rior force will for
a long time stay the advance of much more imposing columns. You can no
more cram above a given number of men on to a certain stretch of road
when on the move, than you can get a quart into a pint pot. Even if
your enemy simply falls back without fighting, destroying all
viaducts, tunnels, embankments, culverts, and so forth, your army will
take a long time to traverse the highlands--unless it be an uncommonly
small one. Armies in these days are inevitably of somewhat bloated
dimensions if they are to do any good. Theatrical strategy of the
flags-on-the-map order is consequently rather at a discount in an
arena such as the War Cabinet, or some members of that body, proposed
to exploit. Even had there been no other obvious objections to a
diversion of force such as they contemplated, the project ignored
certain elementary aspects of the conduct of warlike operations which
might be summed up in the simple expression "common-sense."

But there were other obvious objections. To switch any force worth
bothering about from northern France to the Friuli flats was bound to
be a protracted process, because only two railways led over the Alps
from Dauphine and Provence into the basin of the Po; and those lines
were distinguished for their severe gradients. It was, as a matter of
fact, incomparably easier for the enemy to mass reinforcements in the
Julian Alps than it was for the two Western Powers to mass
reinforcements in the low ground facing that great area of rugged
hills. The question of a transfer of six divisions from the Western
Front to Venetia had, however, been gone into very thoroughly by the
General Staff in view of conceivable eventualities. An elaborate
scheme had been drawn up by experienced officers, who had examined the
question in consultation with the Italian military authorities, and
had traversed the communications that would have to be brought into
play were such a move to be carried out. What time the transfer would
take was a matter of calculation based on close examination of the
details. The final report came to hand while I was acting as Deputy
C.I.G.S., although its general purport had already been communicated
several weeks before. Two or three months later, when it suddenly
became necessary to rush British and French troops round from northern
France to the eastern portions of the Po basin after the singular
_debacle_ of Caporetto, actual experience proved the forecasts made in
t