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Except in the case of Venice, the war does not seem as yet to have made nearly such a mark upon life in Italy as it has in England or provincial France.  People speak of Italy as a poor country, but that is from a banker’s point of view.  In some respects she is the richest country on earth, and in the matter of staying power I should think she is better off than any other belligerent.  She produces food in abundance everywhere; her women are agricultural workers, so that the interruption of food production by the war has been less serious in Italy than in any other part of Europe.  In peace time, she has constantly exported labour; the Italian worker has been a seasonal emigrant to America, north and south, to Switzerland, Germany and the south of France.  The cessation of this emigration has given her great reserves of man power, so that she has carried on her admirable campaign with less interference with her normal economic life than any other power.  The first person I spoke to upon the platform at Modane was a British officer engaged in forwarding Italian potatoes to the British front in France.  Afterwards, on my return, when a little passport irregularity kept me for half a day in Modane, I went for a walk with him along the winding pass road that goes down into France.  “You see hundreds and hundreds of new Fiat cars,” he remarked, “along here—­going up to the French front.”

But there is a return trade.  Near Paris I saw scores of thousands of shells piled high to go to Italy....

I doubt if English people fully realise either the economic sturdiness or the political courage of their Italian ally.  Italy is not merely fighting a first-class war in first-class fashion but she is doing a big, dangerous, generous and far-sighted thing in fighting at all.  France and England were obliged to fight; the necessity was as plain as daylight.  The participation of Italy demanded a remoter wisdom.  In the long run she would have been swallowed up economically and politically by Germany if she had not fought; but that was not a thing staring her plainly in the face as the danger, insult and challenge stared France and England in the face.  What did stare her in the face was not merely a considerable military and political risk, but the rupture of very close financial and commercial ties.  I found thoughtful men talking everywhere I have been in Italy of two things, of the Jugo-Slav riddle and of the question of post war finance.  So far as the former matter goes, I think the Italians are set upon the righteous solution of all such riddles, they are possessed by an intelligent generosity.  They are clearly set upon deserving Jugo-Slav friendship; they understand the plain necessity of open and friendly routes towards Roumania.  It was an Italian who set out to explain to me that Fiume must be at least a free port; it would be wrong and foolish to cut the trade of Hungary off from the Mediterranean.  But the banking puzzle is a more intricate and puzzling matter altogether than the possibility of trouble between Italian and Jugo-Slav.