rony addressed to a
countryman of Mr Lloyd George. But it wasn't. He really meant it. We
went into the Convalescents' Mess. There were about twenty present,
smiling and very gentle and quiet, like men who were not yet quite sure
of the world. One elderly man, a Medical Captain, said to me, very
softly, that it was a great pleasure to see visitors from the outside,
"especially our Allies." At that moment I could easily have wept. Such
sights as I had seen did not physically sicken, nor even much horrify,
me. They just tautened all my nerves and made me feel that all my
questions were impertinent, and all my good wishes flat and empty, and
that I resembled a visitor to a Zoo.

On the way back to Ferrara we talked of literature and Rossi, basing
himself chiefly on Wells and Kipling, said that the English, judged by
their modern writers, seemed to be a race "logical, but a little
isolated."

Two days later the Major and the Right Section of the Battery came to
Ferrara, being replaced on the Piave by a section of another Battery. On
the 1st of December British Infantry, belonging to the XIVth Corps,
moved into the lines for the first time, taking over the Montello
sector, to the south of the Italian Fourth Army. This sector was to be
held by British troops for four months, but it is worth while again to
emphasise the fact that nearly a month had now elapsed since the great
Retreat had been brought to an end by the unaided effort of Italian
troops. The situation now seemed well in hand, and a further break not
at all likely.

There had been a striking scene in the Italian Chamber about this time,
when the Prime Minister, Orlando, announced that high military opinion
had been opposed to the holding of the Piave line, recommending a
further retreat to the line of the Mincio, or the Adige, or even the Po,
which would have involved the surrender of Venice, Padua, Vicenza and
Verona. But the Cabinet at Rome had rejected these recommendations and
ordered that the Piave line should be held at all costs, and the valour
of the Italian common soldier had triumphed over the forebodings of the
generals.

On the 8th, our re-equipment being at last complete, we were warned to
join the XIth British Corps on the arrival of our transport. The end of
our stay at Ferrara was now in sight, and our last days were full of
partings. The Major told me how one morning a little old man, apparently
an artisan, ran after him down the road and, spea