, with a machine gun, to the monastery on November 7; at
eleven on the previous night Mihailov ordered the captain to come to see
him; he wanted to know by whom this expedition had been authorized. The
captain answered that Me[vs]ica was in his district, and that he had no
animus against Roumanians but only against plunderers. After his arrival
at Me[vs]ica the trouble was brought to an end. Nor was it long before
the Serbian troops, riding up through their own country at a rate which
no one had foreseen, crossed the Danube and occupied the Banat, in
conjunction with the French. The rapidity of this advance astounded the
Roumanians; they gaped like Lavengro when he wondered how the stones
ever came to Stonehenge.... When the Serbian commandant at Ver[vs]ac
invited these enterprising Roumanian officers to an interview he was
asked by one of them, Major Iricu, whether or not they were to be
interned. "What made you print that placard?" asked the commandant; and
they replied that their object had been to preserve order. They had not
imagined, so they said, that the Serbs would come so quickly. "I will be
glad," said the commandant, "if you will not do this kind of thing any
more."

THE ITALIAN FRAME OF MIND

Italy was not in a good humour. She was well aware that in the countries
of her Allies there was a marked tendency to underestimate her
overwhelming triumphs of the last days of the War. Perhaps those
exploits would have been more difficult if Austria's army had not
suffered a deterioration, but still one does not take 300,000 prisoners
every day. Some faithful foreigners were praising Italy--and she
deserved it--for having persevered at all after Caporetto. That disaster
had been greatly due to filling certain regiments with several thousand
munition workers who had taken part in a revolt at Turin, and then
concentrating these regiments in the Caporetto salient, which was the
most vulnerable sector in the eastern Italian front. How much of the
disaster was due to the Vatican will perhaps never be known. But as for
the uneducated, easily impressed peasants of the army, it was wonderful
that all, except the second army and a small part of the third,
retreated with such discipline in view of what they had been brooding on
before the day of Caporetto. They had such vague ideas what they were
fighting for, and if the Socialists kept saying that the English paid
their masters to continue with the War--how were they to kn