[Footnote 1:  I heard this story many times and I believe this was one of the causes of the rapid increase of the first confusion.  The Austrians had tried this trick without success against the Third Army on the Carso, as had the Germans against us in France.  There must obviously be a certain amount of confusion already existing, if the trick is to have any chance of succeeding.]

[Footnote 2:  A certain province in Italy, not his own.]

He went on to speak of economic difficulties.  “Italy is poor,” he said, “and the Allies are rich.  Yet coal costs four times as much in Italy as in France, and shipping is hardly to be had.  Our Government has never driven hard enough bargains with the other Allies.  After all, Italy came into the war as a volunteer, and not under the conscription of old treaties.  But the Allies give her no credit for this.  The French, since the war began, have recovered all their old ‘blague.’  They talk incessantly of what they have done, and despise everyone else.  But look how unstable they are politically!  They change their ministries, as often as some men change their mistresses.  The Pope, too, is an enemy of Italy and a friend of Austria.  He aims at the restoration of his temporal power.  Many of the priests went about, both before and after Caporetto, trying to betray their country.  Some told the soldiers that God had sent the disaster of Caporetto to show them the folly and the sinfulness of loving their corruptible country here below in poor earthly Italy, better than the incorruptible country of all good Catholics, God’s eternal kingdom in the skies!”

He spoke bitterly, as was not unnatural.

I made the acquaintance also in the Mess of a Medical Officer, named Rossi, in peace time a University Professor of Nervous Pathology, who was now in charge of a hospital for “nervosi,” or shell-shock cases, four miles outside the town.  One afternoon Jeune and I accepted an invitation to visit this hospital.  We drove out to it in a carrozza, accompanied by Rossi and a young woman, who went there daily to teach some of the illiterate patients to read and write.

No one can begin to understand what modern war means without some personal acquaintance with shell-shock cases.  They are, especially for non-combatants, the most instructive of all the fruits of war, much more instructive than dead bodies or men without limbs.  And then, having watched and talked or tried to talk with a variety of these still living creatures, let any man, even a profiteer or a theologian, look into his heart and ask himself whether he really agrees with the Chaplain, whom I have already quoted, that “three or four years of war may be tremendously worth while.”