ndously excited and
pleased, and shouted with joy.

[Footnote 1: "It's beautiful weather."]

[Footnote 2: "The mountains are always beautiful."]

On the 16th the Major went out again with Jeune and myself to look for
Battery positions for the defence of the line at the foot of the
mountains. We went through Cittadella and Bassano, then southwards along
the Brenta to Nove, and then back through Marostica and Bassano. Bassano
is a delightful old town, with many frescoes remaining on the outer
walls of the houses, and a beautiful covered-in wooden bridge over the
Brenta.

Marostica charmed me even more. Its battlemented walls are like those of
Cittadella and Castelfranco, but in a better state of preservation and
more picturesque, running up a rocky foothill behind the town and coming
down again,--a most curious effect. These Alpine foothills for shape and
vegetation are very like the Ligurian hills north of Genoa and round
Arquata.

At San Trinita, just outside Bassano on the road to Marostica, is a very
fine cypress avenue. There was a possible Battery position here. I
noticed also a row of cypresses standing at intervals of about fifty
yards along a hillside, dark and tall amid a mass of grass and rocks and
brown fallen leaves. The weather was clear and cold, but the snow had
shrunk to subnormal on the foothills. The Weather God was still
favouring the enemy. It was very still, though occasionally shells burst
over the Grappa. But the hills muffle the sounds beyond them.

On the way back we passed a Battalion of Alpini marching up, many of
them very young. I thought of the Duke of Aosta's latest message to the
undefeated Third Army: "A voi veterani del Carso, ed a voi, giovani
soldati, fioritura della perenne primavera italica."[1] Splendid
Alpini! They are never false to their regimental motto, "di qui non si
passa!"[2] They never fail. But nearly all the first Alpini, who went
forth to battle in May 1915, are dead now.

[Footnote 1: "To you, veterans of the Carso, and to you, young soldiers,
flower of the eternal Italian spring."]

[Footnote 2: "No one passes here!"]

On the 20th I went out in a side-car with Winterton to look for
positions in the hills above Marostica. Reconnaissances of the back
lines were now to be discontinued, a sign, we hoped, of diminishing
apprehension and an improving military situation. At San Trinita on the
way back we collided with an Italian wagon and had to stop for repairs.