I turned over and over in my mind in the weeks and months that followed, as fresh evidence accumulated, the meaning and the causes of the disaster of Caporetto, and gradually I came to definite and clear cut conclusions.  It was the Second Army that had been broken, and in the course of the retreat had almost disappeared.  It was a common thing to hear the Second Army spoken of as a whole Army of cowards and “defeatists.”  Many foreign critics, with minds blankly ignorant of nearly all the facts, seemed to think that the whole business could be accounted for by a few glib phrases about German and Socialist propaganda, or the supposed lack of fighting qualities in the Italian race.  Yet it was this same Second Army, which in those now distant days in August had conquered the Bainsizza Plateau, amid the acclamations of all the Allied world.  Whole Armies do not change their nature in a night, even when worn out with fighting and heavy casualties.  The thing was not so simple as that.

* * * * *

In fixing responsibility for Caporetto, one must draw a sharp distinction between responsibility for the original break in a narrow sector of the line, and responsibility for not making good that break, before the situation had got hopelessly out of hand.  In the former case the responsibility must rest partly upon the troops and subordinate Staff charged with holding that narrow sector and partly upon the High Command; in the latter case the chief responsibility, and a far graver one, must rest upon the dispositions of the High Command.  This was the view apparently taken by the Commission appointed by the Italian Government to investigate the whole question, for the three chief Generals concerned were not only removed from their commands, but given no further employment and placed upon half-pay.

The original break was due to many causes.  The great mass of German Divisions and Artillery was concentrated in the Caporetto sector.  This fact should have been known to the High Command, and if the Italian troops holding the line at this point were, for various reasons, of poor quality, this also should have been known to the High Command, whose duty it is to know the comparative fighting power of different units.  The High Command, when the battle started, claimed that they had known beforehand when and where the blow was coming, that all preparations had been made and that they were fully confident of the result.  Such boasts have been made by other High Commands on other Fronts, on the eve of other disasters, and even after them.  They greatly deepen the responsibility of those who make them.

The German Batteries on the Italian Front had a much larger supply of ammunition than the Austrians, including a large quantity of “special gas” shell.  Many Italian troops, both Infantry and Artillery, subjected to prolonged gas bombardment, found the gas masks provided by the High Command quite inadequate.  It was left for General Diaz some months later to order the equipment of the whole Italian Army with the British box respirator.