as an oaken floor, to the snowy crescent of the
Alps. Scenes of past wars it still bears upon its face, in its
farm-houses clustered together for common protection, in the stout
walls and loopholed watch-towers of its towns, record of its warlike
and eventful past. One must be prosaic indeed whose imagination
remains unstirred by a journey across this historic plain, which has
been invaded by Celts, Istrians, and Romans; Huns, Goths, and
Lombards; Franks, Germans, and Austrians in turn. Over there, a dozen
miles to the southward, lie the ruins of Aquileia, once one of the
great cities of the western world, the chief outpost fortress of the
Roman Empire, visited by King Herod of Judea, and the favorite
residence of Augustus and Diocletian. These fertile lowlands were
devastated by Alaric and his Visigoths and by Attila and his Huns--the
original Huns, I mean. Down this very highroad tramped the legions of
Tiberius on their way to give battle to the Illyrians and Pannonians.
Here were waged the savage conflicts of the Guelphs, the Ghibellines,
and the Scaligers. Here fought the great adventurer, Bartolommeo
Colleoni; in the whitewashed village inn of Campo Formio, a far
greater adventurer signed a treaty whereby he gave away the whole of
this region as he would have given away a gold-piece; half a century
later Garibaldi and his ragged redshirts fought to win it back.

For mile after mile we sped through a countryside which bore no
suggestion of the bloody business which had brought me. So far as war
was concerned, I might as well have been motoring through New England.
But, though an atmosphere of tranquillity and security prevailed down
here amid the villages and farm-steads of the plain, I knew that up
there among those snow-crowned peaks ahead of us, musketry was
crackling, cannon were belching, men were dying. But as we approached
the front--though still miles and miles behind the fighting-line--the
signs of war became increasingly apparent: base camps, remount depots,
automobile parks, aviation schools, aerodromes, hospitals,
machine-shops, ammunition-dumps, railway sidings chock-a-block with
freight-cars and railway platforms piled high with supplies of every
description. Moving closer, we came upon endless lines of motor-trucks
moving ammunition and supplies to the front and other lines of
motor-trucks and ambulances moving injured machinery and injured men
to the repair-depots and hospitals at the rear. We passed