The Monticellonian., 1917-07-05

L Is now nearly two years since
Italy took her place beside the
allies in the life and death strug-
gle that is holding the world in its
grip and yet the calm and quiet to be
met with here in North Italy and close
up to the firing line cannot fail to
strike even the most casual observer,
writes IA correspondent of Country
Life. You hear the roar of the can
non, some days almost continuously.
| rust over the mountains that divide the
"Veneto" from Austria day by day
the hospital train passes along the val
ley carrying its load of sick and
wounded down from the front; day by
/ day motors and Red Cross ears dash
along the high road at breakneek
speed. giving the impression that mat
! tiers of life and death hang on the pace
at which they can reach their desti-
nation; and yet the peasants work on
in steady adherence to their tasks
/ barely looking up to notice all this I'M
wonted movement, absorbed more than
/ usual at this moment in the land.
This, however, is not from indiffer-
enee as TO the war; far from 1t, for the
subject is one that all alike are keenly
interested in, and every family has sent
one and often two or more members
to fight for their king and country.
But the Italian peasant also loves
the soil On which he and his fathers
! before him have worked; his heart is
in the land. and the success or failure
of the crops is TO him matter of
well-being or starvation.
Hard Life, but HealthfuI.
| In these times, too, the work re-
quires an unwonted degree of attention
and labor, for every acre must be fully
cultivated. All the men from the age
of twenty-one to forty are, with few
! exceptions, away at the front, and
those who remain must make good the
! deficiency In this they have, however,
willing helpmates in the women. At
| all times the women work in proper
| ton as hard as their men-folk In the
| fields, and when TO these duties are
added those of mothers and house
wives II is small wonder that they
/ age before their time, and that pref
~ fresh girl of eighteen is an old wom-
an at forty. Their life, though hard
! in some ways. is on the other hand ex-
tremely healthful; their habits are sim
pie and frugal, and they slide into old
! age with constitutions untouched by
sharp vicissitudes of climate-the win
! aynacciuolU and tho
summers very hot-interested and
! busy up to the last in all that relates
! to the land, the cattle. and their chill
/ dren.
Family life is on patriarchial lines ;
sons, daughters-in-iaw and their chill
dren (of which there is never any
! lack) all live with the parents under
i the same roof all share the same food
composed chiefly of beans Indian
corn and eheese-and all share one
/ purse kept, often pretty tightly too,
i by the head of the family Gil capo
di famiglia,, who receives any extrane-
GUS sums that any of his children may
earn on his or her own account, and
doles out the money required for
clothes, food, or any small expenses
that the event of a wedding, baptism
or n funeral may call forth.
The food question is. perhaps. the
simplest of the lot The peasant in
this part of Italy shares with the own
er of the land all that the land pro-
duces. He puts into it his labor, he
draws from it the half that that la
Dor brings as his portion; and this ar
rangement of the "meZZadria." or half
and-half system as we might call 1t,
Is, if honestly adhered TO, fairer and
more advantageous TO all concerned
than any other. By it the peasant has
as keen. if not keener interest than
his landlord in the tilling of the soil,
in keeping under the weeds. pruning
and spraying the vines, hoeing the In
dian corn, tending the cattle, aud as