FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

Arriving in Italy after a " regrettable " ( according to some commentators -Ors ) period of absence, I recall HH peninsular saying that all the world is a village, and can report that in some details the wops of the demi-Christian regime behave like americans. There are procedural methods in matters of import and export licences ( or were a few years ago ) which would delight Fulton Lewis.

The Italians with jobs( governmental ) or espoused to blokes having them are inclined to view the scene with satisfaction, I had not set foot on the Ligurian asphalt before being assured that all the constructive activites of the late " deplored " regime were going full-steam ahead , unhampered by hierarchic defects , and that the whole valse was ( though they weren't quite sure of the exact meaning of the term ) " more DEMocratic. "

The profits in decayed chocolate , draed in from Switzerland , by one HH Swiss with a nomai (Roumanian " background " would arouse the envy of any Baltimore merchant sifting and selecting Japanese rag waste , and reselling it in various degrees of putridity or tensile validity.

I HAD inHHHH intended , indeed I had demanded three months of absolute quiet , meaning silence at least on my own part, but having learned from local press that I entered the vale of human tribulation in the year 1855 ( yes the third numeral is a five ) it comes over me that I might be regarded with gloom or expected to put up a rather high rate by any insurance company , and had better step on the AGIP , if I want to fullfill any correspondential functions at all.

The gloom with which Uncle George Tinkham regarded American prospects in 1939 has been almost totally absent from the very limited number of natives whom I have yet had the chance to encounter.

Even Glob Brown with his patent reading machine can scarcely expect a map of 103 to have got through the 500 pages offered me by the "Ranco di Roma, or THHH even the hundred pages on the" question of the Tirol" placed tenderly in my hands by its political( ? ) author.

The noble and really serious action of my distinguished comrad Mr Hemingway cannot be divulged at this moment. Perhaps I should not have mentioned it.

The Italian scenery is much as it was , but the traffic nuissance, Verona is almost as damned as in Washington, Richmond real estate should put this in headlines, unless they want to keep it out of excess population.

The palace of Juliet's family has been dolled up since I last saw it, and now nearly fits the Hollywood version of Lawrence Olivier's play ( if it was Olivier and not Laughton ).

Part of it is occupied by the regional tourist bureau , and the Church of Christ has moved into the rooms JH on the North Side of the court yard.

Mr Scaliger still grins from the top of his equestrian monument , and San Zeno is still the glory of churches and the despair of hollow-tile industry , or of idealist architects who have to buy their materials in

large brain -washed quantity.

In view of my advanced age

our editor will not expect too much detail in the matter
of assassinations to East of us.

I don't know whom the News Leader has assigned to S.Africa, but
one ernest young man there is deploring the lack of history
in University curricula, and reports that as a student of
literature he has been repoved for wanting to know anything AT ALL
about it. Also that all text books in which ever part of the
dark and ever darker and darkening continent aHHHHHH he
inhabits and put out by a firm controlled by h a member of
that coutiy's cabinet.

Obviously the U.S. is drifting behind
the outer parts of Britains once Empire in the matter of
brain-wash , but this may be outside my assignment.

The attempt to link up the SMALL nations, namely
San Marino, Monte-Carlo, Andorra and Lichtenstein, is
reported to have been spiked or at least delayed from the
present, but there is no assurance that the buzzard who left
our sun-kissed peninsula WHHHHH 6 minutes ahead of the
sherif won't have another go at it in the not too distant A
future. He has left a faithful henchman behind him, but
the boy is not considered qualified. In short the brains of
show has left us for parts remote, and the d7 dumb-bunny
is not thought to pressing the matter with either skill
and avidity. What Aristotle cataloged as common practice
continues.

on

Ezra Pound, 16 or there abouts
of July.

The celebrations of the French bastille day were coincidental
and so far as I have learned, without political bearing.