inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the admirable Grand'place, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Cathedral at Brussels are, I know, undermined: I repeat, I know it from private and trustworthy testimony against which no denial can prevail. A spark will be enough to turn one of the recognized marvels of Europe into a heap of ruins like those of Ypres, Malines, and Louvain. Soon after for, short of immediate intervention, the disaster is as certain as though it were already accomplished - Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent will suffer the same fate; and in a moment, as I was saying the other day, there will vanish from sight one of the corners of this earth in which the greatest store of memories, of historic matter and artistic beauties had been accumulated.

The time has come to end this foolery! The time has come for everything that draws breath to rise up against these systematic, insane, and stupid acts of destruction, perpetrated without any military excuse or strategic object. The reason why we are at last uttering a great cry of distress, we who are above all a silent people, the reason why we turn to your mighty and noble country is that Italy is to-day the only European power that is still in a position to stop the unchained brute on the brink of his crime. You are ready. You have but to stretch out a hand to save us. We have not come to beg for our lives: these no longer count with us and we have already offered them up. But, in the name of the last beautiful things that the barbarians have left us, we come with our prayers to the land of beautiful things. It must not be, it shall not be, that on the day when at last we return, not to our homes, for most of these are destroyed, but to our native soil, that soil is so laid waste as to become an unrecognizable desert. You know better than any others what memories mean, what masterpieces mean to a nation, for your country is covered with memories and masterpieces. It is also the land of justice and the cradle of the law, which is simply justice that has taken cognizance of itself. On this account,

Italy owes us justice. And she owes it to herself to put a stop to the greatest iniquity in the annals of history, for not to put a stop to it when one has the power is almost tantamount to taking part in it. It is for Italy as much as for France that we have suffered. She is the source, she is the very mother of the ideal for which we have fought and for which the last of our soldiers are still fighting in the last of our trenches.

THE SOUL AND STONES OF VENICE1

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO

[Gabriele d'Annunzio (1864- ) is perhaps the most prominent Italian novelist and poet of the present day. His first poetical work was published in 1879 and his first novel in 1889. By 1895 he had achieved an international reputation. By many Italians he is considered an excellent poet, especially in his presentation of the beauty and romance of Italian life during the Renaissance period, but as the product of materialistic influences of the present day which make him incapable of appreciating the social problems of Italy since it has achieved its national unity. He is, however, one of the principal voices in the demand that Italia Irredenta should be wrested from Austria and added to the Italian kingdom. He is now an aviator in the Italian Air Service. The sketch presented was originally published in the London Daily Telegraph for September 14, 1915, and presents in a striking fashion the feelings of many Italians toward the World War.]

In belligerent Venice, that reënforces her airy arches, her delicate triforæ, with rough walls of bricks, cement, and beams; in the Venice that has transformed her hotels, formerly sacred to leisure and love, into hospitals full of bleeding heroes; in the dark and silent Venice, whose soul is in intense expectation of the roar of the far-away guns; in courageous and determined Venice, which hourly waits the apparition in the sky, where there still linger Tiepolo's and Veronese's soft clouds, of winged death-bearing craft; in the Venice of the greater Italy, the Land of Abraham Lincoln has to-day an extraordinary representative and admirable witness, whose mission has assumed unexpected importance.

This representative is an American woman, who has consecrated herself to our Saint Francis of Assisi. I like to think of her as one of those saints who bear in the palm of their

1 From the Current History Magazine, published by the New York Times Company, November, 1915. Reprinted by permission.

open hand either a tower or a church or a palace. She was sent to Venice many years ago to execute miniature plaster copies of the most artistic buildings. If the stupid Austrian ferocity should ruin one of St. Mark's domes, a wing of the Procuratie, a lodge of the Ducal Palace, a nave of SS. John and Paul's Church, the choir of the Frari, or the gentle miracle of the Ca' d'Oro, there will remain a souvenir of the beautiful things destroyed in the plaster models of the patient artifi

ceress.

The Venetian knows her well under the name which I myself bestowed on her years ago, the Franciscan sister of the Guidecca. The Ca' Frollo, where she resides, is a yellow structure overlooking a large garden bordering on the Lagoon. A steep oak stairway leads up to the living room. Above the entrance there is an iron shield, with ornamental edges resembling a frying pan, which in ancient times was used to dish out polenta. It is Miss Clara's coat-of-arms.

She comes and meets me smiling on the threshold. On her face a smile multiplies as a ray of sun on a rippled water surface. I have the immediate and strong impression of finding myself before that strange phenomenon represented by a person truly full of life. She wears a bluish cassock, like an artificer. Her hair is white, of the brightest silver, raised on the forehead and thrown back. The eyes are sky blue, shining, innocent, infantine, and in them the internal emotions ebb constantly like flowing water. She has the strong, rough hand of the working woman.

Her attic is very large. The massive beams fastened with iron are as numerous as the trunks of a forest, moth-eaten, with all their fibers exposed, of a golden brown color. Along the wall plaster casts of architectonic details are disposed: capitals, arches, tailpieces, cornices, bas reliefs. There is a complete fireplace by Lombardo, the very fireplace of the Ducal Palace. There are Madonnas, busts and masks. Suspended on two ropes is a model of an ancient Venetian galley, a hull of which the lines are most beautiful.·

"I rescued it at Chioggia with a few cents from a fisherman who was in the act of burning it to cook his polenta," Miss Clara told me.

On one side the windows look out on the Guidecca Canal, which shows the Ducal Palace, the Piazzetta, the library, and the anchored ships, and on the other they look into the garden and the Lagoon. At intervals a rumbling is heard in the distance. Miss Clara sits by the window.

"With the hands of a saint, with religious hands," I tell her, "you have copied the most beautiful churches and palaces of Venice. Now these beautiful things are threatened, are in danger. We expect to see them in ruin any day. There will at least live the copies that you have sent beyond the seas.'

Her blue eyes suddenly fill with tears, and the horror of war, the horror of blind destruction, draws all the lines of her face.

"My God, my God!" she murmurs, joining her hands. "Will you allow such a crime?"

"What does it matter," I venture to say, "if the old stones perish, so long as the soul of Italy is saved and renewed?"

She stares at me intently with profound sadness, shaking her white head, over which there plays the purest light of sunset.

"Have you seen the blinded Ducal Palace?" she asked me, meaning the lodges which the curators have had immured.

We have before us the plaster model of the Palace, on which she has been working for several years. With infinite care she has modeled every arch, every column, every capital, every smallest detail. Her work is an enormous toy, built for an infant nation. She removes the roof and bends to look into it, resembling in the proportions the image of a gigantic saint in the act of guarding a refuge which she protects. Nobody knows better than she the structure of the edifice which incloses the blackened paradise. In my presence she dismounts the copy piece by piece, organ by organ; almost, I