Identifier: literarydigesthi09hals (find matches)
Title: The Literary digest history of the world war, compiled from original and contemporary sources: American, British, French, German, and others
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Halsey, Francis W. (Francis Whiting), 1851-1919, comp
Subjects: World War, 1914-1918
Publisher: New York, London, Funk & Wagnalls Company
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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everywhere. From the outset of Italys entry into the war, Cadornasstrategy had been steadily directed toward Trieste. Recentoperations had justified the care with which he first sealedup the valleys of the Trentino and then removed the Aus-trian menace at Gorizia. Trieste, with apopulation of 279,475,mostly Italians, was a much more important place thanGorizia, with its 30,000 souls. It is a magnificently im-proved seaport, originally a Roman city, and historically apart of Italy, but it had been under Austrian rule for cen-turies. Should Trieste fall, domination of the Adriatic wouldpass with it, but the strip of territory over which the Italianarmies had still to operate, as already stated, was one ofgreat difficulty for an attacking force, and had beenelaborately fortified. In their advance the Italians wereconfronted by an enemy-line quarried into solid rock, withbarbed wire in acre-wide complexity supported by ironstandards cemented into stone—a front, in short, where all 80 -
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IN THE ALPS AND ON THE ADRIATIC that Austrias war-genius could accomplish in eight quietmonths had been done lavishly and well. As in the north,where floods threatened to prevent the passage of the Isonzo,the weather favored a battle only at the last minute. Theday before a violent east wind, locally called a hora, hadbeen roaring dowTi the battle-front, raising the stingingred Carso dust into blinding clouds, sweeping the smoke ofguns backward upon Italian observers. Every shell thatfell against those stony heights now became a great leap offlame immediately densified into a high-spreading column ofred smoke, shot with rust-colored dust. Hundreds oftrench-mortars of the largest caliber, each more portentouslynoisy than whole batteries of howitzers, furnished unendingthunder, and their effect on the trenches was disastrous. For ten hours this red-hot hailstorm of shells of everycaliber systematically and remorselessly kneaded the Aus-trian line. At 4 oclock came the infantrys turn, a

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