The Spirit of Italy
We cannot close more fittingly than by quoting Mr. Sidney Low's highly informing comments on the spirit of Italy:[2]
Photograph by E. M. Newman
LACE MAKERS HOLD TO THEIR TRADE
Island of Burrano, Venice
"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....
Copyright, Western Newspaper Union
WOMAN LETTER CARRIER, ROME