into unnatural life and prosperity. Every one who has spent a week in
Italy can put the picture of the place before his imagination in a
moment: streets of dark, restful, Gothic cloisters; a broad piazza
flanked by a graceful loggia; remains of medieval fortification of which
the towering gate-houses still narrowed each entrance to the town; a
general air of pleasant tranquillity and of a well-being that was a
legacy from the more spacious days of centuries gone by. The nature of
the place was that of mellow old wine, very gracious, rich with
associations that brought a glow to the palate of memory, but for all
that something of which one wanted only little at a time. A glimpse of
Udine as she had been for centuries was delightful, to dwell there would
seem like being buried alive.

[Sidenote: Bustle and congestion when Udine becomes Army Headquarters.]

To this forgotten township of the old Venetian province had come
suddenly in the spring of 1913 all the bustle and congestion of the
headquarters of the whole Italian Army. For the next two and a half
years you could hardly find a room in Udine to sleep in; the people of
the place opened large modern restaurants and cafés for the officers and
soldiers who crowded its streets; big shops filled the gloom of the old
arcades with an incongruous expanse of plate-glass windows; the good
burgesses of Udine made money and waxed fat.

[Sidenote: A tactical dead-lock on the western front.]

It seemed, indeed, as if the steady shower of war prosperity that had
fallen upon them for two years might last until that indefinite, but to
most minds far-off, day when peace should come. For it was the general
opinion that in the West, at least, the war had reached a condition of