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-I31-

vans come into Florence empty; no food brought in for the starving people. The Allies evidently's 'en fichent' says D.di D. who can no longer find even the rice with tomato sauce which for two months had formed his one repast a day. He snarled even more fiercely when telling us of the disrespect shown to him by the English. He, an officer of the last war, was termed 'a chap' by the Military Officials. 'There's that chap still waiting outside!' he heard an official exclaim. 'I haven't been termed a chap for many years,' said the offended, grey-haired and pompous aristocrat. Personally I have noticed that the English dislike the Italians and I hear that it is very much the same with the French. But, says N., the French have a tongue in their mouth, and I to answer, the Italians have a healthy and beautiful race to show to the world. (Alas! will it long remain so?)

Surely such giants as Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Michelangelo and many others pervade the Italian race of today even though it be rarely manifested. In suchwise a Shakespeare enriches every Englishman and woman, no matter how impervious to this influence they may now seem to be. Giants are still springing up in every country, Giants that The Bolsheviks would destroy since they upset so completely their conceptions of the great levelling process, the deadening uniformity decreed for all.

But to return to D.di D. Is he the very same man who only a month ago counselled us to dive with confidence into the