a
sceptical spirit, but I learned some interesting facts, which I verified
from other sources later on. Chief of these was the effect produced
upon Young Italy by the personal gallantry of the poet D'Annunzio, who,
when he is not flying at the head of the Italian bombing planes against
Pola, is making fiery orations to the Infantry in the front line and
distributing among them little tricolor flags bearing his own autograph.

Having talked till midnight, I found a bedroom at the Croce Malta, where
I slept for four hours. Then I got up and dressed and walked to the
railway station, where I drank coffee and ate biscuits. A train was due
to leave for Palmanova, the nearest station to Versa, at 5.30 a.m. As I
waited for it on the platform, I looked out at the station lights, a
dull orange under their dark shades, and at the red signals beyond, four
in a vertical line, and beyond again at the dim outlines of houses and
dark trees against a sky, at first a very deep dark blue, but slowly
lighting up with the beginning of the dawn. The train did not start till
nearly seven. By this time it was quite light, and the sun had turned
the distant Cadore into a ridge of pink grey marble, very sharply
outlined against the morning sky, and in the middle distance, just
across the maize fields which run beside the railway track, rose the
_campanile_ of some little village of Friuli, like a stick of shining
alabaster.

CHAPTER XII

THE BRITISH AND THE ITALIAN SOLDIER

The sending of ten British Batteries to Italy had something more than a
military significance. Otherwise the thing was hardly worth doing. It
was evident that here was an international gesture. An effort was being
made to promote a real Anglo-Italian understanding, to substitute for
those misty and unreal personifications--"England" to an Italian,
"Italy" to an Englishman--real personal knowledge and a sense of
individual comradeship in a great cause. Our task, in short, was not
only to fight, but also to fraternise. But would we fraternise
successfully? For it has been said, not without some truth, that
"England is an island and every Englishman is an island," and in the
early days I was doubtful what sort of personal effect we should
produce, and what sort of personal impressions our men would bring away.

When I got back to the Battery from Versa I began to take stock of my
own impressions so far, and to notice, in the letters which I had to
censor, the drift of