The German authorities seem to be specially anxious to prove one thing: that the German soldiers are behaving like gentlemen, and that the stories about their deeds in Belgium and France are calumnies. Perhaps this very earnestness in trying to alter a prevalent belief proves that Germany has not quite a clear conscience on the subject. So, at least, seem to think the Italian public; and when some such pictures were shown lately in Rome and Milan, nobody took them seriously, and they were considered as childish fakes. Such films are offered to picture-house managers on extremely tempting terms by special agents, who tour all over Italy. Nearly all the atrocities which were proved to have been committed by the Germans themselves are attributed in these films to the Belgians. In one of them a Belgian woman sets fire to the bed on which three wounded German soldiers are dying, and runs away after taking their watches and pocket-books. In another picture the old tale of the _treachery_ of the Louvain inhabitants is staged in a very fierce manner; I have also seen a picture of a cavalry charge given as having been actually taken during the war in Flanders, but which was really part of a two years' old manœuvre film, easily recognisable because the uniforms have changed since then. As no English or French war pictures reach Italy, the local firms have to make their own war-films to suit the taste of their public. In the country round about Milan, Turin, and Rome, the principal centres of the Italian film industry, cardboard Belgian villages and churches, trenches, and terrible-looking fortresses have been constructed, and one can often see hundreds of "Tommies" in khaki, French "pioupious" and helmeted Germans fighting miniature battles. Another of Germany's devices to capture Italian public opinion was the famous tour of Italian journalists, organised by a well-known German emissary, who, by the way, has been arrested lately as a spy in Naples. None of Italy's best-known journalists, nor any correspondents of predominant papers, accepted the invitation, and only about twelve young men, belonging to second-rate journals, went, chaperoned by the vigilant Herr Sweinhart.