One of the character of the average tourist who seeks to describe conditions in a country he has just visited is to lay stress upon what he considers the bad features of what he sees, and when his observation is coloured by his political feelings the bias becomes all the plainer, This applies directly to the description of conditions which he declares he found in Italy, by Canon Shirley, headmaster of the King's School, Canterbury, whose account of his impressions appeared in these columns on Thursday. It is only to be expected that in a country, where such imposing demands are being made upon the population to improve its condition, that sacrifices should be made, though even here the worthy Canon seems to have shown a completely unbalanced assessment of all that he saw, and to have painted them with an exceedingly black brush. It would be idle for any seriously-minded politician or statesman to base any judgment on the findings of these amateur investigators, especially one who speaks Italian "enough to speak to the people openly and without difficulty," for rather more than the passing knowledge of, a language is necessary to discover the real meanings of much of what may have been said. And in this respect the Canon appears to have been somewhat contradictory. If conditions were really so bad as he describes, how could it be possible for people to talk to a stranger so freely as it appears they did to him. They were, if all he alleges is correct, running tremendous risks in doing But even supposing some proportion of his account cóincides completely with the facts, it has to be offset with the knowledge of the remarkable improvements which have been completed in Italy since the advent to power of Signor Mussolini, and the elevation of Italy to a much higher rank amongst the nations of the world. The rejuvenation of a nation placed as Italy has been placed, is in itself a remarkable achievement, and it would be idle to accept as a completely true picture a description which y animated by a bias against the government of Il Duce.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.