in the High Alps.
Nowadays guns "command" nothing. Instead of frowning down on the
enemy from an eminence, they stare blindly skyward from behind a
wall of mountains.]

[Illustration: An Outpost in the Carnia.
"On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in
the Masurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders, does
the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the
roof of the world."]

Under all this traffic the roads remained hard and smooth, for gangs
of men, with scrapers and steam-rollers were at work everywhere
repairing the wear and tear. This work is done by peasants, who are
too old for the army, middle-aged, sturdily built fellows who perform
their prosaic task with the resignation and inexhaustible patience of
the lower-class Italian. They are organized in companies of a hundred
men each, called _centurias_, and the company commanders are called
(shades of the Roman legions!) _centurions_. Italy owes much to these
gray-haired soldiers of the pick and shovel who, working in heat and
cold, in snow and rain, and frequently under Austrian fire, have made
it possible for the armies to advance and for food to be sent forward
for the men and ammunition for the guns.

When this war is over Italy will find herself with better roads, and
more of them, than she ever had before. The hundreds of miles of
splendid highways which have been built by the army in the Trentino,
in the Carnia, and in Cadore will open up districts of extraordinary
beauty which have hitherto been inaccessible to the touring motorist.
The Italians have been fortunate in having an inexhaustible supply of
road-building material close at hand, for the mountains are solid road
metal and in the plains one has only to scratch the soil to find
gravel. The work of the road-builders on the Upper Isonzo resembles a
vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag
in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the
inside by stone-paved gutters and on the outside, where the precipice
falls sheer away, by cut stone guard-posts. So extensive and
substantial are these improvements that one instinctively looks for a
real-estate dealer's sign: "This beautiful lot can be yours for
twenty-five dollars down and ten dollars a month for a year." Climbing
higher, the roads become steeper and narrower and, because of the
heavy rains, very highly crowned, with