walking, about
10 a.m. It was not too hot. I walked about three miles and then picked
up a lorry. One can generally get a ride on an Italian lorry if there is
any room, by waving one's stick at the driver, shouting out one's
destination, and looking agreeable. This one took me to Mogaredo and
then stopped. I then walked another three miles to a point near
Trevignano. Here I was within ten miles of Udine and picked up another
lorry which took me the rest of the way. It was driven by a Triestino
who, seeing what was coming, had left the Unredeemed City just before
Italy declared war. His face was very sad, and he made a gesture of
weeping, drawing his fingers downwards from his eyes across his cheeks,
though his eyes were dry. "How long?" he asked. "How long before Trieste
will be free?"

We approached Udine through a long avenue of plane trees, planted under
Napoleon. It is a gay little town, with arcaded streets, clustering
round a hill on the top of which stands a Castello, with a memorial
tower to the martyrs of 1848, and on the hill slopes public gardens full
of cypresses. Udine was at this time a nest of British newspaper
correspondents. I began to make their acquaintance in the afternoon.
First an Anglo-Italian lady from Rome, whom I met sitting out behind the
Hotel Grande d'Italia under the shade of trees. She was evidently
something of a figure here and received several callers, all ladies of
Udine, as we sat drinking coffee. One of these, on learning that I was a
gunner, took out a locket and handed it to me. It contained a picture of
a marvellously handsome boy. It was her eldest son, killed three months
before in Cadore, a Lieutenant in a Mountain Battery. He was only
nineteen. His mother began to weep as she handed me the locket, and it
was the lady from Rome who told me these things. Then the mother cried,
between her sobs, "E troppo crudele, la guerra!" And as I handed the
locket back, I thought of the unmarried childless parson in khaki who
considered that "three or four years of war may be tremendously worth
while."

* * * * *

Later I met and dined with two of the male correspondents of the London
Press. Conversation, in the sense of a mere flow of talk, is never
difficult with newspaper men. They are among the most articulate of the
British, although much that they articulate is only patter. These two
had plenty of miscellaneous information, much of which I received in