If, as it is said, coming events cast their shadows before, how long those shadows must have been if one only had known, and how despondent everyone would have been if it could have been realised then how many months would have to elapse before the coming events so freely prophesied would materialise. Although I already knew a good deal about the Friuli Sector, there had been so much progress since I had been away from Udine that most of what we were going to see would be new to me. Moreover, it was a very different proposition being permitted to visit it to going about furtively and under constant fear of arrest. The Isonzo Front now extended over a very large area, and was a long way inside Austrian territory. Roughly speaking, from Tirnova, in the valley of the Isonzo, a few miles above Caporetto, to Monfalcone on the Adriatic. We were only to remain a week in Udine, so in order to obtain even the most cursory impression, in the short time at our disposal, of what was taking place in this wide zone of operations, entailed some long motor journeys. This was evidently the plan of the authorities, as they allowed us to lose no time in making a start. At 6 o’clock in the morning following on our arrival we were off on what turned out to be the biggest trip we had made hitherto, and when we got back in the evening we had covered no less than 245 kilometres in the car, and without a hitch or contretemps. It spoke volumes for the excellent manner in which the roads in the war zone are looked after. Heavy as military traffic was, seemingly endless, everywhere one saw gangs of men at work making repairs, where the surface had got broken up. The three months that had elapsed since I was first on this Front, had effected a great change, but nowhere was it more marked than on the road to and beyond Cormons. The redeemed territory had now so completely settled down that it was hard to realise one was on Austrian territory, or rather, what had been so short a time previously. Cormons had become quite an Italian town, and a very busy one at that. And the same could be said of Cervignano, Civiedale, Brazzano, Terzo, and every village where the Italians had passed. An extremely valuable slice of whilom Italian territory had passed back to its old allegiance and with but little fighting. And no damage had been done to either the maize crop or the vines. Our programme for the day’s run was very comprehensive, and provided the car did not break down, we were certain to see much of absorbing interest. Just beyond Cormons, on the summit of Mount Quarin, a wooded hill which dominates the town, and where an observatory had been established, you get a splendid bird’s-eye view of the whole of this important section of the Front.