Exhibits exhibits. include the Owl and the jade "from. the Eumorfopoulos early Buddhist sculptures "yon der Heydt, the wooden Kuan Yin, wore gf the Emperor various spoils from Peking. Colours an exhibition are of great d seemingly endless variety. a few, there isa jade t, and one of the highly-prized and the rarer violet of the material, edly paid. An hotel porter averages 200 to 250 lira a month, your cham-barmaid 100, the autobus driver 250, a good mechanic 400 to 500. Speaking in hundreds, these wages may sound imposing, but what is the value of the lira? The official rate of exchange is 88 to the £, but I could easily buy lire at 150. So 500 lire a month means something like £5, and it does not go far when you pay 100 lire for a reasonable pair of shoes, 300 for a working suit, and 400 a month for renting a three-roomed apartment for your family of five or seven in Rome.
These wages do not run to elaborate meals, and meat is eaten only on Sunday. Coffee and bread for breakfast, macaroni or beans for lunch, and potatoes for supper were the usual daily fare—hardly ever varied.
Bitter Complaints People were bitter in their complaints. Everything now cost more, they said, and they were much worse off than they were 20 years ago. They are severely taxed, too, and di content is rife in all sections of the community, It is sharpened by the fact that this is proving the worst season for tourists' they have ever had. Practically no English, French or Ame cans were travelling when I was there, and while there was a fair number of Germans, these had no money to spend.
Where on earth was Italy drifting to, they wanted to know? Glory! What did the people want with glory—they had little, to eat, lots of hard work to do, wretched wages, high rents, and were taxed right and left. Their fathers and brothers had died in Spain and Africa—and what good was it all? Civilize Africa? Let Mussolini civilize Italy first. Why were they not in close alliance with Britain and France? Why should they ally with the Germans, whom they never had liked?
More than one person asked me why Mussolini should have wasted lives and millions in Spain, when the public were starved and undernourished. And not one believed the official protestation that the Fascists would be withdrawn from Spain without any quid pro quo.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.