tain fighting, which grew out of the old methods in the struggle for
the Carpathian passes during the first winter and spring of the war.

In the old days, during a campaign in a mountain region, most of the
battles were fought on the level--in the literal, not the colloquial
sense of the word. There was a deal of marching and scouting among crags
and precipices, but all with the object of obtaining the best position
in an open valley or upland plain where the real fighting must take
place. Now the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively deserted,
while whole armies are spread out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields
thousands of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches in the ice and
sparring for some vantage-point on a crag that in peace times might tax
the strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.

[Sidenote: Bourcet's "Principles of Mountain Warfare."]

Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de Bourcet wrote a treatise
entitled "The Principles of Mountain Warfare." This may seem to be going
a long way back, but Bourcet's volume and that of the young Comte de
Guilbert on general tactics have historical interest and importance
because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of
Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as
vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of
them are somewhat musty in 1916.

[Sidenote: Passes and defiles once the strong positions.]

Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a battle-line extending from
frontier to sea, lays down as the first principle of mountain warfare
that when the enemy holds a strong position, the assailant should force
him to leave it by turning it. These strong positions in the mountains
were, until this war, the passes and defiles.

"These contracted places," he explains, "as they generally constitute
the principal objects of the defense, must compel the general who is
taking the offensive to seek every possible means of turning them, or of
misleading the enemy by diversions which will weaken him and facilitate
access to them.

"Suppose, for example, that the general on the defensive should be
entrenched at all points surrounding his position in such a way as to be
able to resist any direct attack that might be attempted against him, it
would be necessary to attempt to turn him by some more distant point,
choosing positions that would facilitate the scheme, and which, by
suggest