Milan we found today is an industrial town, entirely modern, dominated not by the cathedral as of old, but by the spirit of the new Italy.  They took us to a luncheon given by the American chamber of commerce.  We heard nothing of their antiquities, and little of their ruins.  We had to fight to get time to see the cathedral, whose windows are boarded up or filled with white glass; but the Milanese were anxious to have us see their great factories; their automobile works, their Caproni airship plant and the up-to-the-minute organization of industrial efficiency everywhere.  Here in Milan we saw thousands of men out of uniform, but wearing the ribbon arm-band of the industrial reservists.  We fancied these Milanese were bigger, huskier men than the men in the south of Italy, and that they looked better-kept and better-bred.  They certainly are a fierce and indomitable people.  The Austrians don’t raid the Milanese in airships.  They said that once the Austrians came and the next day the Milanese loaded up a fleet of big Capronis with 30,000 pounds of high explosives, sailed over Austria and blew some town to atoms.  So Milan has never been bothered since as other border towns of Italy have been bothered by air-raiders.  The days we spent in Milan were like days in a modern American industrial city—­say Toledo, or St. Paul or Detroit or Kansas City.

Turin is similarly modern and industrial, though not so beautiful as Milan.  In Turin we saw the scene of the riot—­the “grosser rebellion,” which our carabinieri friend told us about.  Signor Nitti, now a member of the Italian cabinet, who entertained us in Rome, told the Italian parliament—­according to the American newspapers—­that the millers caused the riot.  The bread ration did not come to Turin one morning, and the working people struck.  Nitti says the millers were hoarding flour and caused the delay.  The strike grew general over the city.  Workers wandering about the town were threatened with the police if they congregated.  They congregated, and some troops from a nearby training camp were called.  The troops were new; they were also friends of the strikers.  They refused to fire.  Then the strikers built barricades in the streets and in a day or so the regular troops came down from the mountains with machine guns, fired on the barricades and when hundreds were hit the rebellion was quelled.  And Signor Nitti says it was all because some profit hog stopped the ordinary flow of flour from the farmer to the consumer of bread!  There is, of course, the other side.  They told us in Turin that boys in their teens were found dead back of the barricades with thousand lire notes in their pockets, and that German agents came during the first hours of the strike and spread money lavishly to make the riot a rebellion.  Probably this is true.  The profiteer made the strike possible.  It was an opportunity for rebellion, and Germany took the opportunity.  Always she is on hand with spies to buy what she cannot honestly