followed at the time of writing (Monday 
afternoon, June 17th), it wiU be necessary to go briefly over 
the line from the Swiss frontier to the Adriatic, showing 
what advantages the enemy have, maybe, and where they lie. 
There are three main sectors in this line. Reading from left 
to right — that is, from West to East— you have, first, the 
sector between the Swiss frontier and Lake Garda. Second, 
the sector between Lake Garda and the Piave River at the 
point where the latter emerges from the foot hills of the 
Alps on to the plain. 
The third sector is that of the Piave River itself, running 
from the south eastwardly across the plain, until, it falls 
into the Adriatic, 30 or 40 miles down stream. 
Of these three sectors, the first need not concern us greatly. 
It is very high mountain land, most of the crests are in the 
hands of the defence, there is only one gate, the Tonale Pass, 
and the lack of communications makes it very difficult for 
the enemy to concentrate upon this sector in any great force. 
The second sector — that between Lake Garda and the 
River Piave— is the critical one, as we have seen. It runs 
from the lake to the valley of the Astico, over country where 
an attack is difficult on account of narrowness of the issues 
by which the enemy can debouch. If this portion were 
weakly or badly held, an enemy success here would be more 
fruitful than anywhere to the eastward, for it would get 
down to Verona and find itself right behind the whole Italian 
army and astraddle of the main railway which feeds it ; but 
not only is this point capable of defence, it is also one where 
the hill country goes on far to the south, so that the difficult 
fighting would have to be prolonged, however successful it 
were. 
All these conditions are modified, when you come to the 
next portion of this sector, lying between the Astico Valley 
and the Brenta, which is known as the "Plateau of Asiago," 
from the now ruined small town in its centre. It is of curious 
