“ Soon after midnight on May 23, 1915, the Alpini and Bersaglieri of the Italian army, supported by a few battalions of first line troops and gendarmes, crossed the mountain frontier. Soon the peaks resounded with the popping of rifle fire and the louder detonations of the Austrian mountain guns. Along the whole Trentino front that night a hundred skirmishes drove back the Austrian outpost. Only a few thousand men in all were engaged. The Italian cyclist sharpshooters advanced swiftly up the steep mountain roads until greeted by musketry fire. ”

“ But the Germans were alert, and they illumined the movement with innumerable flares which made the Indians easy targets for the machine guns and rifles of the Teutons in that part of the line. So quick was the work to repel the attack that many of the Indians were slain as they were climbing out of their own trenches. As a surprise attack at night, the British were not making much of a success of their plan, but as a method of gaining ground and keeping their enemy busy on that particular part of the line the men of their Second Division were effective. ”

“ Before leaving the consideration of the second battle of Ypres it may be well to estimate what has been gained and lost by both sides. In the attempt to wear down their opponents one side had inflicted as much of a blow as the other, to all intents and purposes, for there had been an almost prodigal waste of human life and ammunition. The distinct advantage that Germany had gained was in pushing back and almost flattening out the prow of the British salient, and they had demonstrated the superiority of their artillery. ”

“ These, then, were the plans of Sir Ian Hamilton: four landing operations in widely separated points, two of serious importance and the other two, probably, intended only to draw the troops and energy of the defenders. How they prospered, what measure of success they obtained, how the Turks, fighting with the valor which has made them famous through ages, how the British Colonial and French troops accomplished almost unbelievable deeds of heroism and skill, make one of the most fascinating stories in the annals of warfare. ”

“ Italy and Austria-Hungary were at war.
To comprehend the task before the Italian army it is necessary to examine the Italian-Austrian frontier. Austria's problem was one only of defense. Her warning had been ample and when war was declared she was prepared to the last detail. Being the challenged party hers was the choice of weapons, and she had equipped herself with an almost impregnable line of fortifications. The grievance was Italy's, and hers the duty of assault. Every advantage of position lay with Austria. ”

“ As night settled on the battle field on the ridge above Gaba Tepe and Sari Bair, and the two forces rested from sheer exhaustion, the British troops, who once were well inland toward Maidos, their objective, were barely hanging onto the ridge overlooking the shore of the Gulf of Saros. All their water and food and munitions and reenforcements had to be brought ashore across the exposed beach, while the landing of the necessary artillery in the face of the Turkish fire was a feat to appal the bravest. ”

“ Shall Russia settle down to a war of position in her vast fortifications around Warsaw, or shall she continue to barter space against time, withdrawing from the line of the Vistula and points on it of both strategic and political importance, in order to gain the time which Germany has already stored in the form of inexhaustible gun munitions? ”

“ Opposed to them were the Russian Generals Brussilov, Ivanoff, and Alexieff, respectively.
Correspondents with the Teutonic troops in these weeks wrote in wonderment of the scenes of the slowly forward toiling advance into the mountains which they had seen. On every road leading into Galicia there was the same picture of a flood rolling steadily on. Everywhere could be seen the German and Austro-Hungarian troops on the move, men going into the firing line to fight for days, day after day, with the shedding of much blood, among the peaks and valleys, under changing skies. ”

“ Never was a greater concentration of men and machinery more silently and more speedily accomplished. All along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the mighty thunderbolt had been forged. Thousands of heavy guns were here planted in position, and millions of shells conveyed thither under cover of night. ”

“ Owing to the nature of the scene of hostilities the first days of the Austro-Italian campaign brought a series of engagements between small groups of combatants. Artillery played a large part, and here the Austrians, with their big guns already in carefully studied positions, had a decided advantage. Viewed as a whole only does the campaign at this stage take on an importance and dignity that ranks with the great battles on other fronts of the Great War. Never before had two great powers fought in territory so absolutely ill adapted to the movement of large bodies of troops. ”

“ For nearly twenty minutes a wild, surging sea of clashing steel—bayonets, swords, lances and Circassian daggers—wielded by fiery mountaineers and steady, cool, well-disciplined Teutons, roared and flowed around the big guns, which towered over the lashing waves like islands in a stormy ocean. A railway collision would seem mild compared with the impact of 18,000 desperate armed men against a much greater number of equally desperate and equally brave, highly-trained fighters. ”

“ Since the outbreak of the present war in Europe, the calamitous effect of which we view with grave concern, we, on our part, have entertained hopes of preserving the peace of the Far East by the maintenance of strict neutrality, but the action of Germany has at length compelled Great Britain, our ally, to open hostilities against that country, and Germany is at Kiao-chau, its leased territory in China, busy with warlike preparations, while her armed vessels, cruising the seas of eastern Asia, are threatening our commerce and that of our ally. ”

“ At this stage a new spirit seemed to dominate Austro-Hungarian military affairs; we suddenly encounter greater precision, sounder strategy, and deeper plans: a master mind appears to have taken matters in hand. It is the cool, calculating, mathematical composite brain of the German General Staff. ”

“ Starvation is conducive neither to good feeling nor heroism, especially when it is superimposed upon an unbroken series of more or less disastrous experiences. Misfortune and the so-called "tradition of defeat" had dogged the steps of Austria's troops from the beginning of the war; unlucky generals—Dankl, Auffenberg, and others—had been relieved of their commands and replaced by "new blood"—Boehm-Ermolli, Boroyevitch von Bojna, and Von Pflanzer-Baltin. Of these three, two had as yet failed in carrying to success the German plans which had taken the place of those of their own strategists. ”

“ The slopes below them were swept by a battery of their mountain guns, in telephonic communication with the more distant howitzer battery upon which it could call for assistance if necessity arose, and a large infantry reserve was stationed in the wooded valley below. But one night twenty-nine Alpini crept up the almost sheer precipice a thousand feet high that separated them from the Austrian defenders. They carried ropes and a machine gun and just as the moon rose they attained the summit, set up their Maxim and opened fire. Every man in the observation station was shot down. ”

“ Moreover, Austria's contemplated pathway to Saloniki would cut down through Macedonia, another territory coveted by Bulgaria. Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria, however, is a German by birth and training.
Greece, like Rumania, is also racially isolated. She fears Russia for the same reason that Bulgaria does; Greece is determined that Constantinople shall one day be hers. And she fears Austria because Austria's pathway would even take Saloniki from her. And finally she fears Italy because Italy has ambitions in Asia Minor and Albania. All the belligerents seem to be treading on the toes of Greece. ”

“ In the Alps in these days of May, 1915, the Great War was fought much as wars have been fought in times we are accustomed to regard as the age of true romance. The Italian King visited the Alpine troops and surprised his men and redoubled their devotion by showing his skill as a mountain climber. ”

“ One can hardly imagine the courage and heroism necessary to bear the terrible hardships of fighting under such conditions. All the German soldiers made prisoners by the French describe life in the Argonne as a hideous nightmare.
From the end of September, 1914, the Germans delivered day and night attacks, generally lasting ten days. These attacks were made with forces of three or four battalions up to a division or a division and a half. In each attack the Germans aimed at a very limited objective—to capture the first or second line of trenches, to seize some particular fortified point. ”

“ Bulgaria, smarting under the loss of territory through the attack upon her by Serbia, Greece, and Rumania in the Second Balkan War, was openly conducting friendly negotiations with Turkey for the acquisition of valuable territory—a compact that could mean only one thing. Greece, frightened by the menace of the German power, had resisted up to the moment all the blandishments of the Entente Powers, who urged her to active participation in the struggle. ”

“ Everyone is shouting to his animals and cursing in his own language. The whole mix-up is a traveling exhibition of most variegated characteristic costumes, for the most part, of course, extremely the worse for wear. Common to all these are the little wagons adapted to mountain travel, elastic and tough, which carry only half loads and are drawn by little ponylike, ambitious horses. In between are great German draft horses, stamping along with their broad high-wheeled baggage and ammunition wagons, as though they belonged to a nation of giants. ”

“ Occupying the entire loop of the Sanok-Homona railway north and south of Lupkow, and Mezo-Laborcz toward Dukla, the Russians now threatened the Austrian mountain positions between Lupkow and the Vetlina-Zboj road from the western flank as well. Violent winter storms raged across the Carpathians on April 2 and 3, 1915; nature spread a great white pall over the scenes of carnage. While the elements were battling, the weary human fighting machine rested and bound its wounds. ”

“ On the night of June 14, 1915, the Austrians made a supreme effort to break through the Italian line and put into effect his plan of pouring an army through the Carnic Alps to attack the flank of the main Italian army. Although 100,000 men were engaged in this battle, the ground permitted no massed movements. For miles the saddle of Oregione, the snow-clad sides of Paralba, and every smaller peak and ravine extending to Monte Croce and Freikofel were speckled with fighting men. After the two sides came to grips, the big guns held their fire, and it was man to man and bayonet against bayonet. ”

“ Two hundred yards away, and even closer in some places, are the Turkish trenches, and between them and our lines the dead lie in hundreds. There are groups of twenty or thirty massed together, as if for mutual protection, some lying on their faces, some killed in the act of firing; others hung up in the barbed wire. In one place a small group actually reached our parapet, and now lie dead on it, shot at point-blank range or bayoneted. Hundreds of others lie just outside their own trenches, where they were caught by rifle or shrapnel when trying to regain them. ”

“ The road to the battle field of to-day crosses the battle field of recent weeks and months. Here there once stood a village, but only the stone foundations of the hearths are left as traces of the houses that have been burned down. Sometimes falling shots or the terrors of a brief battle in the streets have reduced to ruins only a part of a village. The roofs of houses have been patched with canvas and boards to some extent, and now serve as quarters for troops or as stables. ”

“ There is reason to believe that at the beginning of the war the Italian soldier was not highly regarded by Austrian and German military authorities. As a whole the army's reputation had been injured by the Adowa disaster and by the slowness of the campaign in Tripoli. But the developments of actual warfare in the spring and summer of 1915 proved that Italian apologists were correct in their claim that in the former war the army was handicapped by political causes. Physically the Italian troops were equal to any in Europe. The Alpini were perhaps the best mountain soldiers in the world. ”

“ For months the heavy fighting in the east had centered on other sections of the immense battle line, running from the Baltic to the Carpathians. The second general Russian offensive, the great forward thrust of the Grand Duke Nicholas toward Cracow in the direction of Berlin, aimed through the center of the German defense, had been met, and the German counterthrust toward Warsaw had come to a standstill in the mud of Poland and before the stone-wall defensive of the Russians on the Bsura and the Rawka. ”

“ The crew of the Königsberg had been active in fortifying their position during the time the cruiser had been sheltering in the river. They had established shore batteries with German thoroughness that commanded all the turnings of the river, and there were observation towers from which they could get the range of any vessel attacking. The British could not get a clear view of the enemy because of the dense jungle, but their aeroplanes were of great service in directing the action of the guns. There was never any doubt of what the ultimate fate of the Königsberg would be. ”