e fields]

"How do you feel," I asked the old man, "about Italian rule?"

"They are not our own people," he answered slowly. "Their language is
not our language and their ways are not our ways. But they are not an
unkind nor an unjust people and I think that they mean to treat us
fairly and well. Austria is very poor, I hear, and could do nothing for
us if she would. But Italy is young and strong and rich and the officers
who have stopped here tell me that she is prepared to do much to help
us. Who knows? Perhaps it is all for the best."

Immediately beyond Madonna di Campiglio the highway begins its descent
from the pass in a series of appallingly sharp turns. Hardly had we
settled ourselves in the tonneau before the Sicilian, impatient to be
gone, stepped on the accelerator and the big Lancia, flinging itself
over the brow of the hill, plunged headlong for the first of these
hairpin turns. "Slow up!" I shouted. "Slow up or you'll have us over the
edge!" As the driver's only response to my command was to grin at us
reassuringly over his shoulder, I looked about for a soft place to land.
But there was only rock-plated highway whizzing past and on the outside
the road dropped sheer away into nothingness. We took the first turn
with the near-side wheels in the gutter, the off-side wheels on the
bank, and the car tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees. The second
bend we navigated at an angle of sixty degrees, the off-side wheels on
the bank, the near-side wheels pawing thin air. Had there been another
bend immediately following we should have accomplished it upside down.
Fortunately there were no more for the moment, but there remained the
village street of Cles. We pounced upon it like a tiger on its prey.
Shrilling, roaring and honking, we swooped through the ancient town,
zigzagging from curb to curb. The great-great-grandam of the village was
tottering across the street when the blast of the Lancia's siren pierced
the deafness of a century and she sprang for the sidewalk with the
agility of a young gazelle. We missed her by half an inch, but at the
next corner we had better luck and killed a chicken.

Meran--the Italians have changed its official name to Merano, just as
they have changed Trent to Trento, and Bozen to Bolzano--has always
appealed to me as one of the most charming and restful little towns in
Europe. The last time I had been there, before the war-cloud darkened
the land, its streets were lined with