War followed us into Italy. But from the war as one finds it in England and France it differed. Perhaps we were too far west, but except for the field uniforms of green and the new scabbards of gun-metal, and, at Turin, four aeroplanes in the air at the same time, you might not have known that Italy was one of the Allies. For one thing, you saw no wounded. Again, perhaps, it was because we were too far south and west, and that the fighting in Tyrol is concentrated. But Bordeaux is farther from the battle-line of France than is Naples from the Italian front, and the multitudes of wounded in Bordeaux, the multitudes of women in black in Bordeaux, make one of the most appalling, most significant pictures of this war. In two days in Naples I did not see one wounded man. But I saw many Germans and German signs, and no one had scratched Mumm off the wine-card. A country that is one of the Allies, and yet not at war with Germany, cannot be taken very seriously. Indeed, in England the War Office staff speak of the Italian communiques as the "weather reports." In Naples the foreigners accuse Italy of running with the hare and the hounds. They asked what is her object in keeping on friendly terms with the bitterest enemy of the Allies. Is there an understanding that after the war she and Germany will together carve slices off of Austria? Whatever her ulterior object may be, her present war spirit does not impress the visitor. It is not the spirit of France and England. One man said to me: "Why can't you keep the Italian-Americans in America? Over there they earn money, and send millions of it to Italy. When they come here to fight, not only that money stops, but we have to feed and pay them." It did not sound grateful. Nor as though Italy were seriously at war. You do not find France and England, or Germany, grudging the man who returns to fight for his country his rations and pay. And Italy pays her soldiers five cents a day. Many of the reservists and volunteers from America who answered the call to arms are bitterly disappointed. It was their hope to be led at once to the firing-line. Instead, after six months, they are still in camp. The families some brought with them are in great need. They are not used to living on five cents a day. An Italian told me the heaviest drain upon the war-relief funds came from the families of these Italian-Americans, stranded in their own country. He also told me his chief duty was to meet them on their arrival. "But haven't they money when they arrive from America?" I asked. "That's it," he said naively. "I'm at the wharf to keep their countrymen from robbing them of it." At present in Europe you cannot take gold out of any country that is at war. As a result, gold is less valuable than paper, and when I exchanged my double-eagles for paper I lost.