was well carried out, and between October and
December, 1911, 90,000 men, with 12,000 horses, were transported to
Tripoli and Benghasi without a single hitch. Italian officers are well
educated, and the men are brave and disciplined. Unlike the
Austro-Hungarian Army, which is composed of men split into a variety
of racial sections, the Italian Army is absolutely homogeneous, and
the troops will enter the European struggle with the moral
consciousness that they are fighting, not with aggressive intentions,
but for the principle of nationality, which is the keynote to that
marvelous progress which Italy has made since she became a nation in
1860.

The Italian Navy has ten up-to-date battleships in commission, all
armed with twelve-inch guns, six of these being pre-dreadnoughts and
four quite recently built dreadnoughts. These four latter ships carry
a more powerful primary armament than the battleships of any other
European country, the Dante Alighieri, the first of the type built,
carrying twelve and the Conte di Cavour, Leonardo-da-Vinci, and Giulio
Cesare thirteen twelve-inch guns mounted on the triple-turret system.
Two more ships of the same class--the Caio Duilio and Andrea
Dorea--are due to be commissioned this Autumn, and their completion
will doubtless now be accelerated. Then there are four more
battleships under construction, known as the Dandolo class--the
Dandolo, Morosini, Mazzini, and Mameli--two of which are due to be
launched in 1916 and two others in 1917. When completed these ships
will be equal in gun power and speed to the ships of the Queen
Elizabeth class, for they will carry eight fifteen-inch guns paired in
four turrets--the triple-turret system having been abandoned--twenty
six-inch and twenty-two fourteen-pr. guns, their speed being 25 knots.
Besides these ten, or practically twelve, completed battleships, Italy
has ten armored cruisers in commission and three twenty-eight knot
light cruisers, but no fastgoing battle cruisers corresponding to
those in the British and German Navies. She has also twenty-seven
completed destroyers and thirteen thirty-two knot destroyers laid
down, along with fifty-one torpedo boats and sixteen submarines, with
four others building. With this fleet, which is half as strong again
as the Austrian fleet, Italy can secure complete control of the
Adriatic Sea and lock up the Austrian ships in Pola.

The Alpine Frontier

By G.H. Perris.

[This article appeared