valley mists made observation so bad
that it seemed more than usually safe to show oneself above the ramparts
on the side toward the enemy. Yet we had not been there three
minutes--a group of two well-known American correspondents and one
Italian, with an Italian officer, and myself--when an Austrian six-inch
shell burst with a crash hardly ten feet from the right-hand man of our
line. A black wall of flying mud towered up and blotted out the sky;
three of us were thrown headlong by the force of the explosion. Only the
fact that the shell had fallen deeply into the rain-softened bank of
earth on top of the battlements saved the names of the last four
visitors to the Italian front from being recorded on graves in Gorizia
cemetery.

"I've brought people here seventy or eighty times," said the officer who
was with us, "and nothing like that has ever happened before."

"We've evidently brought bad luck," said some one, and so, little though
we guessed it, we had.

[Sidenote: The Italians expect an Austrian push.]

During the first fortnight of October it had been a remark frequently
made throughout Italy that an Austrian push was probable before the real
winter set in. I had heard this likelihood discussed by people at the
Chamber of Deputies on my way through Rome, but without serious
significance being given to it. The Austro-Swiss frontier had been
closed for five weeks, always a sign that important movements of troops
were going on in the enemy's country; something more unusual was that
even the postal mails from Austria to Holland and Scandinavia had been
suspended.

[Sidenote: Cadorna believes the enemy will use large reserves.]

According to the talk one heard in Italy, Cadorna had already had in
mind the chance of a strong autumn attack on his army when he arrested
his own offensive in September after capturing by a brilliant stroke the
greater part of the Bainsizza plateau beyond the Isonzo, taking thirty
thousand prisoners and one hundred and fifty guns. The French and
British general staffs, it was said, had asked Cadorna whether he meant
to go on with his offensive, for which they had contributed contingents
of guns. Cadorna's reply had been that he had strong Austrian forces
against him, of which he knew the total, but that he also believed large
reserves of unknown quantity were available for use against him, owing
to the collapse of the Russian Army. In these circumstances he preferred
to consolidate