and prepare rather than to continue to challenge forces
that could not be exactly estimated.

Both the increase of enemy strength on the Italian front and the
paralyzing uncertainty under which the Allies labored, were directly due
to the debacle of the Russian Army during the summer. The means by which
commanders-in-chief arrive at the indispensable knowledge of what forces
they have against them is through a highly organized intelligence
department, working in close cooperation with the similar departments of
the other Allied armies.

[Sidenote: How the enemy's strength is ascertained.]

Each of these departments, by interrogating prisoners and reading papers
found on enemy dead, by collating the reports of the air service, by
minutely sifting the enemy press, arrives at a fairly accurate knowledge
of the enemy's order of battle on the front of its own army. So
essential is this system to the successful carrying-on of operations
that raids are often specially organized on the enemy trenches with the
sole object of capturing prisoners who may be able to give information
that will clear up some point about which there is uncertainty. All the
knowledge of the enemy's dispositions thus collected by each of the
Allied armies is open to all of them; it is exchanged and compared and
collated, so that they finally arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of
the distribution of the enemy's forces in each one of the theaters of
war.

[Sidenote: The Russian intelligence department collapses.]

Now, when the Russian Army went to pieces in the summer, its
intelligence department collapsed with the rest. The Russian Army has
taken virtually no prisoners for a long time, and consequently the facts
about what troops the Austrians and Germans have on that front have not
been ascertainable. It was known that the enemy used to have about one
hundred and thirty divisions there, but no one could tell whether they
still remained or whether they had been brought away to be held in
reserve for some sudden operation on another front.

[Sidenote: The attack by the Austro-Germans a surprise.]

In this way it came about that the sudden attack by an unexpectedly
large Austro-German force upon the Isonzo line took the Italians by
surprise, with the result that they lost in three days not only all they
had won in two and a half years of hard fighting, by sacrifices and
sufferings and labors beyond human estimation, but also the larger part
of