led Cavern and Italian Battery, Front Line 7th
Army; Dolomite Peaks, Italian Alps, Altitude 8,000 Feet.]

THE SEARCHLIGHT.

In the summer of 1918, I visited an Italian army hospital at Edelo. On
one of the small white beds was a young soldier, horribly mangled by a
bomb dropped from an Austrian airplane.

I learned that he had lived seven years in New York, having been carried
there by his father when a boy of fourteen. When Italy entered the war,
he returned to his native land and volunteered his services. At the time
he was wounded he was operating a portable searchlight.

He was near death and, in unconscious monotone, spoke in English:

"A year ago it looked mighty blue; we were on the run at Caparetto. Now
it looks as though we might win the war within the year. Things are
mighty quiet with the enemy. I have not seen an Austrian plane for more
than a week.

"I do love this old searchlight. How it makes the ice and snow of the
mountain tops shine out in the night. When things are quiet like tonight
I turn the light way down into the valley upon the house in the olive
grove where Marcella lives.

"She has said her prayers and lies asleep; and I, ten kilometers
distant, flash the light upon her shutters. It seems I might walk upon
the beam as upon a bridge of silver to her very door.

"My God! Is the war to last forever? Is she to live on macaroni and
chestnuts and break rock upon the road in sun and rain and snow, summer
and winter, until she dies? Am I to stay up here within sight of her
house but never within reach of her arms? When can we ever marry? On my
pay it would take a thousand years to save a decent fee for the priest.
Mother of God, be good to her!

"Let's take a look at those poor devils up there in that hell of ice. No
wonder our great poet pictures a section of hell as such a place. They
can have no fire and must sleep with the dogs to keep warm. It looks
grand in the light; but it is the grandeur of eternal winter, and
eternal winter is death. It is a lonely beautiful region ten thousand
feet above the sea. God and those boys alone will ever know the
heart-bursting strain of placing their big guns, which were raised a few
feet, day by day. What a land to live and fight and die in. The chasms,
the sliding snow and the Austrians each demand and receive toll. Are the
dug-outs and trenches and tunnels, in solid ice and rock, lonely places
for those boys from Naples and Palermo? When they