the
Gonby bridgehead during March 27, 28 and 29, 1916. On the last of
these days the Italians lost some 350 prisoners. Without cessation the
guns thundered on both sides on these three days on the Doberdo
Plateau, along the Fella and Ploecken sectors, in the Dolomites and to
the east of Selz. Scattered Italian attacks at various points failed.
Then, with the end of March, the weather again necessitated a stoppage
of military operations.

An interesting description of the territory in which most of this
fighting occurred was rendered by a special correspondent of the
London "Times" who, in part, says:

"There is no prospect on earth quite like the immense irregular
crescent of serrated peak and towering mountain wall that is thrown
around Italy on the north, as it unrolls itself from the plains of
Lombardy and Venetia. How often one has gazed at it in sheer delight
over its bewildering wealth of contrasting color and fantastic form,
its effect of light and shade and measureless space! But now, for
these many months past, keen eyes have been bent upon it; eyes, not of
the artist or the poet, but those of the soldier.

"It was such a pair of military eyes that I had beside me a day or two
ago, as I stood upon the topmost roofs of a high tower, in a certain
little town in northern Italy, where much history has been made of
late; and, since the owner of the eyes was likewise the possessor of a
very well-ordered mind and a gift of lucid exposition, I found myself
able to grasp the main elements of the extraordinarily complex
strategic problem with which the chiefs of the Italian army have had
to grapple. As I looked and listened I felt that the chapter which
Italy is contributing to the record of the greatest war of all time is
one of which she will have every reason to be proud when she has at
length brought it to its victorious conclusion.

"There are few such viewpoints as this. In the luminous stillness of a
perfect morning of the Italian summer I could look north, and east,
and west, upon more than a third of the battle line, that goes snaking
among the mountains from near the Swiss frontier to the Adriatic. And
what a length of line it is! In England some people seem to think this
is a little war that Italy has on hand, little in comparison with the
campaigns in France and Russia. But it is not small, weighed even in
that exacting balance. The front measures out at over 450 miles, which
is not very far short of the