Land & Water 
June 2 0, 1918 
formation, limestone, and therefore difficult to supply with 
water, and coming out from the fall of the Alps in a sort of 
shelf, depressed in the middle, and rising at the rim. From 
beyond that rim the ground falls very steeply from a sort of 
wall on to the Plain of Vicenza. Across this crucial piece 
of ground the Allied line runs midway. .It nowhere reaches 
the northern heights which bound the plateau and dominate 
it, but it everywhere covers the rim to the south, beyond 
which is the sharp fall on to the plain, which bears the main 
commuiiirations of the armies. Upon this Plateau of Asiago, 
British, French, and Italian divisions are placed, and-there 
lias the main shock been taken. The enemy has several 
advantages here. He has the great international line of 
railway down the Trentint) Valley to supply him and to help 
his concentrations, and he has, branching out from it at 
Trent and running down the Val Sugana, an excellent road 
and railway following the Upper Brenta Valley and giving 
him a tiret-class lateral communication by which to feed his 
front. He has built numerous roads from this railway up 
to that front. He overlooks the defensive line across the 
plateau from the heights toirthe north of it. Finally, if he 
succeeds in bending back the Allied line here, let alone in 
breaking, it, he reaches the plafin almost immediately. The 
main railway itself is not 20 miles away, and the plain is 
nowhere more than 7. In other words, there is hardly any 
room for manoeuvre. 
Beyond the Brenta Valley he could also use. troops and 
guns concentrated by the aid of the railway and everywhere 
exercise pressure to get down to the plain, to which he is 
everywhere close ; but the further east he goes, the less the 
«'ffect of his advance would be. 
L;istly, we have the Piave itself, running through the plain 
from the foot hills to the Adriatic. This part of the front is 
the weakest for defence ; but, at the same time, it is that 
part up«n which an enemy advance has least effect. 
The Piave is no formidable pbstacle. For much the 
greater part of the year it is only a broad bed of shingle, 
carrying a few trickles of water, and bounded by high levees 
or banks upon either side to preserve the plain against 
floods. 
After heavy rain in tlie hills and during the first big melt 
of the snows, it rises by many feet, and becomes very swift 
and deep, an almost impossible obstacle for the moment ; 
but it usually goes down in a few hours, and is of hardly any 
permanent military value, at any rate, above the point of 
St. Dona ; below that point the last few miles to the sea 
run through marshy country, which can be well defended. 
A crossing there is also of httle service to the attack because 
there is no good road by which to advanced-only more 
marshes, cut up by canals, and a big sliallow lagoon barring 
the way. 
The Piave torrent bed is crossed in three places by the 
railway, at St. Dona itself, just above the marshy ground, 
at Fogara, about half-way to the hills, and at Nervesa, just 
where it emerges from the hills. The bridges have, of course, 
long ago been destroyed ; but the railways on the enemy 
side — that is, on the eastern bank of the river-^and the road 
system in his hands only lead to the old crossing places, so 
that they are the obvious points upon which he can con- 
centrate and bring pressure ; and it is there that he had 
already by last Sunday established at least three bridge- 
heads. 
Such being the general nature of the ground, we will now 
turn to the fortunes of the battle so far as the dispatches to 
hand inform us upon them. 
The offensive opened at 3 a.m. on Saturday last, June 15th. 
It -had been preceded by a minor action, dwindling down 
during the previous thirty-six hours against the Tonale Pass 
far to the west of Lake Garda. It is not easy to understand 
the reason for this feint — if feint it was. Perhaps future 
developments will make us understand it better. There was 
no chance of getting through under such conditions of quite 
partial and local attack. At any rate, the attack was de- 
livered, and, as a matter of course, without result ; the 
main offensive followed, as we have said, by the opening of 
intense bombardment at 3 a.m. on Saturday. 
The bombardment lasted four hours, and just after 7 a.m. 
the infantry was launched along the whole line, from above the 
mouth of the Piave to the neighbourhood of Lake Garda 
itself. 
At this point we shall do well to notice the complete cen- 
tralisation of the enemy forces in the West. What he cannot 
command is homogeneity of troops. He has that more or 
less in the German Empire ; he takes advantage of its lack 
among the various nations of the Allies ; but he cannot obtain 
it in the extraordinary different types of recruitment which 
produce the Austro-Hungajian forces. What he has got is 
clearly a unity of central command. For this preparation 
of his last offensive is almost ridiculously exact in its copy 
of the efforts made in France since March 21st. The pre- 
liminary bombardment, its exact duration, the nature of the 
shell used, the searching of back areas — twenty other details 
are precisely the same with the Austro-Hungarians 
in Italy as they have been with the German armies 
in France. 
Now, this kind of similarity is not produced by mere 
copying ; it is only possible when you have direct orders 
and a staff working to a plan. It means that the whole 
direction of the Austrian armies in this Italian offensive is 
German. What they cannot command, as I have said, is the 
united human material. And this battle really turns more 
upon the military value of the Austro-Hungarian units than 
upon anything else. They come from many different races ; 
they are variously affected towards the cause of the Imperial 
Crown ; they have suffered different kinds of strain ; even 
their best units are but isolated groups in such a mass of 
disparate forces ; and it is all this which weighs against the 
fact that they are superior in numbers and far superior in 
guns to the defending force. 
After the bombardment, then, had proceeded four hours 
the infantry was launched at about half-past seven in the 
morning upon every available point of the line. 
