* * * * *

And so I came to Palmanova to supervise the loading of shell, in the
company of Captain Shield and another Ordnance officer. Shield had
travelled much and mixed with Italians on the borders of Abyssinia. He
told me that with no other European race were our relations in remote
frontier lands more harmonious. They and we have, he said, a perfect
code of written and unwritten rules to prevent all friction. He told me,
too, of a young Englishman out there, quite an unimportant person, who
had a bad attack of sun-stroke and whose life was in great danger. The
only hope was to get him through quickly to the coast, and the shortest
road lay through Italian territory. So application was made to the
Italian authorities for a right of passage, which they not only granted,
but mapped out his route for him, for it was difficult country and
unfamiliar to our people, and sent a guide, and had a mule with a load
of ice waiting for him at every halting-place along the road, and so
saved his life, treating him with as much consideration and tenderness
as they could have been expected to show to a member of their own Royal
Family.

* * * * *

Palmanova lies just within the old Italian frontier, a little white town
surrounded by a moat, which in summer is quite dry, and by grassy
ramparts shaped like a star. It was first fortified by the Venetian
Republic four hundred years ago, and again by Napoleon. It can be
entered only through one of three gates, approached by bridges across
the moat, from the north, south-east and south,--the Udine Gate, the
Gradisca Gate and the Maritime Gate. Each gate is double, so that you
pass through a small square court, almost like a well, and at each gate
you can see the remains of an old portcullis and drawbridge. Each is
topped by two slender towers, and is wide enough to allow only one
vehicle to pass at a time, and at each there is a guard of Carabinieri
in their grey lantern-hats, to stop and examine all questionable
traffic.

From the ramparts you can see the Carnic and the Julian Alps, sweeping
round the Venetian plain in a great half circle. To the north the
mountains seem to rise sheer out of green orchards and maize fields, but
to the east there is a gradual slope of less fertile uplands, where the
Austrians in the first days of war on this Front would not face the
onrush of the Italians in the open, but fell back hurri