undo
of the guns, it was a scene of ordered, yes, almost peaceful industry
which in no way suggested war but reminded me, rather, of the Panama
Canal at the busiest period of its construction (I have used the simile
before, but I use it again because I know none better), of the digging
of the New York subway, of the laying of a transcontinental railway,
of the building of the dam at Assuan. Trenches which had recently been
captured from the Austrians were being cleared and renovated and new
trenches were being dug, roads were being repaired, a battery of
monster howitzers was being moved into ingeniously concealed positions,
a whole system of narrow-gauge railway was being laid down, enormous
quantities of stores were being unloaded from wagons and lorries and
neatly stacked, soldiers were building great water-tanks on stilts,
like those at railway sidings, giant shells were being lowered from
trucks and flat-cars by means of cranes; to the accompaniment of saws
and hammers a city of wooden huts was springing up on the reverse slope
of the hill as though at the wave of a magician's wand.

As I watched with fascinated eyes this scene of activity, as city
idlers watch the laborers at work in a cellar excavation, a shell
burst on the crowded hillside, perhaps five hundred yards away. There
was a crash like the explosion of a giant cannon-cracker; the ground
leaped into flame and dust. A few minutes afterward I saw an ambulance
go tearing up the road.

"Just a chance shot," said the staff-officer who accompanied me. "This
valley is one of the few places on our front which is invisible to the
Austrian observers. That's why we have so many troops in here. The
Austrian aviators could spot what is going on here, of course, but our
fliers and our anti-aircraft batteries have been making things so hot
for them lately that they're not troubling us much. That's the great
thing in this game--to keep control of the air. If the Austrian airmen
were able to get over this valley and direct the fire of their guns we
wouldn't be able to stay here an hour."

My companion had thought that it might be possible to follow the road
down the valley to Monfalcone and the sea, and so it would have been
had the weather continued misty and rainy. But the sun came out
brightly just as we reached the beginning of an exposed stretch of the
road; an Austrian observer, peering through a telescope set up in a
monastery on top of a mountain ten miles aw