ITALIAN RIOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 10

ITALIAN RIOT.

ATTACKED HOTEL IN VICTORIA

JJCENSEE STABBED IN THIGH.

FOUR ARRESTED.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, January 27.

Ja?t how serious can be the menace | of foreigners who do not understand andj in some cases make no attempt to under-J stand the laws of the country of their adoption, was amply illustrated by a sensational incident at Woodend, Vic-; toria, last Sunday night. For there, in a riot of Italians, knives and daggers were flourished, an hotelkeeper was stabbed, and a policeman received a rough handling before he made four arrests. Italians concerned in the riot were employed by the Country Roads Board on road work in the Woodend district. On Sunday night they rolled up in a body to the local hotel and demanded admittance to the bar. When they were refused they uttered innumerable threats and retreated for a time. But they returned armed with knives and daggers, and, unable to get the hotelkeeper to open up for them, smashed a door and a window and made their way inside. The licensee was waiting for them and' ordered them out again; but they refused his request to go, and when he attempted to put them out tliey attacked him.

In a melee with the ringleader of the| Italians the licensee, Robert Harper, was I stabbed in the thigh. In the meantime! other residents in the hotel had called | the police, and Constable Earnshaw rushed to the spot single-handed. His] arrival was the signal for another outburst of rioting, and when Earnshaw attempted to arrest the ringleader of the Italians he was surrounded by the mob. He clung to his man; but he was punched and kicked and his hat was knocked off. Eventually he had to let his man go.

Earnshaw went away and obtained a revolver and a baton and returned to the fray. He re-arrested the ringleader, took a knife from him at the point of: the revolver, and took the prisoner outside the fighting zone. By that time the licensee's friends were battling with the intruders, too. 'Having locked up his

prisoner, Earnshaw returned and, with

the help of a number of townspeople who had rolled up by that time, arrested three, other Italians. Numerous knives and daggers were taken from the Jiotefs>- one being loin long.