For though the great majority of the Italian army had succeeded for the moment in escaping from the grasp of the Austro-Germans, the enemy was steadfastly pursuing. Encouraged by a victory that must have more than realized his most ambitious hopes, reinforced by captured guns and material, he would wait only long enough to get sufficient strength into position before hurling the whole of his weight once more against the Italian line.
Impossible to meet the second shock on the Tagliamento.
To meet this second shock on the Tagliamento was not possible. The river itself quickly became, as the rain stopped and the waters fell, too easily traversable an obstacle to be worth fortifying. The line which it would have imposed upon the Italian army was, moreover, too long to be held in the depth desirable for resistance to the attack of superior numbers. So the Tagliamento was occupied as an intermediate position only long enough to shield the further retreat of the army and its transport behind the broader and deeper stream of the Piave.
The new stand behind the Piave.
Winter rains will delay enemy's heavy guns.
Here at the time of writing the Italian forces are in position and the enemy's advanced detachments have begun to register ranges and destroy possible observation posts across the river with such artillery as they have so far had the time to bring up. Whether the Piave line and the rest of the Italian front to the westward, which has had to be modified in conformation with the general movement of retreat, can be held indefinitely, will probably be a question of heavy guns. If the enemy can bring up his larger artillery before reinforcements of the same character arrive from France and England, a further retreat from north and east to another river line may well be necessary. Fortunately the winter rains that have set in make for delay in the arrival of such cumbrous war-engines as the Austrian seventeen-inch mortars, and it may be that persistent mud and rain will compel the Austrians to be satisfied with holding the considerable tract of territory that they have won.
Danger that Venice must be abandoned.
Cathedrals and palaces are protected by sand bags.
But all preparations are being made to face the conceivable eventuality of another retirement. The most serious consequence that this would entail would be the abandonment of Venice and the necessity of bringing that inestimable city within close range of the destruction of war. Even at this early stage, therefore, while the danger to Venice is as yet not urgent, the Italian Government is doing its best to surround her with the protection of such neutrality as the conventions of war, for what they are worth, secure to undefended and unoccupied towns. No person in uniform is allowed to enter the place and the civilian population is being encouraged to leave by free railway transport and subventions to support them until they can settle elsewhere. Even in such tragic hours Venice keeps up her old tradition of light-heartedness. The cafés round the great piazza are full in the evenings with a cheerful crowd. Moreover, to go into St. Mark's is to enter a sort of neolithic grotto; the pillars, set about with sand-bags, have the girth of the arcades of a Babylonian temple; bulging poultices of sacks protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel. The Doge's Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding than it could have been when it was being built; each of those delicate columns of different design is set around with a stout palisade of timber balks. Venice, indeed, looks like a drawing-room with the dust-sheets on the furniture and the chandeliers in bags, and to complete the parallel, the family is going away before one's eyes.
Sad days for Italy, days unimaginable a month ago. There must, indeed, be virtue in the Allies' cause since such ordeals as these still leave our courage high.