headquarters of units happen to be."

A cavalry subaltern gave the following account of life in the trenches:
"Picnicking in the open air, day and night (you never see a roof now),
is the only real method of existence. There are loads of straw to bed
down on, and everyone sleeps like a log, in turn, even with shrapnel
bursting within fifty yards."

One English officer described the ravages of modern artillery fire, not
only upon all men, animals and buildings within its zone, but upon the
very face of nature itself: "In the trenches crouch lines of men, in
brown or gray or blue, coated with mud, unshaven, hollow-eyed with the
continual strain."

"The fighting is now taking place over ground where both sides have for
weeks past been excavating in all directions," said another letter from
the front, "until it has become a perfect labyrinth. A trench runs
straight for a considerable distance, then it suddenly forks in three or
four directions. One branch merely leads into a ditch full of water,
used in drier weather as a means of communication; another ends abruptly
in a cul-de-sac, probably an abandoned sap-head; the third winds on,
leading into galleries and passages further forward.

"Sometimes where new ground is broken the spade turns up the
long-buried dead, ghastly relics of former fights, and on all sides
the surface of the earth is ploughed and furrowed by fragments of
shell and bombs and distorted by mines. Seen from a distance, this
apparently confused mass of passages, crossing and recrossing one
another, resembles an irregular gridiron.

"The life led by the infantry on both sides at close quarters is a
strange, cramped existence, with death always near, either by means
of some missile from above or some mine explosion from beneath--a
life which has one dull, monotonous background of mud and water.
Even when there is but little fighting the troops are kept hard at
work strengthening the existing defenses, constructing others, and
improvising the shelter imperative in such weather."

CHAPTER II

ITALY DECLARES WAR ON AUSTRIA

For many years before the great war began the great powers of Europe
were divided into two great alliances, the Triple Entente, composed of
Russia, France and England, and the Triple Alliance, composed of
Germany, Austria and Italy. When the war began Italy refused to join
with Germany and Austria. Why? The answer to this question throws a
vivid light on the origin of the