THE GERMANS IN ITALY

Hokitika Guardian, 30 March 1926, Page 3

THE GERMANS IN ITALY

TURIN, January 2

The commercial treaty recently signed between Italy and Germany was scarcely necessary from Germany’s point of view. Italy, as one of tho Allies, had her share in winning the war, but it is Germany who is securing the fruits of peace. From the Apennines to the Mediterranean" Italy is flooded with German goods. Ask for aspirin, and you are promptly handed a famous German brand. Ask for cau do Cologne, and you will receive without question an equally famous product from Cologne itself with the label printed in German characters. Ask for a hair wash, and you will lie offered one of the Klberfeld productions. During the last season there has been an enormous increase in travellers fro.tn Germany. Naturally in a Holy Year a certain percentage were Roman Catholic pilgrims, hut not a large percentage. The rest, and the majority, were the real brand of the pre-war German tourist—haversack on the hack, liatlcss (men and women alike), anxious to get sunburn, and not overhandicapped in tlic way of changes of clothes. Men. women and children, they have filled certain hotels and pensions to overflowing. A party of 70 arrived at a pension one night. They slept lour ina room ; some of the others took the poor refuge of beds in bathrooms willingly; a few even were content to sleep in tho corridors, it is stated.

It is not for me fo suggest a remedy. I simply state facts that have como under my own observation, says tho correspondent of a London daily. The Italian house-wife buys her stove from a German-supplied source. She soothes herself with drugs made in a, German chemical factory. Her daughter scents her handkerchief with German perfumes. Her younger children play with toys from Germany. Her husband as often as not shaves himself with a close copy of some well-known make of safety razor which the Germans have Hung in millions on the market. Then, if they wish to go out all together in the evening, it will not be difficult to sit in a kinenia and watch a German film. The more intelligent Italians resent this Germnnixation of their trade and industry. One Italian business man was very bitter about it. “Itis a bad thing for us in the long run,” be said. “ but bow is one to cheek this invasion? There arc too many people here who work on the principle that commerce has no conscience.” He paused a moment and then said, half humorously and half sadly: “ Why even when one of our Princesses married she chose a husband ‘ made in Germany.’ ”