motion; the defeated soldier forgets that the miles are just as long and
weary for his adversary trudging painfully after him as they are for
himself. Rumor, too, spreads wildly among tired and disheartened men.
Enemy cavalry, enemy armored motor-cars, hurrying ahead to cut him
off--that idea haunts the mind of each man in an enforced retirement. A
further complication is caused when, as was the case in the Italian
withdrawal, the civilian population is also desperately anxious to be
gone before the arrival of the enemy. The news of the forthcoming
evacuation of territory spreads backward with rapidity, and the roads
along the route of the retreating army fill at once with unregulated,
disorderly swarms of frightened civilians and their household baggage,
hastily stowed on slow-moving dilapidated carts that are likely to break
down at narrow points of the way and block whole miles of military
traffic for hours at a time. The Italian Army had to endure a great deal
of that kind of complication. Theoretically, of course, a general could
throw back cavalry and mounted police along the line of his retreat and
forbid any civilian traffic whatever under pain of military penalties;
but it is very difficult to use such measures against your own
countrymen threatened with invasion, specially when the whole aim and
object of your war is to free men of your own race from foreign
domination. And not only does the sentimental reason of saving
fellow-citizens from the yoke of an invader forbid this course, but also
considerations of common humanity. In the old wars, when the danger-area
of fighting was restricted to the places where opposing troops actually
came into contact, there was no particular danger for the civilian
inhabitants remaining in invaded territory; though their property might
suffer from the enemy's requisitions, their lives were likely to be
safe. But wars of this modern character spread destruction broadcast
over a whole region. A rear-guard action will involve a rain of shells
that may smash to pieces any village on the line of retreat; gas may be