Next day we reached Arquata amid the tumble of the Ligurian Hills, whose sides were clothed with chestnuts and oaks and vine terraces.  We found British Staff, Sanitary Sections and Ordnance already in possession.  The Ordnance were occupying a large villa just outside the town.  My old friend Shield, whom I had known at Palmanova, was there, but most of the others were new arrivals from France.  They were surprisingly full of cheerfulness, as imboscati are often apt to be, even when things are going badly at the Front.  The Italian disaster evidently meant very little to them; they hardly realised it at all.  They were the first cheerful people I had seen since the retreat began, and it was no doubt good for Siramo and myself to be cheered up.  But it grated on both of us a little.

At my first interview I got the impression that the Ordnance were surprisingly efficient and would be very prompt in giving us what we wanted.  But I gradually discovered that they really possessed very little of what they first promised me, and that nothing was known for certain as to when further stores would arrive.  I telephoned to Ferrara that the immediate prospects were poor, and was told in reply to wait three or four days and see how much turned up.  Having pestered various Ordnance officers to the limit of their endurance, I therefore decided to go away for two days.

Siramo went for two days to his family at Turin and I took the train to Genoa, arriving in the early afternoon.  After lunch I set out to walk eastwards along the Cornice Road.  It was a relief to my thoughts and feelings to be quite alone.  The day was windy and sunless and rather cold, but the warm and audacious colouring of the Villas and the little fishing villages seemed almost to draw sunshine out of the dull sky.  I stopped at Sturla and drank two cups of coffee and ate some biscuits, and decided to walk on to Nervi.  It was now near the hour of sunset and the sun, having kept invisible all day, half broke through the clouds, turning them first red and then golden.  So the sky was when I came to Quarto dei Mille, with its monument looking out to sea, that historic place whence Garibaldi and the Thousand set sail for their great adventure, the liberation of Sicily and Naples, and the unification of Italy, with British warships following them, some say by chance, so that the enemies of Italy dared not interrupt their passage.

Then said I to myself, standing all alone at Quarto, “Italy will not be defeated, nor even mainly saved from defeat by foreign aid.  The strongest and best of her children will pull her through, even though they be not all the nation.  But the rest will do their share also, and will follow, when the bravest lead.  How young, and how uncertain of herself as yet, is Italy!  And yet, how lovable, how well worth serving!” The Germans with their “special gas” and with other factors in their favour, counted on breaking, not only the line