phones and will not regret the absence of good flag
signalers. When large forces are operating, and many shells bursting,
the telephone is often a broken reed. The motor lorries, with about a
one and one-half ton of useful load, get about wherever there is a
road, and the handy little steam tractors, which make light of
dragging the heaviest guns up the steepest gradients, are valuable
adjuncts to the defense. At the turns of bad zigzags, the Italians
have a remarkable drill for men on the dragropes, and in fact all
difficulties have been overcome.

"I recall some Italian batteries mounted at an elevation of about
9,000 feet, of which each gun weighed eleven tons, the carriage five
tons, and the platform, which was divided into sections, thirty tons.
These guns, the battery officers declared, were brought up from the
plains by a new mountain road in seven hours, and placed in position
on these platforms five hours later. It is all a question of roads,
but the _filovia_ can carry 400 kilos, and any gun under that weight
can get up to a peak by way of the air.

"It is all very marvelous and very perfect, and the Italians are also
adepts at trench building, and make them most artistically. The only
objection I can see to the mountain road is that, when the enemy gets
a hold of the territory which they serve, he has the benefit of them.
This is true of Trentino operations now, and the enemy has many more
roads at his disposal than the old maps show. Sometimes I wonder
whether the Italians do not immerse themselves a little too much in
these means of war and lose sight a little of the ends, but over
nine-tenths of Italy's frontier the war is Alpine, and it must be
allowed that Italian soldiers have brought the art of mountain
fighting to a degree of perfection which it has never attained before.

"The Italian Alpine group varies in strength and composition. It
usually has the local Alpine battalions reenforced by the mountaineers
of Piedmont, and completed, when necessary, by line infantry, who
usually act in the lower valleys, leaving the high peaks to the
mountaineers. Artillery is added according to needs--mountain, field,
and heavy--while there are engineers in plenty, and the mule transport
is very good.

"The Alpini wear a good hobnailed boot for ordinary service, but for
work on the ice the heel of the boot is taken off, and an iron clamp
with ice nails substituted. For mountaineering feats they often use
_scarpe