rd Forni. Dense mist prevented all activity of
artillery on the Sette Comuni Plateau. In the northern sector the
Italians stormed some trenches north of Monte Chiesa, and occupied
Agnella Pass.

A great deal of the fighting, both during the Austro-Hungarian
offensive in the Trentino and the Italian counteroffensive, took place
in territory abounding with lofty mountain peaks. Though it was now
midsummer, these were, of course, covered with eternal snow and ice.
Austrians and Italians alike faced difficulties and hardships, the
solution and endurance of which would have seemed utterly impossible a
few years ago until the Great War swept away many long-established
military and engineering maxims. An intimate picture of this new mode
of warfare was given by a special correspondent of the London "Daily
Mail" who, in part, says:

"The villages in the lower ground behind the front have been aroused
from their accustomed appearance of sleepy comfort. In their streets
are swarms of soldiers on their way to the front or back from it for a
holiday. Thousands are camping out in the neighborhood of the villages
or billeted on the inhabitants. Constant streams of motor vehicles
rumble through the villages on their way up the steep road, bearing
ammunition, food and supplies of all sorts, to the batteries, trenches
and dugouts on the peaks.

"The road over which these vehicles travel was before the war a mere
hill path--now the military engineers have transformed it into a
modern road, graded, metaled and carried by cunningly devised spirals
and turns three-quarters of the way up the mountains.

"It is a notable piece of military engineering, but it is not merely
that. It will serve as an artery of commerce when it is no longer
needed for the passage of guns and army service wagons. There is
nothing temporary or makeshift about it. Rocks have been blasted to
leave a passage for it and solid bridges of stone and steel thrown
across rivers.

"Because the Austrians started with the weather gauge in their favor,
being on the upper side of the great ridges, it was necessary for the
Italians to get their guns as high as they could. The means by which
they accomplished this task was described to me. They would seem
incredible if one had not ocular demonstration of the actual presence
of the cannon among these inaccessible crags.

"There are some of them on the ice ledges of the Ortler nearly 10,000
feet above sea level, in places wh