f, said the Colonel, that he was
not going backward when he died; a menu card, signed by all the officers
of a Bersagliere Battalion, who dined together on the eve of the
victorious action of Col Valbella last January, in which they played a
worthy part.

The Colonel told me that his own son was killed and is buried beyond the
Isonzo, near Cervignano. It had been suggested to him that he should
have the body brought home, but he preferred to leave it where it fell.
"C'e un' idea che e morta li," he said, "It is an idea which has died
there. Some day, if I live, I shall make a pilgrimage thither, but the
Austrians may, by now, have destroyed the grave."

Outside in the courtyard, where the Colonel took leave of us, I saw many
young Bersaglieri, the latest batches of recruits, mere boys. "They are
splendid material," he said, with a military pride, not without a
half-regretful tenderness, "one can make anything out of them." They
were, indeed, incomparable human stuff, whether for the purposes of
peace or war. They seemed to have the joy of the spring in their eyes,
just as that middle-aged Regular soldier had in his the sadness of
autumn. And amid all the beauty of Rome in the spring, I was haunted by
the grim refrain, "Nella primavera si combatte e si muore, o
soldato,"--"In the springtide men fight and die, young soldier."

* * * * *

I went away from Rome strengthened in my previous judgment that the
Italians are not a militarist nation. There was no sign of the
militarist, as distinct from the military, spirit at the Bersagliere
Depot. The relations of the Colonel and Signer Marini illustrated this.
They had never met, nor, I think, heard of one another before. Yet this
little civilian seemed to find it quite natural to march into a military
barracks without any preliminary inquiries, to walk upstairs and
straight into the Commanding Officer's office and, not finding the
Commanding Officer there, to send a message into the Officer's Mess,
and, the Commanding Officer having come out, to present his card,
without any appearance of servility or undue deference, and to ask to be
taken round. And the Colonel seemed to see nothing odd in these
proceedings, but placed himself at once at our disposal and showed us
everything and talked without aloofness and without reserve to both of
us. I could not help thinking that things would not have happened quite
like this at the Depot of a crack re