anything one was willing to offer. In one shop I was shown German
field-glasses of high magnification and the finest makes for ten and
fifteen dollars a pair. The local jewelers were driving a brisk trade
with the Italian soldiers, who were lavish purchasers of Austrian war
medals and decorations. Captain Tron bought an Iron Cross of the second
class for the equivalent of thirty cents.

We left Innsbruck in the early morning with the intention of spending
that night at Cortina d'Ampezzo, but, owing to our unfamiliarity with
the roads and to delays due to tire trouble, nightfall found us lost in
the Dolomites. For mile after mile we pushed on through the darkness
along the narrow, slippery mountain roads, searching for a shelter in
which to pass the night. Occasionally the twin beams from our lamps
would illumine a building beside the road and we, chilled and hungry,
would exclaim "A house at last!" only to find, upon drawing nearer,
that, though it had evidently been once a habitation, it was now but a
shattered, blackened shell, a grim testimonial to the accuracy of
Austrian and Italian gunners. It was late in the evening and bitterly
cold, before, rounding a shoulder of the mountain up whose steep
gradients the car seemed to have been panting for ages, we saw in the
distance the welcome lights of the hamlet of Santa Lucia.

I do not think that the public has the slightest conception of the
widespread destruction and misery wrought by the war in these Alpine
regions. In nearly a hundred miles of motoring in the Cadore, formerly
one of the most delightful summer playgrounds in all Europe, we did not
pass a single building with a whole roof or an unshattered wall. The
hospitable wayside inns, the quaint villages, the picturesque peasant
cottages which the tourist in this region knew and loved are but
blackened ruins now. And the people are gone too--refugees, no doubt, in