killing is what we want!" shouted the Sergeant. The young Americans were at the dummies, and each dug his dummy with a wild "Yah!" or college yell or scream. "Go on!" roared the Sergeant; "there are more boches beyond. Clean killing is what we want." And the Americans charged at several more lines of dummies before they leaped into the front trench and began firing. I All over the countryside in these splendid sweeping valleys and green woods, the American army is training with furious zest. To drive or walk in woods and fields is almost as dangerous as visiting frontline trenches. In every field, around every knoll, the American army is blazing away with rifles, guns, and machine guns. Military Events of the Month From October 18 to November 18, 1917 Story of the Great Battle for Venice -N following their policy of holding their strongest and nearest enemies and of attacking their weakest and most remote-with Russia rendered inactive, Serbia overwhelmed, and Rumania fought to a standstill-it was logical that the Germans should next select Italy. Here success might place Austria's most formidable enemy hors de combat and open the back door into France. The Austrians had tried to do this in May and June, 1916. They had attacked Italy's historically and geographically weakest front at its strongest point, and had reached out over the Sette Comuni beyond Asiago, twenty miles from the Trentino frontier. Their object was to reach Vicenza, and thence Verona. From these points they could develop positions east and west-east along the system of railways which fed the Italian army on the Isonzo front, thereby isolating that army; west through the old quadrilateral, Mantua, Peschiera, Verona, and Legnago, absorbing the industrial centre of the peninsula and paving the way to a peace at Rome, if not an approach to the back door of France. But the Italians, diverting 500,000 men who had been training on the plains between Milan and Turin and were on their way to the Isonzo front, were able to flank the Austrian position on the Sette Comuni, from Primolano, in the Val Sugana, on the northeast, and from the Val Astico on the southwest. So the Austrians were rolled up back into the Trentino with the loss of over 80,000 men. But the supplies which had carried Cadorna so far beyond the Isonzo last September were not sufficient to complete his work. In his last exploit he had left the front across the slopes of Monte Nero exposed at Plezzo and at Tolmino; the Bainsizza front, at the Idria, on the north, and at Monte San Gabriele and Monte San Daniele, on the south. Here Germany, with six Austro-German divisions and then thirteen of forty-seven released from the Russian front, struck. The invaders were in command of General von Below, who had been decorated by the Kaiser in Courland and in Macedonia; under him were von Krobatin at Plezzo, von Krass at Tolmino; von Henriquez, ready to cut in through the Vippacco, and Wurm in charge on the Carso. Several divisions of the Austrian troops of Generals Boroevic and Koevess had been elbowed out of the way by the Germans. Field Marshal Conrad von Hoetzendorf was no longer in command. It was a thoroughly German outfit and had been prepared in the usual thorough German fashion. For nearly a year the Italian troops on the Plezzo-Tolmino front had not been replaced. They had begun to fraternize. with the Austrians there. The latter showed them forged copies of Italian papers containing stories of revolts in Naples and Genoa and of British mercenaries there firing upon starving women and children. The Socialist Camorra of Ferri, the pacifist Camorra of Giolitti also got in their fine work of destroying the morale of these isolated, war-weary soldiers. Then the attack came. The front smashed in the north was bent down through the valleys of the Natisone and the Judrio until it became necessary to escape from the Bainsizza, from Gorizia, from Vippacco, and from the Carso. Defenses of Veneto The region of Veneto is defended from the east and north by five natural lines of defense-the right banks of the Tagliamento, of the Livenza, of the Piave, of the Brenta, of the Adige-and two of these have been rendered stronger by art. In the Spring of 1915, when Italy expected to declare war on Austria simultaneously with rupturing the Triple Alliance Treaty, she had fortified the Tagliamento line and intended to retreat to it. But on account of Giolitti's plottings she did not then declare war. Meanwhile, the Austrians removed between 200,000 and 300,000 men from the frontier for work against the Russians in Galicia. Thus the Tagliamento line was not used. Later the western bank of the Piave was fortified with practice trenches. By the time the retreating armies had reached the Piave a natural contraction had taken place in the north-from the Val Sugana. It was not until then that the Germans made a sudden drive from the Trentino and reached Asiago-the extreme point of the Austrian invasion in June, 1916, but now no longer threatened from the Val Sugana. Asiago, on the plateau of the Sette Comuni, is on the left-rear flank of both the Piave and the Brenta lines, and on the right-rear flank of the Italian Army before Rovereto, along the Val Terragnolo and across the Lago di Garda. Thus the last resort of the Regione di Veneto is the Adige, which flows through the Trentino into Italy, along the side of the Quadrilateral through the Province of Verona and separating the Province of Padua from that of Rovigo, thence into the Adriatic just south of the mouth of the Brenta and the Lagoon of Venice. The military details which have brought the Italian armies to the Piave and the Germans to threaten their rear from the Sette Comuni run chronologically as follows: The Battle in Detail On Sunday, Oct. 21, the artillery of the enemy began a bombardment on carefully selected positions of the PlezzoTolmino front and from the slopes of the Idria upon the northern flank of the Italian loop on the Bainsizza. By the 24th it had become apparent that the bombardment was being performed principally by German guns, under cover of which the enemy had broken through the first-line trenches at Plezzo and just south of Tolmino had crossed to the west bank of the Isonzo, under the protection of the bridgehead of Monte Santa Maria and Monte Santa Lucia. From these two points the enemy was able to converge along the Isonzo south and north upon Caporetto, to cut off the Italian detachments retreating from the Monte Nero region, and to open the way down the Natisone and the Judrio. Thus threatened in their rear the principal divisions of the Second Army under General Capello, on the Bainsizza, and those of the Third under the Duke of Aosta, on the Carso, began to retreat. Thus by the 26th the enemy had advanced beyond Caporetto, crossing the frontier to the valley of the Natisone, while further south he had gone beyond Ronzina by descending the Val Judrio, and had forced some 30,000 Italians, mostly road builders, however, to surrender. About 250 guns of position, principally 6-inch and 8-inch howitzers of old pattern, had to be abandoned. The next day Berlin reported that the number of prisoners had reached 60,000 and the number of captured guns over 500. On the morning of that day Ger JUDGE C. H. LINDLEY Head of the Legal Department of the Food Administration. (Harris & Ewing.) CHARLES R. PAGE Member of the United States Shipping Board. (Harris & Ewing.) man troops by a violent series of assaults had secured possession of Monte Matajur, from which they were able to dominate the Italian retreat down the Natisone and the Judrio. Meanwhile, the Italians, who had attempted to consolidate a new line between Monte Matajur and Auzza on the Isonzo, had to give way. The retreat of the Second Army from the Bainsizza and the slopes of Monte San Gabriele and Monte Santo, lying south, and from Monte Cucco, west, became almost a rout across the improvised bridges of the Isonzo and through Gorizia, which the enemy artillery from the abandoned positions was rapidly leveling with the ground. On the 28th Berlin reported the occupation of Cividale, on the Natisone, the railway approach to the Italian General Headquarters at Udine, ten miles to the southwest. In the centre the Austrians, sweeping across the Bainsizza and down the slopes of the mountains already mentioned, had occupied Gorizia and were threatening the Duke of Aosta's left flank. On Here on the 29th the Austrians met with a stubborn resistance along the Vippacco, which undoubtedly saved from destruction the Third Army now in more rapid retreat to the southwest of Gorizia. the Gorizia-Udine railway, Cormons, the first town in Austria occupied by the Italians at the beginning of the war, was recaptured, thereby turning the flank of a detachment that was attempting to make a stand before Udine. A glance at the map will show that the advance of the Germans had now reached a point which threatened the rear of the Fourth Italian Army, which, from the beginning of the war, had been guarding the passes which led from Carinthia into the Regione of Veneto across the frontier barrier of 100 miles of the Carnic Alps. Consequently, this army began to abandon its positions at the Ploecken Pass and similar places, seeking the protection of the valleys which carried streams into the upper Piave and Tagliamento Rivers. On Oct. 24 Udine was taken by the Fourteenth German Army. This brought the enemy within sixteen miles of the centre of the Tagliamento on its lower (southern) course. This river, which rises in the district of Carnia a few miles east of Pieva di Cadore, in the Venetian Alps, first flows eastward, through deep-cut, sheltered gorges, a rapid and narrow stream, by Ampezzo and Tolmezzo, for about forty miles, and then, turning abruptly southward, it traverses, through many broad and some shallow channels, the plains and then the marshes of the Province of Udine, and empties into the Adriatic opposite the Bay of Trieste. In its middle course this river had been strongly fortified, in anticipation of a retreat from the frontier, if Italy, as has already been pointed out, had made war on Austria on May 5, 1915, instead of eighteen days later. Then, however, there would have been no Fourth Army to take care of retreating from the Carnic and Venetian Alps, and the Second and Third Armies would have been strongly intrenched, with guns of position. Now all was different; there were few guns of position and all three armies were in full retreat. By Nov. 1 the enemy had reached the middle of the Tagliamento line, while in the south, being confronted by no bridgeheads, he had crossed the lower reaches of the river south of Codroipo. Over the plains of Udine the Second and Third Armies were fighting gallant rearguard engagements. It was all in vain. The Tagliamento line could not be held. There was no adequate artillery to protect what had once been formidable bridgeheads at Latisana and other places. And by, literally, hundreds of isolated encircling movements detachments of the enemy had increased the number of his prisoners to 180,000 and his number of captured guns to 1,500-so the Berlin report stated on Nov. 1. It was small satisfaction that just 120 years before Napoleon had beaten the Austrians on the same ground. But Napoleon was leading an offensive army; Napoleon was a master of artillery and had the guns. Cadorna was conducting a retreat; he was not a master of artillery, he had few guns, and -he was not Napoleon. The Teutonic hosts swept on, crossing the Tagliamento at fifty places, princi |