oldiers, to your feet! Attention!"
All along the trench the soldiers, with a swift thrill of emotion,
sprang to their feet. Then again the Colonel cried, "My soldiers, let us
cry aloud in the face of the enemy, 'Long live Italy! Long live the
King! Long live the Infantry!'" Loud and long came the cheers, echoing
and re-echoing from the rocks, taken up and repeated by others who heard
them, first near at hand, then far away, echoing and spreading through
the night, like the swelling waves of a great sea.

The Austrians opened fire on Monte Santo. But the music still went on.
The Marcia Reale was finished, but now in turn the Hymn of Garibaldi and
the Hymn of Mameli, historic battle songs of Italian liberty, pealed
forth to the stars, loud above the bursting of the shells. And many
Italian eyes, from which the atrocious sufferings of this war had never
yet drawn tears, wept with a proud, triumphant joy. And as the last
notes died away upon the night air, a great storm of cheers broke forth
afresh from the Italian lines. The moon was now riding high in the
heavens, and every mountain top, seen from below, was outlined with a
sharp-cut edge against the sky.

Four days after, not far from this same spot, General Capello, the
Commander of the Italian Second Army, decorated with the Silver Medal
for Valour some of the heroes of the great victory. Among these was a
civilian, a man over military age. It was Toscanini, Italy's most famous
musical conductor. It was he who, charged with the organisation of
concerts for the troops, had found himself in this sector of the Front
when Monte Santo fell, and, hearing the news, had demanded and obtained
permission to climb the conquered mountain. He reached the summit on the
evening of the 26th and, by a strange chance, found his way among the
rocks and the ruins of the convent, to the place where the band was
playing. His presence had upon the musicians the same effect which the
presence of a great General has upon faithful troops. They crowded round
him, fired with a wild enthusiasm. Then Toscanini took command of what
surely was one of the strangest concerts in the world, played in the
moonlight, in an hour of glory, on a mountain top, which to the Italians
had become an almost legendary name, to an audience of two contending
Armies, amid the rattle of machine guns, the rumble of cannon, and the
crashes of exploding shells.

* * * * *

"Our tricolour