BACK TO VENICE

Levin Daily Chronicle, 23 November 1918, Page 4

BACK TO VENICE

BATHING BESIDE BAYONETS AND BARBED WIRE. THE OVERHEAD WATCH. The population that had departed is now, since the victory of the Piave, gradually drifting back to Venice, says Mr Ward Price in the "Daily Chronicle" of September 2. Over 10,000 of the people "who went away have already returned, and the bathing season has started again at the Lido, which is the island seashore of Venice. It must be the oddest seaside place in Europe, for the big bathing establishment which used in peace time to be a parade ground for the most daring bathing costumes which the taste of feminine visitors from Austria and Hungary could devise, now lies in the midst of the Lido defences against an enemy landing. The sand is dug and revetted into trenches, and a thick barbed wire entanglement runs right across the part of the beach where bathers bask in the sun after their swim. The Venetians seem not to notice it, though, nor yet to hear the guns growling away at the mouth of the Piave a few miles along the coast. —

It is odd to see this throng of people j in bright bathing costumes, sitting un- ' der gay sun-umbrellas, with that belt of sinister barbed wire passing among J them, and sentries with fixed bayonets watching their water frolics from each [I corner of the enclosure and from boats j around. Sometimes even the Venetians jj are obliged to take these pleasures fleri-j ously, for there are notices . in each dressing cabin that the sentries have orders to fire on any bather going beyond the limits of water fixed for the establishment, and since the season opened they have already recalled three or four heedless swimmers by sending a bullet to splash up the water beside them. SCRUTINY OF BATHERS.

As one leaves, the bathing place, too, there is a scrutiny by military police to be undergone, perhaps to defeat any attempt by the Austrians to land troops disguised as bathers.

Few places in a war-zone can be more agreeable than is Venice now. On these warm evenings when the Grand Canal is flooded with the silver twilight of a brilliant moon,, the Pinzetta is fuller at midnight than at noon. Last night thero were hundreds of people standing between the .Doge's Palace and the gleaming lagoon, to look at the red flashes of anti-aircraft shells along the Piave front where Italian machines were bombing the' enemy trenches.

A dreamy spell seemed t6 rest on the whole city, deepened rather than broken by the droning call of the aircraft look-outs from their platforms on the roofs of the highest palaces, as at regular intervals they confirmed their watch by chanting through megaphones like some super-natu*a]l muezzin ? the wailing cry, "Nell'aria, buona gard.ia." "In the air, good watch!