THE WAR-CLOUD OVER NAPLES

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 89, 14 April 1917, Page 15

THE WAR-CLOUD OVER NAPLES

NO TOURISTS AND LITTLE SHIPPINU. "La bella Napoli" of the days before the was has ceased to be, says an American' correspondent. The tourist hotels along the j waterfront and on the heights overlooking the orescent of the bay are virtually empty. Many have boarded np their windows army of guides. Interpreters, hotel runners and money changers has become an army of soldiers, sealing the mountains of the Carso hundreds of miles to the nortb, where eternal snow replaces the eternal sun of Southern Huly. The quays are eeserted. Where a year ago 200 ships were plying between Naples aud the United States, with a tonnage of 1,300,000, there now are eleven, with a total of less than 00,000 tons. Of ten companies, not counting the German and Austrian ones, running thirty-seven transAtlantic passenger ships, one Italian line now runs the boats, one British line two, anO a French line one. 'Phat is all. Seldom does one now see curtains of drying spaghetti screening the narrow ways between the hor.ses in Naples. There is a scarcity of food. Thursday and Friday of every week are "meatless days," when no nioar may be purchased or sold in restaurants, and the Neapolitan is forced to lWe on fish, macaroni, rice, or more vegetables. Friday, Saturday aud Sunday of every week ore "sweetless days" when neither sugar nor cakes of any kind can be served, at least in public. Every day is a butter- j less day, and even rrearn is a rarity entirely oat of reach of anyone but the most luxurious. There are plenty of men in Naples, as in all of Italy, buf all in uniform—bersaelieri. with their hatß and hobnailed lioots; tripollni, with red, rlnilesa caps from which blue tnssels hang by a long string, officers with oupea thrown over their shoulders like Spanish grandees and swaggering carabinieri, the terror of evil-doers. I