Main highways total over 30,000 miles and Italy is easily seen by car, motorcycle, scooter or even bicycle. Every facility is available for the traveler and service stations are everywhere. There are even special pumps for scooters which supply gas properly mixed with oil. In fact, since gas is relatively expensive in Italy, as it is everywhere in Europe, there are considerably more scooters and motorbikes on the roads than there are cars. If you plan to enter Italy by car, or any other private vehicle, send for the pamphlet Visit Italy In Motor Car which is distributed free by the tourist offices. This gives you a complete rundown including a road map of the country. THE ITALIANS. Sowehow or other many of we Americans have picked up the idea that all Italians are short, dark of complexion, highly excitable, of criminal tendency and make second rate citizens. Why this should be, I don't know, unless it is because a large percentage of Italians who have migrated to the United States came from poverty stricken Sicily or from the equally poverty stricken areas about Naples. Actually, Italy is almost as great a melting pot of nations as is our own country. There are a good many tall blondes in the north in those sections over which the Germanic tribes rolled to overthrow the Roman power. There are a great many red heads in the more central Rome area, and, in the deep south we find the shorter statured, dark complected Italians. As far as criminal tendencies are concerned, it is true that Naples to a large extent deserves the reputation she has gained. There is probably more crime there than in the average European city. On the other hand, in the northern cities you are less apt to have your pockets picked, to be attacked on the streets, or to be cheated in your business dealings than you are in an average American city. I'd much sooner walk the streets of Venice, at two o'clock in the morning, than I would those of Brooklyn or Chicago. The fabulous heights reached by the Italian people in art, science, political science and philosophy could not have been achieved by other than a bright, cultured, aggressive folk and not by a bunch of
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