ons
uncomfortable and insecure. This obnoxious post was practically
inaccessible either from above or below, and it barred the Italians
even from looking into the Val Travenanzes which it defended. It was, in
fact, an impregnable position, and against it was pitted the invincible
5th Group of the Alpini. It was the old problem of the irresistible
force in conflict with the immovable object. And the outcome has been
the biggest military mine in all history.

The business began in January, 1916, with surveys of the rock in
question. The work of surveying for excavations, never a very simple
one, becomes much more difficult when the site is occupied by hostile
persons with machine guns. In March, as the winter's snows abated, the
boring machinery began to arrive, by mule as far as possible and then by
hand. Altogether about half a kilometre of gallery had to be made to the
mine chamber, and meanwhile the explosive was coming up load by load and
resting first here, then there, in discreetly chosen positions. There
were at the last thirty-five tons of it in the inner chamber. And while
the boring machines bored and the work went on, Lieutenant Malvezzi was
carefully working out the problem of "il massimo effetto dirompimento"
and deciding exactly how to pack and explode his little hoard. On the
eleventh of July, at 3.30, as he rejoices to state in his official
report, "the mine responded perfectly both in respect of the
calculations made and of the practical effects," that is to say, the
Austrians were largely missing and the Italians were in possession of
the crater of the Castelletto and looking down the Val Travenanzes from
which they had been barred for so long. Within a month things had been
so tidied up, and secured by further excavations and sandbags against
hostile fire, that even a middle-aged English writer, extremely fagged
and hot and breathless, could enjoy the same privilege. All this, you
must understand, had gone on at a level to which the ordinary tourist
rarely climbs, in a rarefied, chest-tightening atmosphere, with wisps of
clouds floating in the clear air below and club-huts close at hand....

Among these mountains avalanches are frequent; and they come down
regardless of human strategy. In many cases the trenches cross avalanche
tracks; they and the men in them are periodically swept away and
periodically replaced. They are positions that must be held; if the
Italians will not face such sacrifices, the