In front of him loomed the heavy mediæval gateway, square above its arch. Its ordinarily forbidding gloomy aspect was lost in a generous decoration of green boughs, a trophy of Italian flags, red, white and green, above a white-crossed shield, a great inscription--"Per la più grande Italia!"[2] The battle-cry of Italy's greatest modern poet--the cry that had rung beseeching, dominating, inspiring, through dithyramb after dithyramb of the wonderful passionate orations by which he had wakened the glowing soul of the people into flame, was blazoned here as everywhere in Italy. Under that gateway thousands of Italy's sons had marched to conflict with the _Tedeschi_, to the redemption of their brethren; thousands more would march. And those to come would shout as those who had gone had shouted: "_Per la più grande Italia! Evviva Italia!_" The captain, glancing up at it ere the car shot under the dark arch, carried the inscription marked upon his brain through the obscurity. Familiar enough, he reperceived its meaning with a thrill. What mattered the little individual life he was hurrying to risk? "_Per la più grande Italia!_" The car sped along a road on the left side of a pleasant valley. In front, immediately claiming the eye, a range of Alpine peaks, dark rock-scars breaking their dazzling whiteness, exquisitely delicate and fine-drawn as perceived through the warm atmosphere, towered in lofty austerity into the rich unvarying blue of the sky. The road, thick with dust, climbed towards them in long loops and bold curves. Close upon its left, dark woodland descended, masking ever and anon the distant prospect behind a shoulder of the hills. To the right, across the green valley where the cattle stood hock-deep in flowers, village after village--yellow-ochre and burnt-red, its slant-roofed campanile high above the flat houses--clustered itself upon an eminence or nestled low down to the valley stream. Viewing the scene of quiet bucolic prosperity it was difficult to imagine that among the silent peaks in the background lurked the terrors of war; men embattled for mutual destruction. Along the road creaked and squealed clumsy country-carts drawn by oxen with patient heads bowed to the yoke. They hoofed the dust with the unhurried motion of centuries of tradition in their toil, careless of the goad of the barefooted _contadina_ crying them to hasten, to turn aside to allow passage for impatiently hooting motor-lorries. In strange contrast of locomotion, column after column of lumbering mechanical transport rushed down from the mountains in a smother of dust and petrol-fumes. Column after column proceeding upward was overtaken and passed by the captain's car. Ever in front towered the range of glittering peaks, in unshakable, eternal calm. Yet from somewhere among their solitudes came a distant, faint roar that was not the roar of nature's thunder.