hills above the plain, and I have no doubt they felt extremely uneasy.

As one motors through these ripe and beautiful towns and through the
rich valleys that link them--it is a smiling land abounding in old
castles and villas, Vicenza is a rich museum of Palladio's architecture
and Bassano is full of irreplaceable painted buildings--one feels that
the things was a narrow escape, but from the military point of view it
was merely an insane escapade. The Austrians had behind them--and some
way behind them--one little strangulated railway and no good pass road;
their right was held at Pasubio, their left was similarly bent back. In
front of them was between twice and three times their number of first
class troops, with an unlimited equipment. If they had surmounted
that last mountain crest they would have come down to almost certain
destruction in the plain. They could never have got back. For a time
it was said that General Cadorna considered that possibility. From the
point of view of purely military considerations, the Trentino offensive
should perhaps have ended in the capitulation of Vicenza.

I will confess I am glad it did not do so. This tour of the fronts has
made me very sad and weary with a succession of ruins. I can bear no
more ruins unless they are the ruins of Dusseldorf, Cologne, Berlin,
or suchlike modern German city. Anxious as I am to be a systematic
Philistine, to express my preference for Marinetti over the Florentine
British and generally to antagonise aesthetic prigs, I rejoiced over
that sunlit land as one might rejoice over a child saved from beasts.

On the hills beyond Schio I walked out through the embrasure of a big
gun in a rock gallery, and saw the highest points upon the hillside
to which the Austrian infantry clambered in their futile last attacks.
Below me were the ruins of Arsiero and Velo d'Astico recovered, and