When we arrived at Milan we found there waiting for us a note from the Gilded Youth, whom we had met coming over on the boat from America. And it brought back our everlasting love affair. It is curious how that love affair kept projecting itself into the consciousness of two middle-aged men who reasonably may be supposed to have passed out of the zone of true romance. But the memory of the hazel eyes of the Gilded Youth as he gazed at the pretty face of the young nurse there in the moonlight at Landrecourt, with such exaltation and joy, kept bobbing back into our minds as we saw other lovers in other lands, married and single, crossing our paths. And there was the Young Doctor, diffident and reticent, who had his heart set on the girl, and the contest furnished us with a deathless theme for speculation. And here at Milan came this letter—just a note forwarded from Paris—telling us that the Gilded Youth could "stand and wait" no longer; he was going to hit back. He had quit the Ambulance service for aviation. And he was in a training camp near Paris. We wondered how many times during his training he would slip across the sky to Landrecourt to visit his true love. The one-horse buggy had been the only lover's chariot known to Henry and me, and we remembered how a red-wheeled cart used to lay out the neighbours in the heroic days of the nineties. So in our meditative moments we considered what a paralysing spectacle it would be for the neighbours to see a young man come swooping down upon his lady love's bower in an airplane and Henry, who was betting on the Gilded Youth as against the Doctor, began taking even money again!
[Illustration: We thought he might be testing us out as potential spies]
Milan we found today is an industrial town, entirely modern, dominated not by the cathedral as of old, but by the spirit of the new Italy. They took us to a luncheon given by the American chamber of commerce. We heard nothing of their antiquities, and little of their ruins. We had to fight to get time to see the cathedral, whose windows are boarded up or filled with white glass; but the Milanese were anxious to have us see their great factories; their automobile works, their Caproni airship plant and the up-to-the-minute organization of industrial efficiency everywhere. Here in Milan we saw thousands of men out of uniform, but wearing the ribbon arm-band of the industrial reservists. We fancied these Milanese were bigger, huskier men than the men in the south of Italy, and that they looked better-kept and better-bred. They certainly are a fierce and indomitable people. The Austrians don't raid the Milanese in airships. They said that once the Austrians came and the next day the Milanese loaded up a fleet of big Capronis with 30,000 pounds of high explosives, sailed over Austria and blew some town to atoms. So Milan has never been bothered since as other border towns of Italy have been bothered by air-raiders. The days we spent in Milan were like days in a modern American industrial city—say Toledo, or St. Paul or Detroit or Kansas City.
Turin is similarly modern and industrial, though not so beautiful as Milan. In Turin we saw the scene of the riot—the "grosser rebellion," which our carabinieri friend told us about. Signor Nitti, now a member of the Italian cabinet, who entertained us in Rome, told the Italian parliament—according to the American newspapers—that the millers caused the riot. The bread ration did not come to Turin one morning, and the working people struck. Nitti says the millers were hoarding flour and caused the delay. The strike grew general over the city. Workers wandering about the town were threatened with the police if they congregated. They congregated, and some troops from a nearby training camp were called. The troops were new; they were also friends of the strikers. They refused to fire. Then the strikers built barricades in the streets and in a day or so the regular troops came down from the mountains with machine guns, fired on the barricades and when hundreds were hit the rebellion was quelled. And Signor Nitti says it was all because some profit hog stopped the ordinary flow of flour from the farmer to the consumer of bread! There is, of course, the other side. They told us in Turin that boys in their teens were found dead back of the barricades with thousand lire notes in their pockets, and that German agents came during the first hours of the strike and spread money lavishly to make the riot a rebellion. Probably this is true. The profiteer made the strike possible. It was an opportunity for rebellion, and Germany took the opportunity. Always she is on hand with spies to buy what she cannot honestly win. Reluctantly we turned our faces from Italy to France. Yet the journey had been well worth while. We came home with a definite and hopeful impression about Italy. The Turin riot, bad as it was, was not an anti-war riot. It was directed at the bad administration of the food controller. Italy then was not an invaded country, as France was, and had no such enthusiasm for the war, as a nation has when its soil is invaded. Italy has that enthusiasm now for the war. We saw that her man-power was hardly tapped. She has millions to pour into the trenches. She needs and will need until the end of the war, iron and coal. She will have to borrow her guns and her fuel. But she has almost enough food. We found sugar scarce; butter scarce, and bread sharply allowanced in hotels and restaurants. We found two meatless days a week besides Friday and found the people, as a rule, observing them. We found the industries of the nation turned solely toward the war. Italy realizes what defeat means. The pro-Austrian party which was strong at the beginning of the war has vanished, and since the invasion, even the Pope has lost his interest in peace!
But all these things are temporary; with the war's passing they will pass. The real thing we found was an awakening people, coming into the new century eager and wise and sure that it held somewhere in its coming years the dawn of a new day. That really is the hope of the war—an industrial hope, not a political hope, not a geographical hope, but a hope for better things for the common man. It is a hope that Christianity may take Christendom, and that the fellowship among the nations of the world so devoutly hoped for, may be possible because of a fellowship among men inside of nations.
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN WE CONSIDER THE WOMAN PROPOSITION
It is curious how the human heart throws out homeseeking tendrils. As we crossed the Italian frontier and came back into France, keen longing for the Ritz—even the Ritz with its gloomy grandeur came to me, and Henry confessed that he was glad to get back to a country where a man could get a good refreshing bowl of onion soup! After dinner, our first evening at the Ritz, we were looking over the theatrical offerings advertised upon the wall by the elevator at the hotel, when whom should we meet but "Auntie," the patrician relative of the Gilded Youth. She recognized us in our civilian clothes, and it fell to me to make the fool blunder of complicating our formal greetings with gaiety. Auntie's troubled face would have caught Henry's quick sensitive eyes. But Auntie's voice brushed aside the levity of the opening.
"Haven't you heard—haven't you heard?" she asked. And we knew instinctively that something had happened to the Gilded Youth. And when one is in aviation something happening always is serious. It was Henry's kind voice that conveyed our sympathy to her. And she told us of the accident. Two mornings before, while making his first flight alone, from the training camp near Paris, something went wrong with his engine while he was but a thousand feet in the air—and over Neuilly. He had to glide down, and being over a town he could not make a landing. They took him from the wreck of his plane, to the hospital near by—fortunately an American Red Cross Hospital, where the people recognized him and sent for his aunt. All day and all night he had lain unconscious, and at noon had opened his eyes for a minute to find his aunt beside him. "I brought with me," said Auntie, in a tone so significantly casual that it arrested our attention before she added, "that capable young nurse, the first assistant—" As she spoke she caught Henry's eyes and held him from looking at me.
"You mean the one—" said Henry in a tone quite as casual as Auntie's while giving eye for eye.