“But,” said the husband casually, “Mr. Runciman is a shipowner.”

I explained that he was nothing of the sort.  It was true that he came of a shipowning family—­and perhaps inherited a slight tendency to see things from a shipowning point of view—­but in England we did not suspect a man on such a score as that.

“In Italy I think we should,” said the husband of the Irish lady.

4

This incidental discussion is a necessary part of my impression of Italy at war.  The two western allies and Great Britain in particular have to remember Italy’s economic needs, and to prepare to rescue them from the blind exploitation of private profit.  They have to remember these needs too, because, if they are left out of the picture, then it becomes impossible to understand the full measure of the risk Italy has faced in undertaking this war for an idea.  With a Latin lucidity she has counted every risk, and with a Latin idealism she has taken her place by the side of those who fight for a liberal civilisation against a Byzantine imperialism.

As I came out of the brightly lit Galleria Vittorio Emanuele into the darkened Piazza del Duomo I stopped under the arcade and stood looking up at the shadowy darkness of that great pinnacled barn, that marble bride-cake, which is, I suppose, the last southward fortress of the Franco-English Gothic.

“It was here,” said my host, “that we burnt the German stuff.”

“What German stuff?”

“Pianos and all sorts of things.  From the shops.  It is possible, you know, to buy things too cheaply—­and to give too much for the cheapness.”

THE WESTERN WAR (SEPTEMBER, 1916)

I. RUINS

1

If I had to present some particular scene as typical of the peculiar vileness and mischief wrought by this modern warfare that Germany has elaborated and thrust upon the world, I do not think I should choose as my instance any of those great architectural wrecks that seem most to impress contemporary writers.  I have seen the injuries and ruins of the cathedrals at Arras and Soissons and the wreckage of the great church at Saint Eloi, I have visited the Hotel de Ville at Arras and seen photographs of the present state of the Cloth Hall at Ypres—­a building I knew very well indeed in its days of pride—­and I have not been very deeply moved.  I suppose that one is a little accustomed to Gothic ruins, and that there is always something monumental about old buildings; it is only a question of degree whether they are more or less tumble-down.  I was far more desolated by the obliteration of such villages as Fricourt and Dompierre, and by the horrible state of the fields and gardens round about them, and my visit to Arras railway station gave me all the sensations of coming suddenly on a newly murdered body.