3

It seems to be part of the stern resolve of Fate that this, the greatest
of wars, shall be the least glorious; it is manifestly being decided
not by victories but by blunders. It is indeed a history of colossal
stupidities. Among the most decisive of these blunders, second only
perhaps of the blunder of the Verdun attack and far outshining the wild
raid of the British towards Bagdad, was the blunder of the Trentino
offensive. It does not need the equipment of a military expert, it
demands only quite ordinary knowledge and average intelligence,
to realise the folly of that Austrian adventure. There is some
justification for a claim that the decisive battle of the war was fought
upon the soil of Italy. There is still more justification for saying
that it might have been.

There was only one good point about the Austrian thrust. No one could
have foretold it. And it did so completely surprise the Italians as to
catch them without any prepared line of positions in the rear. On the
very eve of the big Russian offensive, the Austrians thrust eighteen
divisions hard at the Trentino frontier. The Italian posts were then in
Austrian territory; they held on the left wing and the right, but they
were driven by the sheer weight of men and guns in the centre; they lost
guns and prisoners because of the difficulty of mountain retreats to
which I have alluded, and the Austrians pouring through reached not
indeed the plain of Venetia, but to the upland valleys immediately above
it, to Asiago and Arsiero. They probably saw the Venetian plain through
gaps in the hills, but they were still separated from it even at Arsiero
by what are mountains to an English eye, mountains as high as Snowdon.
But the Italians of such beautiful old places and Vicenza, Marostica,
and Bassano could watch the Austrian shells bursting on the last line of