n life immensely broadened.

It rained in torrents during my stay in Gorizia, but, as we recrossed
the Isonzo onto the Friulian plain, the sinking sun burst through a
rift in the leaden clouds and turned into a huge block of rosy coral
the red rampart of the Carso. Beyond that wall, scarce a dozen miles
as the airplane flies, but many times that distance as the big gun
travels, lies Trieste. It will be a long road, a hard road, a bloody
road which the Italians must follow to attain their City of Desire,
and before that journey is ended the red rocks of the Carso will be
redder still. But they will finish the journey, I think. For these
iron-hard, brown-faced men, remember, are the stuff from which was
made those ever-victorious legions that built the Roman Empire--and it
is the dream of founding another Empire which is beckoning them on.

V

WITH THE RUSSIANS IN CHAMPAGNE

When the French have been pestered for permission to visit the front
by some foreigner--usually an American--until their patience has been
exhausted, or when there comes to Paris a visitor to whom, for one
reason or another, they wish to show attention, they send him to
Rheims. Artists, architects, ex-ambassadors, ex-congressmen, lady
journalists, manufacturers in quest of war orders, bankers engaged in
floating loans, millionaires who have given or are likely to give
money to war-charities, editors of obscure newspapers and monthly
magazines, are packed off weekly, in personally conducted parties of a
dozen or more, on a day's excursion to the City of the Desecrated
Cathedral. They grow properly indignant over the cathedral's shattered
beauties, they visit the famous wine-cellars, they hear the
occasional crack of a rifle or the crash of a field-gun,[B] and, upon
their return, they write articles for the magazines, and give
lectures, and to their friends at home send long letters--usually
copied in the local papers--describing their experiences "on the
firing-line." "Visiting the front" has, indeed, become as popular a
pastime among Americans in Paris as was racing at Longchamps and
Auteuil before the war. Hence, no place in the entire theatre of war
has had so much advertising as Rheims. No sector of the front has been
visited by so many civilians. That is why I am not going to say
anything about Rheims--at least about its cathedral. For there is
nothing left to say.

Five minutes of brisk walking from the cathedral brings one to the