"Is, I live-a there five year."
That also got over and his comrades realized that he was a polyglot. Then in a joyous spirit of over-confidence, he waved the oriflamme of speech in our faces.
"Is, my papa he live-a in Brooklyn. He keepa da butcha shop and is maka da roast bif. Is, my papa's brodder he live-a in Brooklyn too. He keepa da saloon and is maka da jag!" Then we shook hands as fellow Americans.
In another hour we had wormed our way through the tunnels to the other side of the peak, and had scrambled down the mountainside to the general headquarters. Never since Hannibal's day were more interesting brigade headquarters established. They were niched into the mountain side about 4,000 feet above a gorge below. The sleeping quarters and offices were half tunnelled into the hillside. The diningroom was mounted on a platform overlooking the gorge below. Across the gorge a quarter of a mile away an aerial tram ran. That morning two airplanes—an Italian plane and an Austrian—met out by the tram wire in a battle. It could be seen as easily from the diningroom platform as if it had been half down the block; yet the airmen were 4,000 feet in the air. We had luncheon at the brigade headquarters, and it was made a gala occasion. Some one had brought in an Austrian cow which was brigade property and we had real cream. Otherwise it was a war dinner. We had hors d'ouvres—thin sliced dried ham, sausages, and sardines—a delectable paste with parmesian cheese on it, roast beef and brown potatoes, salad and broiled chicken, and then the chef d'ouvres, the cream upon a charlotte russe! After that came cheese and coffee. Chianti and a cider champagne were served. The mess was proud of itself, as it should have been. But it seems sad to think how soon that Austrian cow went home. For within three weeks from the time we sat there, the general had surrendered in the gulch below the air-tram wire and the Germans had come with their big guns to fill the vacant emplacements!
We spent one night on our journey along the Italian front at Vicenza, and there, although the place was jammed full of soldiers, we left the war behind to stroll by moonlight over the beautiful mediaeval town. There is a fine square there—not so broad as the square at St. Mark's where the tourists used to feed the doves, but to me it seemed as beautiful. For upon the square was the famous arcade which Palladio erected around the city-hall of the place. It stood beautiful and gloomy before us in the moonlight, one of the world's real bits of architecture. As Americans we had a special interest in the arcade because it was typical of the best of Palladio's work and our own Thomas Jefferson, studying it, had reproduced it and Americanized it in some of the buildings of the University of Virginia, buildings that have had a distinct influence upon American architecture! A number of Palladio's other works we saw that night, softened and glorified by the moonlight. And we saw also an old French house, not twenty-five feet wide, but a gem of French architecture erected before the discovery of America. Finally we went back and stood by the statue of Palladio and listened to the low rumble of the guns on the front and wondered what the Germans would do with such a lovely thing as this Vicenza if by any chance they ever took it. That day we had looked down from a mountain-top upon an Austrian town lying peacefully in the valley below us directly under the Italian guns. The guns of the Austrians and the Italians were smashing away at each other from the mountain-tops over and across the town.
"You could pulverize that town easily enough," Henry said to the
Italian who was taking the Americans through the trenches.
"Oh, yes," he answered. "But it's a beautiful little town! Why ruin it?" His theory was that if the Italians took it they would want it whole and would want the loyalty and respect of the people of the town; if they did not take it, why smash a beautiful little town just to be smashing?
The German theory, of course, is exactly opposite to this. They would smash the town, if they were to take it, to put fear into the hearts of the inhabitants and command obedience; and if they knew they could not take it they would smash it to cripple the enemy that much! We of the Allies desire respect and loyalty that come from reason. The Germans demand unreasoning obedience and denied that, they destroy. One philosophy is Christian; the other Babylonian. But the devilish strength of the German philosophy came to us more forcibly in Italy than it came elsewhere because of certain contrasts. They were contrasts in what might be called public wisdom. The Germans take better care of their poor than some of the Allies. The Germans know that poverty is a curse to a nation, and during the past generation they have done much to alleviate it. And in alleviating poverty they have kept their poor docile; and they go into battle feeling that they have something to fight for. In the allied countries too often we have let the devil take the hindermost. As we rode one afternoon from Vicenza to Milan we wondered, looking at the farms and the farmers along the road, why those farmers should be asked to die for a country that kept them in so low an estate. And yet they were better off than the farmers of Southern Italy. But in socializing industry the Italian farmer has been forgotten, and when the press came upon the Italian front, thousands of ignorant peasant soldiers lay down their arms, deluded by a German spy ruse so simple that it should have fooled no intelligent soldier. But they were not intelligent. Their intelligence had been eaten up by their landlords for generations, and in a crisis the German civilization overcame its enemy! You cannot shake the sleeping peasant on the wine-cart from a thousand years' sleep and make him get up and go out and whip a soldier who is even half awake!
As we rode from Vicenza to Milan we had a curious experience. There entered our compartment at twilight one of the carabinieri! We had been looking with admiration at the carabinieri for days. They were well-set-up soldiers, apparently of a picked grade of men, who wore wide cocked hats, like those worn by the British troops in the American revolution. The cocked hats of the Italian carabinieri are as wide as their handsome shoulders and they make striking figures. This one who entered our compartment was drunk—grandly, gorgeously and sociably drunk. He wanted to talk to us. He tried Italian and we shook our heads. Then Medill tackled him in French and he shook his head. Then Henry squared off and gave him the native Kansas English—with appropriate gestures. But the Italian sighed amiably and it was clear he was balked. Then he looked up and down the outer corridor of the car, came in, shut the door and smiled as broadly as his cocked hat.
"Sprecken sie Deutsch?" he asked, and Medill answered, "Seemlich!" When it was apparent that two of us understood German he opened up. He had to talk slowly, but he was willing to make any sacrifice to get conversation going. He rambled along in a maudlin way, and finally picked up an illustrated paper containing an account of the Turin riots, which angered him, and then and there being, that Italian soldier told us in German the story of what he called der grosser rebellion! To talk German in an allied country today is as much as one's life is worth. For a soldier to talk German is a crime; for a soldier to tell three foreigners about a riot in his country, which he, as a soldier behind machine guns had to suppress, killing hundreds, was mighty near to treason. And we gasped. We thought he might be testing us out as potential spies. So we shut up. But he ambled on, and slowly, as the liquor overcame him, he ran down and went sound asleep with the offending paper in his arms. Perhaps he was one of those Germans wearing the Italian uniform who in the German drive three weeks later gave commands to the ignorant peasant regiments to lay down their arms and surrender! At least it was reported in Europe that thousands of them abandoned their works under the command of German spies!