ow what was
the truth? The British regiments, who were received not merely with
cigars and cigarettes and flowers and with little palm crosses which
their trustful little weavers had blessed, but also with showers of
stones as they passed through Italian villages in 1917, must have
sometimes understood and pardoned. Then the troops were in distress
about their relatives, for things were more and more expensive, and
where would it end? In face of these discouragements it was most
admirable that the army and the nation rallied and reconstituted their
_morale_.

SENSITIVENESS WITH RESPECT TO THEIR ARMY

Of course one should not generalize regarding nations, except in vague
or very guarded terms; but possibly it would not be unjust to say that
the Italians, apart from those of northern provinces and of Sardinia,
have too much imagination to make first-class soldiers. And they are too
sensitive, as you could see in an Italian military hospital. Their task
was also not a trifling one--to stand for all those months in territory
so forbidding. And there would have been more sympathy with the Italians
in the autumn of 1918 if they had not had such very crushing triumphs
when the War was practically over. What was the condition of the
Austrian army? About October 15, in one section of the front--35
kilometres separating the extreme points from one another--the following
incidents occurred: the Army Command at St. Vitto issued an order to the
officers invariably to carry a revolver, since the men were now
attacking them; a Magyar regiment revolted and marched away, under the
command of a Second-Lieutenant whom they had elected; at Stino di
Livenza, while the officers were having their evening meal, two hand
grenades were thrown into the mess by soldiers; at Codroipo a regiment
revolted, attacked the officers' mess, and wounded several of the people
there, including the general in command. Such was the Austrian army in
those days; and it was only human if comparisons were made--not making
any allowances for Italy's economic difficulties, her coal, her social
and her religious difficulties--but merely bald comparisons were made
between these wholesale victories against the Austrians as they were in
the autumn of 1918 and the scantier successes of the previous years. In
September 1916 when the eighth or ninth Italian offensive had pierced
the Austrian front and the Italians reached a place called Provachina,
Marshal Boroevi['c] h