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Show ITALY'S PLAINT. Xot the least of Italy's troubles is its lack of American visitors with their well-filled purses. The gold that American Amer-ican tourists formerly lavished upon Italy is sadly missed in .that country. There are three principal causes for that unpleasant condition. One of them is the failure of Italy to put an end to its own belligerency. A second sec-ond is that Italy's scenic beauties temporarily tem-porarily must give way to countries like France and Belgium, where historic his-toric battlefields hold the traveler's interest. in-terest. The greatest of all tho causes, however, is tho unconscionable profiteering profit-eering of tho Italian hotelkeeper. Gone are the days when the American Ameri-can could see the best parts of Italy for less than $300. Hotels which now give "pension" rates at all charge from $1G a day upward. The Italian tourist is treated the same way, and only the very rich can go to health resorts re-sorts this year. A wretched room with no chance of bath in the enyirons of Rome and Milan costs $20 a day. A .movement is afoot to interest tho government in regulating tourist traffic, traf-fic, so that hotel and boarding housekeepers house-keepers will have to be content with less than 300 per cent profit. Those behind the movement hope .that the' government will interfere in time to give Italy a good winter tourist reason. One great step may be to deprive war profiteers of a large part of their capital. capi-tal. These are the only persons who can pay the prc.-ent prices. However, it is not likely that, much can be hoped for from the government, for'tlie government is just now tremendously tremen-dously occupied with graver matters than the regulation of tho tourist traffic. |