are gone too—­refugees, no doubt, in the camps which the Government has erected for them near the larger towns.  One no longer hears the tinkle of cow-bells on the mountain slopes, peasants no longer wave a friendly greeting from their doors:  it is a stricken and deserted land.  But Cortina d’Ampezzo, which is the cheflieu of the Cadore, though still showing many traces of the shell-storms which it has survived, was quickening into life.  The big tourist hotels at either end of the town, behind which the Italians emplaced their heavy guns, were being refurnished in anticipation of the resumption of summer travel and the little shops where they sell souvenirs were reopening, one by one.  But the losses suffered by the inhabitants of these Alpine valleys, desperately serious as they are to them, are, after all, but insignificant when compared with the enormous havoc wrought by the armies in the thickly settled Friuli and on the rich Venetian plains.  Every one knows, presumably, that Italy had to draw more heavily upon her resources than any other country among the Allies (did you know that she spent in the war more than four-fifths of her total national wealth?) and that she is bowed down under an enormous load of taxation and a staggering burden of debt.  But what has been largely overlooked is that she is faced by the necessity of rebuilding a vast devastated area, in which the conditions are quite as serious, the need of assistance fully as urgent, as in the devastated regions of Belgium and France.

Probably you were not aware that a territory of some three and a half million acres, occupied by nearly a million and a half people, was overrun by the Austrians.  More than one-half of Venetia is comprised in that region lying east of the Piave where the wave of Hunnish invasion broke with its greatest fury.  The whole of Udine and Belluno, and parts of Treviso, Vicenza and Venice suffered the penalty of standing in the path of the Hun.  They were prosperous provinces, agriculturally and industrially, but now both industry and agriculture are almost at a standstill, for their factories have been burned, their machinery wrecked or stolen, their livestock driven off and their vineyards destroyed.  The damage done is estimated at 500 million dollars.  It is unnecessary for me to emphasize the seriousness of the problem which thus confronts the Italian Government.  Not only must it provide food and shelter for the homeless—­a problem which it has solved by the erection of great numbers of wooden huts somewhat similar to the barracks at the American cantonments—­but a great amount of livestock and machinery must be supplied before industry can be resumed.  At one period there was such desperate need of fuel that even the olive trees, one of the region’s chief sources of revenue, were sacrificed.  The Italians have set about the task of regeneration with an energy that discouragement cannot check.  But the undertaking is more than Italy can accomplish unaided, for the resources of her other provinces are seriously depleted.  We are fond of talking of the debt we owe to Italy, not merely for her sacrifices in the war, but for all that she has given us in art and music and literature.  Now is the time to show our gratitude.