"Of all the belligerent nations I have seen, Italy seems to me the most tranquil, contented and serenely confident. She has endured heavy losses and is called upon to make great sacrifices, but her people have counted the cost and they pay it resolutely, cheerfully, almost, one would say, gaily. They have no love for war and on this one they entered with hesitating and doubtful steps, but now, I think, they feel, not only that it was necessary and right, but that it will give them some things which were wanting in the years of peace. War is a monstrous evil; but from its furnace of pain and suffering Italy, with other nations, may emerge hardened and tempered. She will gain a larger unity and that not merely by annexing the unredeemed territory. The war has gone far to obliterate that division of classes and localities which was the inheritance of her troubled past. The common effort and the common burden have crowned the edifice which the makers of Italy built up in the nineteenth century.... "What Italy needs is security, sufficient to develop to the full her economic resources and her national individuality; and that she intends to obtain. She is resolved to be independent of external patronage, protection and supervision of any kind, and to enjoy all the rights, privileges, ambitions, which belong to the greater nations of the earth. She believes herself capable of excelling, not merely in art, science, letters, philosophy, laws, but in production, manufacturing, commerce, the exploitation of waste and backward lands. She is not content that her people, so intelligent, so industrious, so capable, should be packed off year by year in shoals to form the ill-paid labor helots of wealthier communities; she prefers that they should be kept at home to develop the riches and intensified vitality of their own land. She has watched the rise of Germany from poverty and weakness to strength and industrial magnificence; and she believes that the Latin capacity for organization, invention, scientific adaptation and enterprise, is not inferior to the Teutonic. She thinks she can do many of the things that Germany has done, and some things which Germany will never do; and she means to try. It is for the great free nations, with which she is now associated, to survey her effort with sympathetic eyes, and extend to it all the aid and encouragement in their power." [2] From "Italy in the War" [Illustration: WOMAN LETTER CARRIER, ROME Copyright, Western Newspaper Union] [Illustration: SCHOOL INSTITUTED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS At the Italian front, behind the war zone Press Illustrating Service. Inc] _SUPPLEMENTARY READING_ ITALY IN THE WAR. _By Sidney J. M. Low_ ITALY AT WAR. _By H. Vivian_ EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR. _By G. Ferrero_ THE BOOK OF ITALY. _Edited by Raffaelo Piccoli_ A book of story, essay, verse and picture, interpreting the spirit of Italy.