ad of the Government and the head of the army are at Udine, the
fact is never mentioned in print. To believe that the Austrians are
ignorant of the whereabouts of the Italian high command is to
severely strain one's credulity. The Italians not only know where the
Austrian headquarters is situated, but they know in which houses the
various generals live, and the restaurants in which they eat. This
extreme reticence of the Italians seems a little irksome and overdone
after the frankness one encounters on the French and British fronts,
but it is due, no doubt, to the admonitions which are posted in
hotels, restaurants, stations, and railway carriages throughout Italy:
"It is the patriotic duty of good citizens not to question the
military about the war," and: "The military are warned not to discuss
the war with civilians. An indiscreet friend can be as dangerous as an
enemy."

My previous acquaintance with Udine had been confined to fleeting
glimpses of it from the windows of the Vienna-Cannes express. Before
the war it was, like the other towns which dot the Venetian plain, a
quaint, sleepy, easy-going place, dwelling in the memories of its
past, but with the declaration of hostilities it suddenly became one
of the busiest and most important places in all Italy. From his desk
in the Prefecture, General Cadorna, a short, wiry, quick-moving man
in the middle sixties, with a face as hard and brown as a
hickory-nut, directs the operations of the armies along that
four-hundred-and-fifty-mile-long battle-line which stretches from the
Stelvio to the sea. The cobble-paved streets and the vaulted arcades
are gay with many uniforms, for, in addition to the hundreds of staff
and divisional officers quartered in Udine, the French, British,
Russian, and Belgian Governments maintain there military missions,
whose business it is to keep the staffs of their respective armies
constantly in touch with the Italian high command, thus securing
practical co-operation. In a modest villa, a short distance outside
the town, dwells the King, who has been on the front almost
constantly since the war began. Although, as ruler of the kingdom, he
is commander-in-chief of the Italian armies, he rarely gives advice
unless it is asked for, and never interferes with the decisions of
the Comando Supremo. Scarcely a day passes that he does not visit
some sector of the battle-line. Officers and men in some of the
lonely mountain commands told me that the on