Being weak, she was prevented from making any preparations for defense against a foe which continually was obviously getting ready for attack upon her. The mere commencement of preparations might have precipitated war. But Austria continually prepared. Besides, the Italians ever have been a peace-loving nation. As a natural and inevitable consequence of all these conditions all the dominating positions along the Austro-Italian frontier were strongly fortified by the Austrians. They have long occupied the crest of every mountain in such a way that their guns could rake any Italian approach from below, along a front of 450 miles--about the distance from New York to Buffalo, and almost the same as that of the whole French-British-Belgian eastern front in this war. During the winter of 1916, one of the most exceptionally hard winters known in the annals of the Italian Weather Service, the Italians not only have been fighting for their sunny homeland, but have been fighting in a region of eternal snow. This snow was an obstacle extremely hard to overcome. It may be said never to have been less than six yards deep on the Isonzo front, so the task of the consolidation of positions, enabling troops at once to resist attack and protect themselves from assault from the rear, was highly difficult. TYPICAL ROAD BUILDERS. The Italians were ever road-builders, descendants, as they are, of those Romans who built roads for all Europe. While the Austrians were fully supplied with roads of the best and most modern character, there were hundreds of miles on the Italian side where there were not even mule-tracks. Here was a vast problem. Literally millions of soldiers were not free to fight, but had been drafted for the road-building work. Carrying picks and shovels, managing steam-shovels, working electric hoists, stringing supporting cables, they were as truly fighting men, however, as any who ever bore rifles or worked machine-guns. Miles of the roads were rebuilt under Austrian fire, by men who built them well enough, even in the great 8,000-foot heights, that they could bear heavy artillery of vast weights without suffering damage. They built them in such easy gradients that heavy artillery could be moved speedily, the guns and motor-lorries that passed over them frequently weighing as much as fifteen tons. Nor did the problem end with the construction of these marvel-roads. It was necessary to transport very heavy war material across stretches where the building of any roads whatever was a sheer impossibility. Often it was necessary to take heavy guns as far as might be upon sleighs and then drag them for considerable distances by hand; quite as often it was imperative that across chasms great cables should be rigged on which the guns might be swung, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of feet above the valleys beneath, from one height to another.