In the meantime practically half the Austrian Army and the pick of the troops at that was being held up on the Italian Front, and not in a state of immobility by any means; one was able to judge if one read between the lines of the _Communiqués_ that day by day almost, and all through the winter, harrying tactics were being successfully carried on all along the Front. So much so, in fact, that the Austrian Generals must have often found themselves in a quandary for satisfactory matter for their daily reports. The winter passed with ding-dong trench warfare, when the rate of progress could at times be only reckoned by yards in a week. Still, it was progress, and every yard was bringing the Italians nearer to their immediate objective, Gorizia. Meanwhile the extraordinary and quite unexpected recuperative power of the Austrians was becoming more and more _en evidence_ as was also the fact, unfortunately demonstrated by the heavy losses of the Italians, that they were putting up a desperate fight. Gorizia had proved a veritable Verdun. Every hill and bluff being found to be fortified and honeycombed with deep entrenchments, which would have entailed enormous sacrifice of life to capture at this stage of the operations. It looked, therefore, like taking months to accomplish what the Italians had fondly hoped would be but an affair of weeks, though considering the unforseen difficulties that had to be overcome, it redounded to the credit of General Cadorna and his lieutenants that so much could be recorded as actually compassed. The occupation of two thousand square miles of Austrian territory with a population of over 300,000, was an achievement which in itself was sufficient answer to those captious stay-at-home arm-chair critics who were continually asking “What is Italy doing?” Then suddenly—as a bolt from the blue—something totally unexpected happened, and developed into a crisis of so serious a nature that it called for the exercise of all the genius and resource of Cadorna, combined with the devotion of his troops, to master, and which might conceivably have altered the whole outlook of the war had it not been successfully handled. On the 15th May the Italian _communiqué_, to the surprise of most of us, who followed with interest the fighting on this front, announced that on the previous day the Austrians had started a heavy bombardment on the positions on the Trentino Front near Roveretto which the Italians were expecting to capture at any moment. This piece of news, after months of comparative quiescence, was sufficiently startling to attract immediate attention to the Italian Front, and the London papers actually began to mention Italy again. The _communiqués_ of the following days stated that the activity of the Austrian batteries continued, but gave no suggestion of anything untoward happening, so it was generally thought that the first intimation was perhaps somewhat exaggerated, and that there was “nothing much in it.”