Norwich bulletin., 1915-10-01
GROUND WHERE FIGHT
 @e AUsTRIANss AND ITALIANS
Cherished Playground of the World Changed Into Savage War Theatre.
(special to The Bulletin.)


 Washington. D. C.. Sept. 3O.-"The ghostly Dolomities. the wildly splen- did ruins of a once mighty Alps, where all the forms the architect ever designed, and many more, cut, in cha ottc profusion, into the skies, were, a year ago, cherished playground of the world. while. today, among their crags. peaks and rock splinters. their weather-torn crests and weather fretted precipices, an inferno of mountain cannons. machine guns and rifles have transformed the play ground into the most savage war theatres to be found in all war-rid- den Europe"
 Thus begins the bulletin issued by the National Geographic Society to- day, which deals with the terrifying battle-ground where Austrians and Italians are contesting mountain pin- acles, sheer walls of barren rock. glacier crests. and narrow, twisting valleys. The nucleus of the Dolom- ities is the southeastern part of Tyrol, region quite as untamed now as when Roman legionaries threaded it's dangerous passes with their heels in testudo to guard against rock masses from the heights above.
 The Dolomities are in their nature sinister. cruel and A1ncanny Their desolation is weird. The paths among their crags are treacherous. Wind.
 
 multitude of shapes. with teeth and claws and ugly wrinkles. Yet des- bite the fierce aspect of these noun tains, they have fascinated all who | have visited them, and brought many tourists back summer after summer for tramps In the bracing air that | bathes them and for feasts upon the richly varied scenery which they offer. The Dolomites are not the same from year to year. The rock of which | : as that which enters into the compo- sition of our Rocky Mountains and the Alps. Each year its thousands of fantastic modellings are carved new The strange Dolomite needles become more pointed and longer. while it's knife-like ridges run to sharper edges Its tusks,' 'obelisks,' pyramids ca thedral spires,' it's serrate teeth and etched walls disintergrate noticeably from year to year. Scattered through out their area are great fields of brok- en stones, and deep streams of eroded matter slope against their higher was born in this mountain region | walls.
 Titan. the great master of colors His birthplace was Campo di Sotto or Pieve di Cadore. At least. he spent his boyhood in the latter village, ance \ the capital of a sturdy Dolomite re. public, the Republic of Cadore, which was founded 800 years before America | was discovered, and which existed foI 500 years, losing its liberty to no less- CT conqueror than Napoleon, who, al the peace of Compio Formio in 797 lre-arranged this part of Europe.
 The Latins and Germans have fought from tices immemorial- on thu Dolomites' cyclopian @attlegrouihd A race of warriors grew up in thi. border land. andy also. one might say a race of peasant aristocrats. Thers are humble people here who car trace the family percentage back un. broken through centuries, and whs treasure ancient family documentl signed by popes and emperors, dogel and great nobles. Some of our sturd. jest immigrants, Italian, German ans Slav, come from these mountain fast nesses- Few of them remain. how ever, for their wonderful mountain homeland calls them irresistibly aftel they have made their stakes"