hey told me that they had been quite moved by their
wonderful welcome on the way through Italy and by all the hospitality
shown to their officers and men at the stations where they had stopped.
It gave me a queer thrill to see British Infantrymen again after many
months, and this time on Italian soil.

* * * * *

After various orders and counter-orders I left Arquata for Ferrara on
the 16th, with two truckloads of stores. But this was only a very small
proportion of the minimum which we required.

CHAPTER XXVI

REFITTING AT FERRARA

I got back to Ferrara on the evening of November 17th, and shared a
bedroom with Jeune, who had returned from leave in England, having
missed all our most unpleasant experiences. Our brother officers of the
Italian Field Artillery were very hospitable and courteous to us through
those weeks of waiting. We could do nothing till the Ordnance sent us
gun stores from Arquata, and these dribbled in very slowly, a few odds
and ends at a time.

I often went out riding on the Piazza d'Arme and along the ramparts and
in the country round Ferrara with Italian officers. Days were still very
anxious, and the news from the Front not always good, and one rather
avoided talking about the war. But one evening at dinner I succeeded in
piercing the polite reserve of a little Captain who was sitting next to
me. "Italy should have made it a condition of her intervention," he
said, "that the other Allies should have sent troops to the Italian
Front. Also more guns and war material. Italy, at the beginning of her
war, had many heroes but few guns. The other Allies, equally with Italy,
are without statesmen. Your Lloyd George is energetic, but----! The
British are not really at war with Austria. They have soft sentiments
towards her and don't want her to lose too much. The Jugo-Slav
propaganda was at its height, and was being encouraged in Paris and
London, at the very moment when Italy was being pressed by the French
and British to enter the war.

"We have made too many offensives on our own, unaided. Cadorna should
have refused, but he went on and on. He sacrificed thousands of lives
uselessly. He demanded too much of his troops. He did not understand
them. This last disaster was caused by Croats and Bulgarians, who spoke
Italian perfectly, having lived among us and taken degrees at our
Universities, getting through our lines in the first confusion, dressed
in Italian