[Sidenote:  The Italians are evacuating the Bainsizza plateau.]

It was from that last fair glimpse of Triest that you turned back to the grave realities of situation.  On the next morning, the twenty-sixth, the Italian supreme command announced that the Bainsizza plateau was being evacuated.  It had been won with great losses and gallantry in August, and the Italians had laboriously equipped it with roads and military establishments to create a firm taking-off place for the next attack upon the crest of Mount Gabriele, which was expected to drive the Austrians back for five miles up the Vippaco valley, on the way to Laibach, one of the back-doors to Triest.

The same day came the news of the fall of the Italian Government, which had been attacked during the fortnight by a strange combination of the advanced wing of the pro-war party who considered that the ministry was not displaying enough firmness in its conduct of the campaign, with the pacifist socialist party who denounced the Government for infringing the constitutional rights of the people in the interests of militarism.  A feeling of malaise was in the air.  All the elements of success were present in the Italian Army except the most important of all, the psychological element.

[Sidenote:  Evacuation of Udine.]

By this time motor-lorries had already begun to pour back through Udine, and in the streets the Signal Corps were taking down the telegraph-wires.  You saw little parties of father, mother, and children suddenly emerge from house or shop, each with hand-luggage.  If you looked closely you generally saw that the woman was crying.

[Sidenote:  Air fights between Germans and Italians.]

On the twenty-sixth there were frequent attempts to reach Udine by German flyers who were new to the ground.  It was the first time that the Italian Air Corps had had to deal with a German attempt to contest their supremacy and they came well out of the trial.  Ten enemy machines were brought down during the day, two individual Italian airmen accounting for three each.  When the enemy machines were sighted heading for Udine the jarring scream of a siren gave the alarm, and the police cleared the streets.

Saturday, October 27, was the day of general exodus.

[Sidenote:  Batteries hold rearward positions.]

I left Udine early on Saturday morning, in the car of the British general commanding our artillery contingent on the Italian front, to go up to the batteries and see how they got on in the retreat.  We crawled out toward the front along roads blocked with rearward-moving traffic for which there was no organization, and after lunching at the general’s headquarters at Gradisca, I went on to Rubbia, just across the Isonzo, to the south of Gorizia, where was the group headquarters of the batteries.  Already the supply service of the Third Army were pouring in a black mass along the road, screened at the side and overhead by rushmats