one of the
main attractions of our national game. But the glorious uncertainty of
cricket is as nothing compared to the glorious uncertainty which
obtains in time of war as to what silly thing H.M. Government--or some
of its shining lights--will be wanting to do next. At this time the
War Cabinet, or perhaps one ought rather to say certain members of
that body, had got it into their heads that to send round a lot of Sir
Douglas Haig's troops (who were pretty well occupied as it was) to the
Isonzo Front would be a capital plan, the idea being to catch the
Central Powers no end of a "biff" in this particular quarter. That
fairly banged Banagher. For sheer fatuity it was the absolute limit.

Ever since the era of Hannibal, if not indeed since even earlier
epochs, trampling, hope-bestirred armies have from generation to
generation been bursting forth like a pent-up torrent from that broad
zone of tumbled Alpine peaks which overshadows Piedmont, Lombardy and
Venetia, to flood their smiling plains with hosts of fighting men. Who
ever heard of an army bursting in the opposite direction? Napoleon
tried it, and rugged, thrusting Suvorof; but they did not get much
change out of it. The mountain region has invariably either been in
possession of the conquerors at the start, or else it has been
acquired by deliberate, protracted process during the course of a
lengthy struggle, before the dramatic coup has been delivered by which
the levels have been won. The wide belt of highlands extending from
Switzerland to Croatia remained in the enemy's hands up to the time of
the final collapse of the Dual Monarchy subsequent to the rout of the
Emperor Francis' legions on the Piave. The Italians had in the summer
of 1917 for two years been striving to force their way into these
mountain fastnesses, and they had progressed but a very few miles.
They had not only been fighting the soldiery of the Central Powers,
but had also been fighting Nature. Nature often proves a yet more
formidable foe than do swarms of warriors, even supposing these to be
furnished with all modern requirements for prosecuting operations in
the field.

Roads are inevitably few and far between in a mountainous region. In
such terrain, roads and railways can be destroyed particularly easily
and particularly effectively by a retiring host. In this kind of
theatre, troops can only quit the main lines of communications with
difficulty, and localities abound where a very infe