ITALY'S GERMAN PERIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

ITALY'S GERMAN PERIL.

Italy ''has a periland one which she shares with Great Britain—a German peril. What Italy dreads is absorption, that most efficacious of all German methods .of conquest. The scene of operations is, naturally, the North of Italy. The . cities of the plains of Lombardy, which called down the warlike legions of Napoleon, now invite no less the deadlier, if peaceful, legions of the Kaiser. . If Milan owes its modern architectural splendour to the decrees of Napoleon, it owes a very large proportion of its prosperity to the enterprise of German capital. Its rapidly-increasing population is traceable rather to the virility of its Teutonic than its Italian citizens. Germany is going madly ahead beneath the shadow of that Great White Wonder, Milan Cathedral, and, in a lesser degree, is spreading her influence, by the simple-process of propagation, in the other cities of Northern Italyßrescia, Verona, and Padua.

, In Venice the object is : the same, but differently at'.aired. As though by military command?, the "lagunaj" are,, year by year, more and more the resort of German tourists. You '"<will seek the lists of the splendid hotels of the Lido almost in vain for the sight of English names, and you wiJ,', strain your ears for the sound of the English.language, your eyes for the sight of an English face. How German is" the atmosphere of the seaside annexe* of the city of Venice is at once obvious, and an Englishman has only to go there to. realise it for himself. On the lovely lake of Garda you will see, as you pass, German' name after German name. You refresh yourself at a "Brau," you lunch at a " Hot," and you take tea at a "Haus." And, unless you " sprech Ueutsch," you run the risk of being seriously misunderstood in your simplest daily wants. And this in England's brjoved Italy, the inspiration of our poets from Shakesperc downward, and the darling land of our dreams !