want intelligent and helpful capital. They want a helpful France.
They want bituminous coal for metallurgical purposes. They want cheap
shipping. The French too want metallurgical coal. It is more important
for civilisation, for the general goodwill of the Allies and for Great
Britain that these needs should be supplied than that individual British
money-owners or ship-owners should remain sluggishly rich by insisting
upon high security or high freights. The control of British coal-mining
and shipping is in the national interests--for international
interests--rather than for the creation of that particularly passive,
obstructive, and wasteful type of wealth, the wealth of the mere
profiteer, is as urgent a necessity for the commercial welfare of France
and Italy and the endurance of the Great Alliance as it is for the
well-being of the common man in Britain.


3

I left my military guide at Verona on Saturday afternoon and reached
Milan in time to dine outside Salvini's in the Galleria Vittorio
Emanuele, with an Italian fellow story-writer. The place was as full as
ever; we had to wait for a table. It is notable that there were still
great numbers of young men not in uniform in Milan and Turin and Vicenza
and Verona; there was no effect anywhere of a depletion of men. The
whole crowded place was smouldering with excitement. The diners
looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be
expressing sentiments. Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection
of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of
flitting white sheets among the little tables.

"To-night," said my companion, "I think we shall declare war upon