iberty of your national
existence from the German menace, both of us, moreover, to set the whole
world free from the peril of falling under the dominion of that race,
hard in temper as a granite rock, which finds in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire a willing ally in its rapes and aggressions. I am here, then, to
thank you, not only as an Italian, but as a man, and I am filled with
joy at the thought that the British, even as the Italians, are showing
themselves to be, now as always, the champions of justice, and the
defenders of liberty and right. The sacrifices which we are making
together, the mingling of our blood upon the battlefield, will render
even stronger the agelong, traditional friendship between our two
nations.

"Viva l'Inghilterra! Viva l'Italia!"

CHAPTER V

PALMANOVA

During my first month in Italy I lived a nomadic life. I was only
"attached" to a Battery, and really nobody's child. July 17th to 22nd I
spent at Palmanova in charge of an Artillery fatigue party which was
helping the Ordnance to load and unload ammunition, and from August 2nd
to 10th I was in charge of another working party of gunners at Versa, a
fly-bitten, dusty little village, which our medical authorities had
stupidly selected as a site for a Hospital, though there were many
suitable villas in more accessible and agreeable places not far away.
But in this first month I was lucky in being able to multiply and vary
my impressions of the Eastern Veneto.

* * * * *

I rode down to Palmanova from Gradisca on a motor lorry. What a country!
The white houses, the white roads, the masses of fresh green foliage,
chiefly acacias, the tall dark cypresses, the cool blue water of the
Isonzo, the blue-grey mountains in the distance, and on their summits
the sunshine on the snow, which is hardly distinguishable from the
low-lying cloud banks in an otherwise cloudless sky.

Italian troops, dusty columns marching along the road, throw up at me an
occasional greeting as the lorry goes by. Long lines of transport pass
continually. "Sempre Avanti Savoia!" "Sempre Avanti Italia!" I find my
eyes wet with tears, for the beauty and the glory and the insidious
danger of that intoxicating war-cry; for the blindness and the
wickedness and the selfish greed that lurk behind it, exploiting the
generous emotions of the young and brave; for the irony and bitter
fatuity of _any_ war-cry in a world that should be purged of war.