The organization with regard to the transport of guns is different in
the Italian and the British armies. The British system is that every gun
shall have its motor or horse-haulage permanently assigned to it, so
that it is always mobile at a moment's notice. In the Italian army the
mechanical transport service provides haulage for all units when
required, and as it is only in extraordinarily exceptional circumstances
that every single thing in the army needs moving at once, they are able
to effect considerable economies over the British method, which
constantly keeps large numbers of lorries and tractors and cars,
together with their drivers and mechanics, idle, since the units to
which they are attached are not at the moment in need of transport.

[Sidenote: Doubtful if all the British guns can be moved.]

By the time it was dark on Saturday evening the likelihood of all the
British guns getting away seemed doubtful, and the Italian artillery
colonel who supervised their employment as corps artillery came to our
group headquarters to say that preparations must be made for blowing the
last of them up, and that in any case each tractor must tow more than
one gun and come back for others directly it had got its first tows
behind the Isonzo.

[Sidenote: Enormous conflagration of military stores.]

And now the darkening landscape suddenly began to spring out into
brilliant points of light, as everywhere behind the Italian front,
supply-depots, military stores, and vast collections of wooden sheds
were set in a blaze. Gorizia was the site of a special conflagration,
and the enemy gun-fire was steadily increasing, till sometimes the