At Cracow in 1892 I tried to buy for one of my children the little Polish national cap, but after a vain search for it through many shops (where I was generally suspected of being a spy for the Austrian police), the cap was brought to me at night, in my private room, by shopkeepers who had been afraid to sell it openly in the day. At Wieliezhe, I, with some forty persons of various nationalities (including the usual contingent of detectives), descended the immense and marvellous salt-mine which is now used as a show place for visitors. After passing, by the flare of torches, down long galleries of underground workings, we were plunged into darkness by a rush of wind over a subterranean river through which we had to shoulder our way on a raft. Then suddenly, no face being visible in that black tunnel under the earth, the Polish part of our company broke into a wild, fierce, frenzied singing of their national anthem which, in those days, they dare not sing on the surface and in the light: “Poland is not lost for ever; she will live once more.” No, Poland is not lost for ever! She will live once more! THE OLD SOLDIER OF LIBERTY And Italy! Although it is only since May that Italy has stood by our side on the battle-front, in an effort to avert from the world a new military domination, we have known from the beginning that her heart was with the Allies, and she was willing to stake all, when her time came, for the same principles of humanity and freedom. A Roman friend tells me that he heard an Italian statesman say, “Italy always meant war.” We can well believe it. We have believed it from the first. On one of the early days of August, when a British regiment was passing through the streets of London on its way to Charing Cross, it was noticed that an old man in a red shirt and a peaked cap was marching with a proud step by the side of our soldiers. He turned out to be a Garibaldian, who had been living many years in Soho. Having dug up from his time-eaten trunk the simple regimentals of the army of the Liberator, he had come out to walk with our boys on the first stage of their journey to France. In the person of that old soldier of liberty we saw and saluted Italy--Italy that had known what it was to make her own sacrifices for the right, and was now ready to show us her sympathy in this supreme crisis in our history. But she had a trying, almost a tragic, time. For ten long months she lay under the quivering wing of war, in danger of attack from our enemies, and liable to misunderstanding among ourselves. She was party to a Triple Alliance which, ironically enough, bound her (up to a point) to her historic adversary, Austria, as well as to that Germany whose emperors had again and again sent their legions south in vain efforts to rule even the papacy from across the Rhine.