"It was such a pair of military eyes that I had beside me a day or two ago, as I stood upon the topmost roofs of a high tower, in a certain little town in northern Italy, where much history has been made of late; and, since the owner of the eyes was likewise the possessor of a very well-ordered mind and a gift of lucid exposition, I found myself able to grasp the main elements of the extraordinarily complex strategic problem with which the chiefs of the Italian army have had to grapple. As I looked and listened I felt that the chapter which Italy is contributing to the record of the greatest war of all time is one of which she will have every reason to be proud when she has at length brought it to its victorious conclusion. "There are few such viewpoints as this. In the luminous stillness of a perfect morning of the Italian summer I could look north, and east, and west, upon more than a third of the battle line, that goes snaking among the mountains from near the Swiss frontier to the Adriatic. And what a length of line it is! In England some people seem to think this is a little war that Italy has on hand, little in comparison with the campaigns in France and Russia. But it is not small, weighed even in that exacting balance. The front measures out at over 450 miles, which is not very far short of the length of ribbon of trench and earthwork that is drawn across western Europe. "Here, as there, every yard is held and guarded. It is true that there is not a continuous row of sentries; for on the Austro-Italian front there are places where the natural barriers are impassable even for the Alpine troops, who will climb to the aerie of the eagles. But wherever nature has not barred the way against both sides alike the trenches and fortified galleries run, stretching across the saddle between two inaccessible peaks, ringing around the shoulder of a mountain, dipping it into the valley, and then rising again to the very summit or passing over it. "There are guns everywhere--machine guns, mountain guns, field guns, huge guns of position, 6-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch--which have been dragged or carried with all their mountings, their equipment, their tools and appurtenances, up to their stations, it may be, 3,000, 4,000, 6,000 feet above the level. And at those heights are the larders of shell which must always be kept full so that the carnivorous mouths of the man-eaters may not go hungry even for the single hour of the single day which, at any point, an attack may develop. "Such is the long Italian battle line. When you know what it is you are not surprised that here and there, and now and again, it should bend and give a little before an enemy better supplied with heavy artillery, and much favored by the topographical conditions; for he has the higher mountain passes behind him instead of in front, and is coming down the great Alpine stairway instead of going up.