In every
Allied country it has been active; among the English it is at work
corrupting labor, preying on the nerves of the overstrained worker, and
whispering any subtle lie that will sap his will and undermine his
spirit. In France one fractional part of the widespread organization
that carries on this treacherous work is being exposed by the
revelations in the Bolo case. In Italy the Germans cunningly twisted
fanatics, both socialist and clerical, into agents for forwarding their
work, and they had flooded the country with money to corrupt the army
which they had not been able to beat in the field. The individual
soldiers of every country, including above all the Central empires
themselves, are dead-weary of the war, but the enemy alone has had the
cunning and the baseness deliberately to exploit this feeling to his
profit, working through the agency of bought traitors and hired spies.
And so the Austro-Germans had managed to imbue a limited part of the
Italian Army with the distorted idea that the quickest way to regain the
longed-for comforts of peace was to refuse to fight and thus open the
way for a rapid Austrian victory.

When this ferment of disloyalty had done its work, the Germans were
ready to attack the particular sector of the line held by the troops
that it had most affected. These were on the left wing of the Italian
Second Army, which held the front of the Isonzo from Plezzo down to
Tolmino, and it was on that point that the enemy directed his first
thrust.

[Sidenote: The news of the taking of Caporetto.]

The news of the taking of Caporetto on the morning of October 24 had
about as startling an effect at Italian headquarters as would be
produced on the British front if it were suddenly announced that the
Germans were in Ypres. Not only was Caporetto a town on the Upper Isonzo
which the Italians had seized by dashing forward across the frontier the
very morning that war was declared, but it also stood at the head of a
most important strategical valley leading back into the mountains on
which the Italian main line lay, and from the town lead several easy
roads that follow various routes into the plain beyond. Already the
enemy was pressing in force along those roads. The Italians had, indeed,
fallen back to reserve positions, but were the enemy to win through--as
he did within two days--he would be on the flank and almost in the rear
of the whole Italian Army of a million men.

[Sidenote: Rapid pr