The Italian Army had to endure a great deal
of that kind of complication. Theoretically, of course, a general could
throw back cavalry and mounted police along the line of his retreat and
forbid any civilian traffic whatever under pain of military penalties;
but it is very difficult to use such measures against your own
countrymen threatened with invasion, specially when the whole aim and
object of your war is to free men of your own race from foreign
domination. And not only does the sentimental reason of saving
fellow-citizens from the yoke of an invader forbid this course, but also
considerations of common humanity. In the old wars, when the danger-area
of fighting was restricted to the places where opposing troops actually
came into contact, there was no particular danger for the civilian
inhabitants remaining in invaded territory; though their property might
suffer from the enemy's requisitions, their lives were likely to be
safe. But wars of this modern character spread destruction broadcast
over a whole region. A rear-guard action will involve a rain of shells
that may smash to pieces any village on the line of retreat; gas may be
used, creeping into the refuges where the non-combatant population has
taken shelter, and choking them there like vermin in a hole. War is no
longer a civilly organized affair of pitched battles; it is a wild fury
of destruction, raging across the whole country-side like a typhoon.
If the English batteries on the Italian front had brought with them to
Italy their full organization of transport, they could have saved all
their ammunition and stores, their ordnance workshops and supplies.
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