"They are very wonderful, these mountain roads. They play with the Alps and make impossibilities possible. Thanks to them, and to the _filovia_, or air railway on chains, it is possible to proceed from point to point with great rapidity, and to keep garrisons and posts well supplied. The telephones run everywhere, and observing stations on the highest peaks enable Italian howitzers to make sure of their aim. I am not quite sure whether the Italians do not trust too much to their telephones and will not regret the absence of good flag signalers. When large forces are operating, and many shells bursting, the telephone is often a broken reed. The motor lorries, with about a one and one-half ton of useful load, get about wherever there is a road, and the handy little steam tractors, which make light of dragging the heaviest guns up the steepest gradients, are valuable adjuncts to the defense. At the turns of bad zigzags, the Italians have a remarkable drill for men on the dragropes, and in fact all difficulties have been overcome. "I recall some Italian batteries mounted at an elevation of about 9,000 feet, of which each gun weighed eleven tons, the carriage five tons, and the platform, which was divided into sections, thirty tons. These guns, the battery officers declared, were brought up from the plains by a new mountain road in seven hours, and placed in position on these platforms five hours later. It is all a question of roads, but the _filovia_ can carry 400 kilos, and any gun under that weight can get up to a peak by way of the air. "It is all very marvelous and very perfect, and the Italians are also adepts at trench building, and make them most artistically. The only objection I can see to the mountain road is that, when the enemy gets a hold of the territory which they serve, he has the benefit of them. This is true of Trentino operations now, and the enemy has many more roads at his disposal than the old maps show. Sometimes I wonder whether the Italians do not immerse themselves a little too much in these means of war and lose sight a little of the ends, but over nine-tenths of Italy's frontier the war is Alpine, and it must be allowed that Italian soldiers have brought the art of mountain fighting to a degree of perfection which it has never attained before. "The Italian Alpine group varies in strength and composition. It usually has the local Alpine battalions reenforced by the mountaineers of Piedmont, and completed, when necessary, by line infantry, who usually act in the lower valleys, leaving the high peaks to the mountaineers. Artillery is added according to needs--mountain, field, and heavy--while there are engineers in plenty, and the mule transport is very good.