The Cordova daily times., 1918-06-25
CRIMSON GROSS
 WORKERS ROUSE:
 |TALy'S SPIRIT

HEADQUARTERS ITALIAN ARMY, May ? (by malD D-Throughout Italy and particularly in this section near the fighting front, the work of Amer ican relief accomplished by the Amer ican Red Cross workers has served as medium for stirring the spirit of resistance among the people and theI soldiers It has contributed toward keeping them heartened for the trials I of the war and letting people know that America was united with them in it.
 It is a work going on all over Italy, but here near the front it deals with actual fighting conditions, in a belt of country lying just back of the | fighting lines. with masses of troops billeted in towns, villages and country districts, and vast wave of refugees, swept south and west from the invaded regions, settled down with all their misery like a swarm of locusts on
 the local communities.
 1 In such a section the work is some
 while $200,000 has been distributed in this one section, yet the main pur
 pose has been to stimulate and hearten the spirit of the peasantry,
 to arouse their ardore and support for the men on the fighting line, and
 to let them know that America and all her resources are with them to the end
 These provinces of Treviso, Venetia
 and Padua lie just back of the Piave
 and mountain fighting fronts. Trevso province is on the border line with
 half it's communes occupied by the
 enemy and half by the Italians, and
 the Piave running between the two
 severed parts of the province. Every
 one of the thirty eight Treviso com munes remaining under Italian con- trol has been visited by the American Red Cross workers; the 193 com
 munes of Padua province have been
 similarly visited, and some seventy five communes in Venetia province. Stirring scenes have been witnessed in these> country districts as the American workers have carried on
 their work under the general direc-
 tion of Captain Thwaits, in charge of civilian relief in the war zone. At
 Este, for example, a public holiday was decreed the town was placarded with posters announcing that "the Americans are coming" the school children and the mayor gave a din ner with speeches. The same wave of appreciation and enthusiasm has
 spread everywhere, until the whole
 region rings with what the Americans are doing.
 The tour today lay due north to the very margin of the fighting country, and one could see side by side the stir of intense military preparation, the spring awakening of great agri- cultural region, and the squalid mis cry of the unfortunate mass swept out of the invaded region and settled down here unable to get any further On the right was the Piave river with the defenses on tho heights of Asole . and the MOntello region, and ahead were the snow-covered peaks O. | Mount Grappa and it's line of noun
 tain defenses stretching west to the
 Brenta river.
 The signs of military preparation
 and defense were on every hand, ever
 at this distance of ten or fifteen miles
 back of the actual fighting line, fol everything is prepared ahead for the possible eventuality of the conflict
 surging down to this peaceful plain
 Squads of army engineers were at all
 the bridges, digging deep pits fol mines to blow up these structures and block the advance of the enemy. Sentinels were on guard every hun
 dred feet along the Brenta canal
 guarding this precious artery of com munication. Across the fields new
 trenches were being dug, so that the
 farm country was gradually taking or
 the aspect of an armed camp. Barbed
 wire entanglements criss-crossed the