[Sidenote: Italian game on the Gorizia front.] On the Gorizia front they have made what in this war may be considered as important gains. Gorizia stands watch over the valley of the Isonzo and Austria's Adriatic littoral. Besides occupying Grado and Monfalcone in the coastlands, General Cadorna's forces have crossed the Isonzo at several points, have smashed through to the north, and now threaten to envelop Gorizia. Indeed, many observers believe that Cadorna could at any time take the place by a grand assault if he were willing to pay the cost in blood. Despite the very unfavorable character of the country, the Italians have gained more ground here in the same period than either the Germans or the Anglo-French forces in the flat or rolling plains of Flanders and northern France. But the outflanking tactics of Bourcet, with feints and swift maneuvering, have had little to do with it. The assailants have had to fight their way step by step. The Austrians had prepared all sorts of disagreeable surprises. They had hewn gun-positions out of solid cliffs, skilfully placed so as to cover the routes of approach, and had cemented up the embrasures. It was merely necessary to knock the cement out and pour shells upon the advancing Italians at a range of several miles. The batteries were inaccessible to storming parties, and the Italians had to drag up guns of equal caliber to put them out of business. [Sidenote: Ancient methods employed.] In some places rocks and masses of ice were rolled down the slopes, as in the brave old days of the Helvetians; and in this line the Austrians introduced an innovation. When the Italians began driving their trenches up the steep slopes of Podgora--the Gibraltar of Gorizia--the defenders rolled down barrels of kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire. This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian gunners got the range of the launching-point and succeeded in exploding a few barrels among the Austrians themselves. [Sidenote: Austria had possession of the heights.] The writer does not mean to give the impression that Italy's job in the Alps is all but finished. A glance at the map of the frontier will cure any one of such a notion. The Italians were forced to start this campaign under every strategic disadvantage. By the frontier delimited in 1866, they were left without natural defenses on the north and east. All along the Austrian boundary the heights remained in the hands of the Hapsburgs as natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy. Italy received the plains, but Austria held the mountain fastnesses that hung above them. This is so much the case that when Italy declared war, the Austrian general orders reminded the troops that they were in the position of men on the top floor of a six-story house, defending it from attackers who must mount from the street under a plunging fire. [Sidenote: Chasseurs Alpins in the Vosges.]