From this terrace of ours we had fine views of fighting in the air.  On August 2nd we saw an Austrian plane brought down by two Italians, who dived down upon him from above, firing at him with machine guns as they swept past him.  The Austrian, who was flying high, gradually seemed to lose his head and hesitate in what direction to fly, then he began to turn over and over, recovered for a moment, but finally lost all control and came down nose first into his own trenches, just across the river.  Another evening, about ten o’clock, a whole squadron of Austrian planes came over, flying in regular formation and signalling to one another with Morse lamps.  They were going, it appeared, to bomb Gradisca.  They were heavily shelled by the “archies” as they came over us, and several fragments of shell fell on our terrace.  The night sky was full of starry shell-bursts, and a dozen of our searchlights fussily got busy.  Then suddenly all our artillery, as it seemed, began to go off, and for about five minutes there was a deafening burst of fire from guns of all calibres.  And then all grew suddenly quiet again.  Perhaps it was a raid, perhaps only the fear of one.

One day an Italian plane dropped some booklets into the Austrian trenches, and some were blown back into our own lines.  They contained photographs of Austrian prisoners of war in Italian camps, very contented apparently, and explanations in German, Magyar and various Slav tongues, showing “men who yesterday were living from hour to hour in peril of death, now waiting happily and calmly in perfect safety for the war to end, when they shall return to their homes to embrace once more their wives and little children.  Here you will be able to recognise many of your friends.”  A good propaganda to induce desertions and surrenders!  The Italians generally had the mastery over the Austrians in the air.  Their machines, and especially their Capronis, could always be distinguished from the Austrians’ by the deeper hum of their engines.

Venosta had a gramophone, which played most evenings after dinner on the terrace, chiefly marches and martial music and Italian opera.  Italy’s Libyan war, whatever else may be said of it, has produced one magnificent marching song, “A Tripoli,” which deserves to live for ever.  Fine, too, even on the gramophone, are the “March of the Alpini,” the “March of the Bersaglieri” and the famous “Garibaldi’s Hymn.”  I met an English doctor once, who had heard this last played in Rome on some great occasion with some of the old Garibaldian veterans in their red shirts marching in front of the band.  He had felt a lump in his throat that day, he said.  When Venosta’s gramophone played, the Italians encamped near by clustered round the edge of the terrace in obvious enjoyment, and sometimes one or two would dash indignantly down the road to stop limbers and carts, which were making a rattle on the stones.

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