what they could to make all our hearts beat young! A picture show
across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a
vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from
the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic
swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here
and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning;
but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was a tale that
is told.

But the next day in Rome the war moved into our vision again. But
even if Rome was more visibly martial than Genoa, still it was not
Paris. One could see gay colours upon women in Rome; one might see
straw hats upon the men, and in the stores and shops the war did
not fill every window as it filled the shop windows of Paris. Rome
was taking the war seriously, of course, but the war was not the
tragedy to Rome before the invasion that it was to France.

Yet there was to me a change in Rome--from the Rome one knew who
had been there eight years before--a change stranger and deeper
than the change one felt in coming from Rome to Paris. This new
Rome was a cleaner Rome, a more prosperous Rome, a happier Rome.
Something had been happening to the people. They wore better
clothes, they seemed to live in cleaner tenements; they certainly
had a different squint at life from the Romans of the first decade
of this century. One heard two answers to the question that arose
in one's heart. One group said: "It is prosperity. Italy never has
seen such prosperity as she has seen during the past ten years.
There has been work for everyone, and work at good wages. So you
see the working people well-clad, well-housed, clean and contented."
Another answered the question thus: "The Socialists have done it.