We trust, and we hope.
Greetings to you.
(Signed)
- L. Andreev,
- K. Arseniev,
- I. Bunin,
- U. Bunin,
- I. Belousov,
- M. Gorky,
- V. Veresaev,
- A. Grusinsky,
- N. Davydov,
- S. Elpatievsky,
- I. Ignatov,
- S. Melgunov,
- A. Serafimovich,
- N. Teleshov,
- I. Shmelev,
- N. Morozov,
- Count A.N. Tolstoy,
- N. Rusanov,
- F. Kriukov,
- A. Gornfeld,
- A. Pieshechonov,
- N. Kareyev,
- F. Batushkov,
- L. Panteleyev,
- N. Kotliarevsky,
- V. Miakotin,
- V. Vodovosov,
- P. Sakulin,
- Olnem-Tsekhovskaya,
- A. Koni,
- W. Kranikhfeld,
- B. Lazarevsky,
- P. Potapenko,
- Th. Sologub,
- T. Schepkina-Kupernik,
- W. Bogucharsky,
- K. Barantsevich,
- S. Vengerov,
- P. Miliukov,
- A. Prugavin,
- M. Kovalevsky,
- A. Posnikov,
- E. Letkova-Sultanova,
- D. Ovsianniko-Kulikovsky,
- A. Remezov,
- D. Merezhkovsky,
- Z. Hippics,
- F. Zelinsky,
- N. Tchaikovsky,
- A. Blok,
- E. Tchirikov,
- A. Petrischev,
- I. Bielokonsky,
- Prince A. Sumbatov,
- W. Fritche,
- A. Veselovsky,
- W. Nemerovich-Danchenko,
- Prince E. Troubetskoy,
- I. Shpazhinsky,
- Th. Kokoshkin,
- Count E.L. Tolstoy,
- N. Temkocsky,
- M. Artisibashev,
- U. Baltrushaitis,
- U. Aichenwald,
- Prince D. Shakhovsky,
- W. Brusov.
Evviva L’Italia
By William Archer
Mr. Archer's article praising the Italian decision and purpose appeared originally in The London Daily News.
ONE of the most beautiful and memorable of human experiences is to start, one fine morning, from some point in German Switzerland or Tyrol and, in two or three days—or it may be in one swinging stretch—to tramp over an Alpine pass and down into the Promised Land below. It is of no use to rush it in a motor; you might as well hop over by aeroplane. In order to savor the experience to the full, you must take staff and scrip, like the Ritter Tannhäuser, and go the pilgrim's way. It is a joy even to pass from the guttural and explosive place names of Teutonia to the liquid music of the southern vocables—from Brieg to Domo d'Ossola, from Göschenen to Bellinzona, from St. Moritz to Chiavenna, from Botzen and Brixen to Ala and Verona. It is a still greater joy to exchange the harsh, staring colors of the north for the soft luminosity of the south, as you zigzag down from the bare snows to the pines, from the pines to the chestnuts, from the chestnuts to the trellised vineyards. And just about where the vineyards begin, you come upon two wayside posts, one of them inscribed "Schweiz" or "Oesterreich," the other bearing the magic word "Italia." If your heart does not leap at the sight of it you may as well about-turn and get you home again; for you have no sense of history, no love of art, no hunger for divine, inexhaustible beauty. For all these things are implicit in the one word, "Italy."