3 men, women, and children
lost their lives.

The admiral in command of Venice showed me a map of the city, which,
with the exception of a large rectangle, was thickly sprinkled with
small red dots. There must have been several hundred of them.

"These dots," he explained, "indicate where Austrian bombs have
fallen."

"This part of the city seems to have been peculiarly fortunate," I
remarked, placing my finger on the white square.

"That," said he, "is the Arsenal. For obvious reasons we do not reveal
whether any bombs have fallen there."

Considering the frequency with which Venice has been attacked from the
air, its churches, of which there are an extraordinary number, have
escaped with comparatively little damage. Only four, in fact, have
suffered seriously. Of these, the church of Santa Maria Formosa has
sustained the greatest damage, its magnificent interior, with the
celebrated decorations by Palma Vecchio, having been transformed
through the agency of an Austrian bomb, into a heap of stone and
plaster. Another bomb chose as its target the great dome of the church
of San Pietro di Castello, which stands on the island of San Pietro,
opposite the Arsenal. On the Grand Canal, close by the railway-station,
is the Chiesa degli Scalzi, whose ceiling by Tiepolo, one of the
master's greatest works, has suffered irreparable injury. Santi
Giovanni e Paolo, next to St. Mark's the most famous church in Venice,
has also been shattered by a bomb.

I asked the officer in command of the aerial defenses of Venice if he
thought that the Austrian airmen intentionally bomb churches,
hospitals, and monuments, as has been so often asserted in the Allied
press.

"It's this way," he explained. "A dozen aviators are ordered to
bombard a certain city. Three or four of them are real heroes and, at
the risk of their lives, descend low enough to make certain of their
targets before releasing their bombs. The others, however, rather than
come within range of the anti-aircraft guns, remain at a safe height,
drop their bombs at random as soon as they are over the city, and then
clear out. Is it very surprising, then, that bombs dropped from a
height of perhaps ten thousand feet, by aircraft travelling sixty
miles an hour, miss the forts and barracks for which they are
intended and hit churches and dwellings instead?"

Intentional or not, the bombardment of the Venetian churches is a
blunder for which the Austrians will pay dearly in