of motor boats, armed with machine guns, small cannon,
and torpedo tubes, to huge, cumbersome, flat-bottomed British monitors,
mounting the biggest guns.

The Italian vessels navigated secret channels dug in the bottom of the
shallow lagoons. Only the Italian war pilots knew these courses. Even
gondolas straying out of the channels were instantly and hopelessly
stranded. Not only this, but as the muddy flats and marshy islands did
not permit of artillery emplacements the Italians developed an immense
fleet of floating batteries. The guns ranged from three-inch fieldpieces
to great fifteen-inch monsters. Each was camouflaged to represent a tiny
island, a garden patch, or a houseboat. Floating on the glasslike
surface of the lagoons, the guns fired a few shots and then changed
position, making it utterly impossible for the enemy to locate them. The
entire auxiliary service of supplying this floating army was adapted to
meet the lagoon warfare. Munition dumps were on boats, constantly moved
about to prevent the enemy spotting them. Gondolas and motor boats
replaced the automobile supply lorries customary in land warfare.
Instead of motor ambulances, motor boats carried off the dead and
wounded. Hydro-airplanes replaced ordinary fighting aircraft.

Along the northern limit of the Venetian Gulf, where the Austrians,
having filtered into the Piave Delta, sought to cross both the Sile and
the Piave, the enemy each night hooked up pontoons. At daybreak every
morning one end of a huge pontoon structure was anchored to the east
bank of the Piave and the other flung out to the strong current, which
soon stretched the makeshift bridge across.

The moment this happened, the enemy infantry madly dashed across.
Simultaneously the Italian floating batteries opened a terrific fire.
Practically every morning the Austrians tried the trick, and every
morning they failed, with heavy losses, to effect a crossing. At last
they gave up the attempt as hopeless, and the armies remained locked on
the Piave for several months.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

REDEMPTION OF THE HOLY LAND

From the beginning of the war the German General Staff and the British
War Office planned the occupation of Palestine and Macedonia. Germany
wanted domination of that territory because through it lay the open road
to Egypt and British prestige in the East. Turkey was the cat's paw of
the Hun in this enterprise. German officers and German guns were
supplied to the Turk