“We’ve evidently brought bad luck,” said some one, and so, little though we guessed it, we had.

[Sidenote:  The Italians expect an Austrian push.]

During the first fortnight of October it had been a remark frequently made throughout Italy that an Austrian push was probable before the real winter set in.  I had heard this likelihood discussed by people at the Chamber of Deputies on my way through Rome, but without serious significance being given to it.  The Austro-Swiss frontier had been closed for five weeks, always a sign that important movements of troops were going on in the enemy’s country; something more unusual was that even the postal mails from Austria to Holland and Scandinavia had been suspended.

[Sidenote:  Cadorna believes the enemy will use large reserves.]

According to the talk one heard in Italy, Cadorna had already had in mind the chance of a strong autumn attack on his army when he arrested his own offensive in September after capturing by a brilliant stroke the greater part of the Bainsizza plateau beyond the Isonzo, taking thirty thousand prisoners and one hundred and fifty guns.  The French and British general staffs, it was said, had asked Cadorna whether he meant to go on with his offensive, for which they had contributed contingents of guns.  Cadorna’s reply had been that he had strong Austrian forces against him, of which he knew the total, but that he also believed large reserves of unknown quantity were available for use against him, owing to the collapse of the Russian Army.  In these circumstances he preferred to consolidate and prepare rather than to continue to challenge forces that could not be exactly estimated.

Both the increase of enemy strength on the Italian front and the paralyzing uncertainty under which the Allies labored, were directly due to the debacle of the Russian Army during the summer.  The means by which commanders-in-chief arrive at the indispensable knowledge of what forces they have against them is through a highly organized intelligence department, working in close cooperation with the similar departments of the other Allied armies.

[Sidenote:  How the enemy’s strength is ascertained.]

Each of these departments, by interrogating prisoners and reading papers found on enemy dead, by collating the reports of the air service, by minutely sifting the enemy press, arrives at a fairly accurate knowledge of the enemy’s order of battle on the front of its own army.  So essential is this system to the successful carrying-on of operations that raids are often specially organized on the enemy trenches with the sole object of capturing prisoners who may be able to give information that will clear up some point about which there is uncertainty.  All the knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions thus collected by each of the Allied armies is open to all of them; it is exchanged and compared and collated, so that they finally arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of the distribution of the enemy’s forces in each one of the theaters of war.