cavalry outposts on the Tirul Marsh, and bombarded the Russian positions on the right bank of the Dvina north of Dvinsk. On Sept. 2 they crossed the Dvina near Uxkul, sixteen miles southeast of the city, and advanced up the Mitau-Riga causeway. The advance guard entered Riga that night.

On the same day, Sunday, Letchitzky ordered the army to withdraw to the fortified line east of Lake Stint and up the Jaegel, and then, on the 13th, to the line River Nitzcope-Zegenhoff - Paush - Zegevolt-Lupsala, further east.

According to the report of the Assistant Commissioner to the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, the troops withdrew fighting and inflicting

severe losses on the enemy; the breaking of the front, the report said, was due to the overwhelming superiority of the German artillery fire, which dominated and put out of action the Russian batteries, annihilated the Russian trenches, and compelled the troops of the Guard, who were half decimated, to fall back. After the great German assault of November, 1915, which almost captured the city, practically all the factories were removed to the centre of Russia. In the last week of August nearly all the heavy guns were dismounted and sent to the rear.

Apparently Letchitzky gave up Riga because he found it impossible of prolonged defense with the means at hand. His retreat, however, has made the Ger

provided with coverings to prevent their being filled with snow. It is not a tremendously difficult climb; in fact, we went four-fifths of the way in an automobile, so wonderful and enduring are the Italian mountain roads.

In all that land there was no water when the Italians arrived. It is there now everywhere. It is there because the Italians are the best engineers in the world. They have run pipe lines from the valleys up to every mountain crest.

View of Conquered Mount Nero

I slipped into my seat in the middle front row and unhooked my glasses. The curtain had risen. The morning fogs had all gone and the midday sun made the air as clear as crystal. I have seen many things that are wonderful and beautiful, but I have never in my life seen such an amazing, breath-taking panorama as that spread before me. "Drink it in," my officer said, "and then I will tell you where we are." I drank it in, and then, following instructions, I fixed my glasses on a high peak far over to the left. The air was so clear that through the glasses it didn't seem more than half a mile away. It was Mount Nero. Its front, where I looked, seemed a sheer precipice of bare rock 8,000 feet from the valley to the cone-shaped summit, but out beyond toward higher snow peaks I could see a thin ridge connecting it, which proved that there was not so straight a drop on the other side. As I looked, my officer explained how Mount Nero was captured by the Alpini.

"You can't see our trenches there," he said, "because we hold the summit, and the trenches are on the other side. You see that sheer wall of rock facing us? Well, it was by going up that that our soldiers took Mount Nero. We had to have it. It is an important observatory -better than this one-for the Isonzo Valley. From there one can see almost to the Dolomites on the one side and almost to Laibach on the other.

"You see that long ridge connecting the peak with the mountains beyond? That is where we made a strong feint attack. We sent two columns along that ridge so that the Austrians thought that

was all we intended to do. But the third and principal column went up the precipice. They did it during one dark night. It was important that they should do it without a sound, as they were to take the summit from the rear by surprise. So they climbed up without rifles, which might have knocked against things and sent stones crashing down, and they went up in bare feet to avoid slipping and also to avoid sound. They carried only revolvers and hand grenades.

They jumped on the Austrians just at dawn. But the Austrians, though surprised, were very strong. We quickly used up our revolvers and bombs and we took Mount Nero with our hands. I mean that the fight became so desperate that our Alpini literally conquered by fighting hand to hand, so that hundreds of Austrians were hurled bodily down that cliff to the valley over a mile below." I meditated upon what I had been hearing. As I looked at that appalling cliff it seemed as though I had been reading some ghastly fiction. Then he told me to shift my glasses to the right along the ridge connecting Mount Nero with the Marnick-a lower peak, almost due north of Tolmino.

Tolmino Spared by the Guns

"Going up the sides," he said, "you can see lines. Those are our roads. And down some distance from the summit you can see our trenches-a long, zigzag line in the white rock. Just under the crest runs another line. That is the Austrian trench."

My guide told me to keep following the trench lines with my glasses down far into the valley, where they disappeared under hills in the foreground. Then I studied the Isonzo as it wound its way about Tolmino.

That Austrian town was basking in an afternoon siesta. There wasn't a shot fired to disturb its tranquillity. I could see Austrian soldiers lounging in front of the barracks. I could see horses hitched to wagons standing in the village square and pedestrians moving slowly in and out of the shops. It was all within easy striking distance of hundreds of Italian guns, but an Italian shell has

never yet been fired into Tolmino. Perhaps that will never happen. The Italians hope it will not be necessary and that Tolmino will fall in another way. They don't want to wipe it out in such a fashion as Gorizia.

I swept the glasses past the town, and further down the Isonzo on the far bank arose a sheer cliff, the top of which is the famous Bainsizza Plateau-the land of the Holy Ghost. The sun had shifted so that the entire Austrian side was bathed in brilliant light, while the Italian mountains were in the shade. This made everything still more visible, and far to the south I could see Mount Santo -the Holy Mountain-taken in this offensive. I could make out the crumbled remains of the shrine on its summit where at the beginning of the war Emperor Francis Joseph went to pray for the success of the Austrian arms. When the Italians took the mountain their regimental bands played in the ruins of that shrine, and the conductor was Toscanini.

Beyond Santo there seemed to be a volcano of smoke and fire, and above it all I could actually count the white puff balls in the sky that meant that shrapnel was exploding over Mount St. Gabriele, thirty miles away.

On Bainsizza Plateau

The entire front of the present battle, which I call the battle of the Julian Alps, stretching from Tolmino to the Adriatic, is nearly forty miles a greater distance than any other continuous offensive of the war. In that sector there are now grouped more soldiers of actual fighting units than have ever before comprised an army of shock."

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trenches of Volnik, which is the furthest eastward point of the Italian lines in Austria, through glasses. I could see Italian soldiers in a trench shooting at Austrians in the trench beyond, which I could also see plainly. I always desire in following war operations to get to the interesting places first, wherever the going is possible; so I asked a General who was there to tell me the name of another person who, I learned, had preceded me. It was the inevitable Toscanini.

I began my ride over Holy Ghost Land by crossing the Isonzo at one of the famous fourteen bridges where the Italian attack began. The Isonzo, which is glacier water, and therefore always a most sinister green, is a torrent that runs through mountain gorges its entire length until it comes out into the plain at Gorizia. At some points this gorge rises sheer for thousands of feet, as between Santo and Sabotino, where it is so deep, dark, and narrow that one gets a deluded idea he can jump across, although the distance between crests is about half a mile.

Barrier of Isonzo Gorges

As we approached the river coming down from Mount Zagradan in the north we could see it while we were miles away and far above it. The stream writhed along at a tremendous rate, exactly like a beautiful green snake, sometimes dark and dangerous, at other times a beautiful shimmer where a sun ray penetrated between the mountain peaks and crept into the valley. Through its entire course, except in the Gorizia plain, the gorge is so steep that at no point can one ever go down to the actual level of the water.

Even where pontoons were flung across in a single night, to permit the passage of the Italian Army, the river banks are perpendicular granite cliffs quite forty feet high. Then there comes a thin ledge where infantry can find safe footing and where the straight line from the water's edge changes to an incline leading to Bainsizza, another thousand feet up.

into

the

Months ago the Italians attempted to cross the river at some of these places,