Sly hints are about in America as to the pusillanimity of the Italians. Some persons are ready enough to absorb these hints. Nothing could be more monstrously false. It is not a matter about which I need to argue--I _know_. No one with the full use of eyes and ears and possessed of moderate intelligence could spend twenty-five days with Cadorna's fighting men without being thrilled. They are battling where men never battled before--upon the tops of high mountains, elevations that only eagles knew before Germany put the torch to civilization. They are swinging bridges across incredible chasms. They are chiselling roadways where monkeys could scarcely cling. They are blowing off the tops of gigantic mountains in order to progress a few meters. They are accepting the most frightful hardships with that charming acceptance of the inevitable which, it seems to me, is so characteristically Italian. They freeze. They starve. But always they go ahead--and Vienna knows with a drag at the heart that the standards of Italy will shortly snap from the housetops of Trieste. I say that men never fought before in country so frightfully convulsed by nature. Wily Austria, peering into the future, knew that the hour would come when Italian forbearance would strike twelve and demand the liberation of oppressed Italians in the Trentino, and so Austria in the Peace of Villafranca brought about an iniquitous boundary which left her with her feet planted in Italian territory, with her fortresses upon Italian mountain crests. And that desperate handicap was what Italy faced when she went to war to liberate her people. All the odds were against her. But she is winning--winning a few hundred meters at a time. She conquers first one peak, then a whole range, then another peak, then another range, and all the time fights classical warfare, the classical warfare that has been abandoned in France and Belgium. Hear this story--one of fifty such: II--STORY OF ITALIAN-AMERICAN WHO BLEW UP A MOUNTAIN Fifteen years ago a charming, cultivated young Italian, son of the Duke of Sermonetta, came to the United States to study mining engineering. He sank his identity in a family name, Gealsio Caetani, earned his degree in the Columbia School of Mines, went West and labored at $2 a day with pick and shovel so as to know his business from the ground down, became superintendent (out of sheer ability) of a great mine in Alaska and eventually opened a consulting office in San Francisco. When the Germans overran Belgium Caetani threw up his business, hastened to Belgium and volunteered. When Italy was ready to fight he joined his own colors and entered the aviation service. I saw him in flying man's toggery.