that of the Engineers black with a red border. Of the Infantry, the
Alpini collars are green and the Bersaglieri crimson, the bands of
colour being shaped in each case like sharp-pointed flames turning
outwards. For this reason the Alpini are often called the "fiamme
verdi," or green flames, and the Bersaglieri "fiamme rosse," or red
flames. The Infantry Brigades of the line, who bear local names,--the
Avellino Brigade, the Como Brigade, the Lecce Brigade and so
forth,--have each their distinctively coloured collars.

These local names mean very little, for, as a matter of policy, men from
all parts of Italy are mixed indiscriminately together in each Brigade.
The Parma Brigade, for example, will contain only a few men from Parma,
and them by chance. One of the objects of this policy is to help to
break down those regional barriers, which still linger owing to
historical causes, between different districts of Italy. It is often
remarked that men from many parts of Italy know more of foreign
countries than of other parts of their own country, and most of the
numerous local dialects are hardly intelligible to men who live far from
the districts where they are spoken. Ordinary Italian, which is in fact
the local dialect of Rome, is, as it were, the _lingua franca_ of the
whole country, but the great majority of Italians speak not only Italian
but one, or sometimes several, local dialects, and the latter are used
by all classes in their own homes. Some of these dialects differ widely
from Italian. In many remote districts some of the peasants cannot speak
Italian at all.

The Alpini and the two Sardinian Brigades, Cagliari and Sassari, are
exceptions to the rule mentioned above. The Alpini are in peace-time
recruited entirely from the men who dwell in the Alps, though I believe
that during the present war a certain number of men from the Apennines