We enquired our way to the quarters of the Divisional Commandant, as my companion had a letter to deliver to him, and an officer we met sent some one with us to show us the house, as outwardly there was no indication of its being occupied. The number of deep dug-outs protected with sand-bags one saw everywhere was sufficient proof of the awful time the men stationed here went through. As we went along we were constantly meeting stretcher-bearers bringing along wounded men. At the corners of streets men were sheltering close up to the walls as though expecting at any moment something to happen. The Commandant’s “office” was in a house that had suffered badly: there were gaping cracks in the walls, and it looked as if any explosion near it would bring it down with a run. There were quite a number of staff clerks at work in the ground-floor rooms, and the telephone bells were ringing incessantly. We were received by the Commandant with much cordiality, and the position of affairs in the immediate vicinity explained to us very lucidly by means of a big military chart fastened to a table in one of the rooms, but he expressed regret at our having come just on that particular day as a big attack by the artillery was timed to commence at eleven o’clock (it was then 10.45), and he feared we should not be able to get back so soon as we wished. As though in defiant response to his statement, there was at that moment a loud report from an Austrian battery, and a big shell screeched by overhead. There was still a quarter of an hour to spare before the Italian guns were to start off, so the Commandant suggested our going upstairs to the third floor to have a peep at the Italian and Austrian trenches through a shell-hole in the roof. The house was quite new and built in flats, which had evidently been occupied by fairly well-to-do people. The room we went into had evidently been a sort of bedroom and nursery combined: it was in a complete state of ruin, furniture smashed, women’s clothes jumbled up all over the floor, with tiles and bricks and mortar, here and there among the _débris_ a child’s toy, a broken doll, and what not, letters and papers strewn everywhere, and all sodden with rain. There was something inexpressibly pathetic in this little ruined home. The Italian and Austrian trenches were but a few hundred yards away, and only quite a short distance separated them. There was, however, very little to see even through our powerful binoculars. The whole hillside was very bare, and the trenches looked like mere furrows in it, and yet one knew that these furrows were full of men waiting the opportunity to get out and kill each other. There was not a sign of life anywhere, as it meant certain death to show yourself if only for an instant, the Commandant told me; even where we were in this third floor room we ran the risk of being spotted by some vigilant sniper, for the dilapidated roof offered very little shelter.