rt Maximinus who murdered Alexander Severus, and
later Aquileia brought Attila near to despair. Our party alighted; we
inspected a very old mosaic floor which has been uncovered since the
Austrian retreat. The Austrian priests have gone too, and their Italian
successors are already tracing out a score of Roman traces that it was
the Austrian custom to minimise. Captain Pirelli refreshed my historical
memories; it was rather like leaving a card on Gibbon _en route_ for
contemporary history.

By devious routes I went on to certain batteries of big guns which had
played their part in hammering the Austrian left above Monfalcone across
an arm of the Adriatic, and which were now under orders to shift and
move up closer. The battery was the most unobtrusive of batteries; its
one desire seemed to be to appear a simple piece of woodland in the eye
of God and the aeroplane. I went about the network of railways and paths
under the trees that a modern battery requires, and came presently upon
a great gun that even at the first glance seemed a little less carefully
hidden than its fellows. Then I saw that it was a most ingenious dummy
made of a tree and logs and so forth. It was in the emplacement of a
real gun that had been located; it had its painted sandbags about it
just the same, and it felt itself so entirely a part of the battery that
whenever its companions fired t burnt a flash and kicked up a dust. It
was an excellent example of the great art of camouflage which this war
has developed.

I went on through the wood to a shady observation post high in a tree,
into which I clambered with my guide. I was able from this position to
get a very good idea of the lie of the Italian eastern front. I was in
the delta of the Isonzo. Directly in front of me were some marshes
and the extreme tip of the Adriatic Sea, at the head of which was
Monfalcone, now in Italian hands. Behind Monfalcone ran the red ridge
of the Carso, of which the Italians had just captured the eastern half.
Behind this again rose the mountains to the east of the Isonzo which
the Austrians still held. The Isonzo came towards me from out of the
mountains, in a great westward curve. Fifteen or sixteen miles away
where it emerged from the mountains lay the pleasant and prosperous town
of Goritzia, and at the westward point of the great curve was Sagrado
with its broken bridge. The battle of Goritzia was really not fought at
Goritzia at all. What happened was the bril