Italy at War and the Allies in the West | Page 7

churches. Everything portable has been removed to a place
of safety, but the famous mosaics, the ancient windows, and the
splendid carvings it is impossible to remove, and they are the most
precious of all. The two pulpits of colored marbles and the celebrated
screen with its carven figures are now hidden beneath pyramids of
sand-bags. The spiral columns of translucent alabaster which support
the altar, are padded with excelsior and wrapped with canvas. Swinging
curtains of quilted burlap protect the walls of the chapels and transepts
from flying shell fragments. Yet all these precautions would probably
avail but little were a bomb to strike St. Mark's. In the destruction that
would almost certainly result there would perish mosaics and
sculptures which were in their present places when Vienna was still a
Swabian village, and Berlin had yet to be founded on the plain above
the Spree.
If it has proved difficult to protect from airplane fire the massive
basilica of St. Mark's, consider the problem presented to the authorities
by the Palace of the Doges, that creation of fairylike loveliness, whose
exquisite façades, with their delicate window tracery and fragile
carvings, would be irretrievably ruined by a well-aimed bomb. In order
to avert such a disaster, it was proposed to protect the façades of the
palace by enclosing the building in temporary walls of masonry. It was

found, however, that this plan was not feasible, as the engineers
reported that the piles on which the ancient building is poised would
submerge if subjected to such an additional weight. All that they have
been able to do, therefore, is to shore up the arches of the loggia with
beams, fill up the windows with brick and plaster, and pray to the
patron saint of Venice to save the city's most exquisite structure.
The gilded figure of an angel, which for so many centuries has looked
down on Venice from the summit of the Campanile, has been given a
dress of battleship gray that it may not serve as a landmark for the
Austrian aviators. Over the celebrated equestrian statue of Colleoni--of
which Ruskin said: "I do not believe there is a more glorious work of
sculpture existing in the world"--has been erected a titanic armored
sentry-box, which is covered, in turn, with layer upon layer of
sand-bags. Could the spirit of that great soldier of fortune be consulted,
however, I rather fancy that he would insist upon sitting his bronze
warhorse, unprotected and unafraid, facing the bombs of the Austrian
airmen just as he used to face the bolts of the Austrian crossbowmen.
The commercial life of Venice is virtually at a standstill. Most of the
glass and lace manufactories have been forced to shut down. The
dealers in curios and antiques lounge idly in their doorways, deeming
themselves fortunate if they make a sale a month. All save one or two
of the great hotels which have not been taken over by the Government
for hospitals have had to close their doors. The hordes of guides and
boatmen and waiters who depended for their living upon the tourists
are--such of them as have not been called to the colors--without work
and in desperate need. In normal times a quarter of Venice's 150,000
inhabitants are paupers, and this percentage must have enormously
increased, for, notwithstanding the relief measures which the
Government has taken, unemployment is general, the prices of food are
constantly increasing, and coal has become almost impossible to obtain.
Fishing, which was one of the city's chief industries, is now an
exceedingly hazardous employment because of submarines and floating
mines. Save for the clumsy craft of commerce, the gondolas have
largely disappeared, and with them has disappeared, only temporarily,
let us hope, the most picturesque feature of Venetian life. They have

been driven off by the slim, polished, cigar-shaped power-boats, which
tear madly up and down and crossways of the canals in the service of
the military government and of the fleet. To use a gondola, particularly
at night, is as dangerous as it would be to drive upon a motor
race-course with a horse and buggy, for, as no lights are permitted, one
is in constant peril of being run down by the recklessly driven power
craft, whose wash, by the way, is seriously affecting the foundations of
many of the palazzos.
It is an unfamiliar, gloomy, mysterious place, is war-time Venice, but
in certain respects I liked it better than the commercialized city of
antebellum days. Gone are the droves of loud-voiced tourists, gone the
impudent boatmen, the importunate beggars, the impertinent guides,
gone the glare of lights and the blare of cheap music. No longer do the
lantern-strung barges of the musicians gather nightly off the Molo. No
longer across the waters float the strains of "Addio