ders
rolled down barrels of kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire.
This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian gunners got the range
of the launching-point and succeeded in exploding a few barrels among
the Austrians themselves.

[Sidenote: Austria had possession of the heights.]

The writer does not mean to give the impression that Italy's job in the
Alps is all but finished. A glance at the map of the frontier will cure
any one of such a notion. The Italians were forced to start this
campaign under every strategic disadvantage. By the frontier delimited
in 1866, they were left without natural defenses on the north and east.
All along the Austrian boundary the heights remained in the hands of the
Hapsburgs as natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy. Italy received the
plains, but Austria held the mountain fastnesses that hung above them.

This is so much the case that when Italy declared war, the Austrian
general orders reminded the troops that they were in the position of men
on the top floor of a six-story house, defending it from attackers who
must mount from the street under a plunging fire.

[Sidenote: Chasseurs Alpins in the Vosges.]

But in one way or another the Italians have been doggedly fighting their
way up the walls of the house. For one thing, their Alpini have brought
to great perfection the use of skis in military operations on the
snow-clad slopes. This is the first war in which skis have really come
to the front. In France, too, the Chasseurs Alpins have been able to
show the Germans some astonishing things with their long wooden
snow-shoes in the winter fighting among the crests of the Vosges.

A typical instance of this is the story of the capture of a German post
on the Alsatian frontier in the winter of 1914-15. The Germans, holding
the railroad from Ste. Marie to Ste. Croix, were expecting an attack
from the French position at St. Die. This impression was deliberately
strengthened by a heavy artillery fire from St. Die, while a
considerable detachment of the Chasseurs Alpins led a body of infantry
along a winding mountain road to the village of Bonhomme. There they
posted themselves just out of sight of the German lines, while the
_chasseurs_ scaled the snow-covered heights and crept along the flank
of the German position.

When they had reached the desired position, the infantry charged along
the road and the Chasseurs Alpins simultaneously whizzed down the slope
on thei