One Can Endure The Militarism Of Germany And The Bureaucracy Of Austria; But It Is Revolting To See Decent Italian Countryfolk At The Mercy Of These Uncouth Savages, Veritable Cave-Men, Whose Only Intelligible Expression Is One Of Malice Striving To Break Through A Crust Of Congenital Cretinism.

We hear much of the great artists and speculative philosophers of old Italy.

The artists of modern Italy are her bureaucrats who design and elaborate the taxes; her philosophers, the peasants who pay them.

In point of method, at least, there is nothing to choose between the exactions of the municipal and governmental ruffians. I once saw an old woman fined fifty francs for having in her possession a pound of sea-salt. By what logic will you make it clear to ignorant people that it is wrong to take salt out of the sea, whence every one takes fish which are more valuable? The waste of time employed over red tape alone on these occasions would lead to a revolution anywhere save among men inured by long abuses to this particular form of tyranny. No wonder the women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities under the device of being enceintes; no wonder their wisest old men regard the paternal government as a successfully organized swindle, which it is the citizen's bounden duty to frustrate whenever possible. Have you ever tried to convey - in legal fashion - a bottle of wine from one town into another; or to import, by means of a sailing-boat, an old frying-pan into some village by the sea?

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