vantage-points, and a number of staff-officers, speaking perfect English
and knowing every detail of the front and its history, raised these
visits from the level of sight-seeing excursions to opportunities for
learning a great deal that was important and technical.

[Sidenote: The Austro-German offensive begins.]

The very last of these journeys, which had been made by visitors of
every country, took place on October 24, the day that the great
Austro-German offensive began, and I remember how, as we drove along in
the rain, all our talk was of the bad news of that morning--that the
enemy, reinforced by a huge number of divisions brought secretly from
the Russian front, and profiting by a night of rain and fog, had thrust
down into the valley of the Isonzo between Plezzo and Tolmino, carried,
apparently by surprise, two Italian lines across the ravine after a
short and very violent bombardment, and then, pushing on, had captured
Caporetto, thus cutting off the Italian troops on Monte Nero and the
other mountains beyond the Isonzo, and opening a most serious gap in the
very center of the Italian line.

[Sidenote: Gorizia has suffered from the war.]

[Sidenote: A shell interrupts the sight-seers.]

The day was one of evil omen. We went to Gorizia, that pretty Austrian
spa that was taken by the Italians last year, and has suffered from the
war as much as Udine, its neighbor across the old frontier, has
prospered. In the heart of the town its old castle towers up from an
isolated crag, and from the battlements you can look across the valley
to the Italian and Austrian lines on the slopes of San Marco opposite.