Arizona republican., 1918-09-14
"The Martial Adventures of
 Henry And Me"

as soon as he learns the points of the compass. Finally our host explained: The truth of the matter is that this land never has been sold in the mem ory of living men. Probably most of it has remained in it's present owner ship for from three hundred to five hundred years. No one sells land in Italy"
 Remnant of Feudal System
 And that revealed much; there was the whole program of the agrarian So- cialist. The man on the wine cart asleep, the peasant villages, the ,ags and the poverty, the novels that we saw on the rich land and the crumbling aristocracy of Rome living meanly striving vainly, bewildered. and bedev- filed trying to make profits out of a dormant tenantry. grinding seven per cent out of the land and yet losing money by it-all these things were the meat of the answer, which recounted the long unbroken line of feudal own ership of the land. Wooden ploughs and oxen, women yoked with beasts of bur den, vines and vines planted and re- planted through the centuries; no cap saw zand art. ideral CT s!yp got ital to develop the land; insufficient profits to wake, up the tenants. masters and servant going gradually down ir a world where labor and capital shar- ing profits equitably, are rising; it was a dishearteniny problem.
 The Italian Front
 | Then in due course we left Rome and went to the Italian army on the front | and there we saw another side of tie shield. From Udine in Northern Italy we journeyed into the mountains where the Italian army at that time was holding the mountain tops against the Austrians. Wherever we ascended we saw white ribbons of roads twining up the green soft mountain sides that face Italy. These roads have been made since the war Nearly four thousand miles of them furnish approaches to the Alpine heights. They are hard sur | faced, low graded, wide, highways gouged into the mountain side. Two automobiles may pass at full speed anywhere on these roads. And all night they were alive with wagon trains bearing supplies to the front. Women help the men mend the roads. We saw few Austrian prisoners at work on the Italian roads; possibly because we were too near the front line trenches to see prisoners who are kept thirty kilos back of the line, and possibly because they have better work for the Aus trians-work that ole men and woine en cannot do. Whenever we threaded our way up mountain side and came to a top, we found its flarks tunnelled with deep wicker walled, broad floored, well drained trenches. and it's top honey combed with rllnways for ammunition and with great rooms for soldiers and holes for gun barrels. Mountain tor after mountain top has been made into a Gibraltar by the Italians. That Gi- braltar was 300 miles long, before they lost it to the Germans. But they lad few guns 1. in their fortress They showed us emplacement after emplace- ment without a. stick of artillery in it They had told the French and the Eng fish of their blight. and few artillery companies had been sent in; but only a fraction of the need. There was nc central council of the allies then
 A Series of Little Wars
 Every nation was running it's owr little war. and Italy was left to fall. ana now the four thousand miles of Ital. ian roads. and the 300 miles of Gibral- tar are German military stronghclds that will have to be conquered with olll | piOOu ana Iron. TrODdDly no Ddtlit line in the world today is more inter
 esting than the Italian front was ir
 the autumn of 1917. The south face o
 the Alps often is green and beautiful
 but generally the northern faces O
 those mountains are bleak and rugged and steep. The, battle line ran zig
 gag course through the mountains, now
 meeting in g,llches now scurryins
 away up to mesas, again climbing tS
 the top of the barren he'~hts. We stood
 one sunny day on a ouiet sector of sh'
 Pasubio. We were with the Liguris brigade the 157- 15Sth infantry. Througl a peep hole in the trench, we looked , across a gulch to another mountainsidt
 and saw there the Austrian trenches not 200 yards away Before them la,
 the ugly scar of brown rusted barbe6 , wire, and just below the wire, sprawlet out on the white limestone of the steel } mountainside. lay fifty dead Italian , soldiers who had vainly charged int , the machine guns up that formidabl slope. They had lain there for weeks