with the red-white cockade. Farther on we unexpectedly passed from the mountain defile into a broad cavity, above which, in an amphitheatre, were assembled about 2,000 of our troops in a deluge of flags and waving hats. There was a long outburst of cheering, and I was then deeply moved as they intoned the strains of our national hymn, accompanied by the regimental band. The commander of the sector, having learnt about my visit, had rapidly organized this touching celebration which among these mountains at a height of several thousand feet, impressed me as few things have done in my life. I was greeted by several of those who had attended my university lectures. They were all filled with resolution and confidence, and they reminded me of the veiled suggestions which I had managed to embody in my lectures and which they had thoroughly understood.
During these moments there passed through my mind the memory of all that had happened from 1914 until October 1918, i.e. from the time when I had been creeping through the streets of Prague with treasonable documents in my pockets; when I had received messengers from Switzerland with suspicious luggage; when, as an outlaw, I had succeeded at the eleventh hour in escaping across the frontier; when I had begun my life of hardship in Paris, right up to that very moment when our national army were greeting me with songs and rifle salutes as a representative of our national Government, with a general of an Allied Great Power, and when, only a few miles away, the Austro-Hungarian military forces were awaiting an attack which was perhaps to have fatal consequences for them.
Amid the cheering of the soldiers we continued our journey until, in the vicinity of the front lines, I went with General Graziani and a number of officers into the trenches, which were a few hundred paces from those of the Austrians. We were standing immediately above Rovereto. General Graziani explained the position to me, and pointed out the scene of the recent conflicts, where several hundred Austrians had been captured. He also showed me another place where a number of our troops had been taken unawares and had defended themselves to the last with hand grenades rather than be taken prisoners. Now and then we heard the sound of firing, but on the whole the front at this point was quiet after the fighting which had taken place there in the preceding days.
We returned by another road along the front and around the
