The Evening Star THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1928. BREAKING THE MAFIA.

Evening Star, Issue 19774, 26 January 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1928. BREAKING THE MAFIA.

If Signor Mussolini has destroyed freedom in Italy his little finger has been stronger than his predecessors’ loins for the destruction of some abuses. “ The best of the Fascists,’’ it has been said, “ have a vision of ‘ the old Italy,’ which they desire in all seriousness to get away from—the vision of a country anarchical, cynical, and corrupt, perpetually rent by local and personal factions, ready at any time to suspend work for an argument, and to terminate the argument with a show of knives.” If respect for the law can bo made to take the place of those characteristics, Mussolini will have performed a service for his countrymen not to be soon forgotten. A symbol of “ the old Italy,” in its worst excesses, was the notorious Mafia Society, which flourished in Sicily. The Mafia has been almost completely till now, and Sicily to a less extent, a law to itself. If the Mafia has now been ended by “ II Duce,” quite the worst relic of medimvalism will have been removed from bis country.

It is an amazing organisation which has at least been badly broken by Mussolini’s efforts, when all the Governments before him had failed to deal effectively with it. Its origin goes back quite definitely for two hundred years, and indefinitely for a much longer period. About the middle of last century crime and blackmail took the place with it of political objects. Before anyone could be admitted to this secret society ho had to pledge himself to seek no redress from the courts, nor ever to give evidence before them, and a trial of skill with the dagger was also required of him. Some of the older tests, probably, had ceased to be applied in recent years, but the society continued to be an organisation of lawlessness, more dreaded than the law itself. It was more powerful than the Caraorra, the similar secret society with headquarters at Naples, against which one of the old Governments did show energy enough to take effective action a few years before the war. The great trial of thirty-seven Camorrists was begun at Yiterbo in March, 1911, and lasted, with over 300 sittings, until July, 1912. It was internal dissensions which brought that society to ruin. The accused Cammorists were charged with the murder of two of their associates. Nine of them were found guilty and heavily punished. It seems a small draught from so wide a net, but not much has been heard of the Cammorists since.

Mussolini’s officials—new officials they had to he, to do anything at all —have made a much bigger sweep in their proceedings against the Mafia. A year ago it was reported that more than a thousand members of the order had been captured in their last stronghold near Palermo, and would “ shortly ” take their trial. As no court was big enough to hold the accused, a special temporary court was being erected. Those captured, it was stated, included a famous woman brigand named Cargnaccii, who ruled the countryside around the Madonie mountains with a rod of iron, even arranging marriages and levying taxes. Not oven Signor Mussolini has been able to make the processes of Italian justice anything but slow. Presumably it is the first of these suspects, a collection totalling 154, who have now been convicted, and against whom the official prosecutor has asked for sentences ranging from five years’ imprisonment to penal servitude. The coovictions have already had one salutary effect. The fear which dictated refusals to give evidence, or to inform, having been broken down, reports have poured in concerning other members of the Mafia, and arrests, we arc told, are being made now daily. “Two thousand members are awaiting trial, causing the disappearance of one of the most impudent, picturesque, and deadly gangs of cut throats throughout the world, which was responsible for four centuries’ terrorism.” Viterbo, judged sensational in its time, was a more incident compared with this clear-

ance. Blackmail and robbery were the chief activities of the Mafia. With them was closely associated the vendetta, most sinister of all customs of “ the old Italy.” Two years were required for the collecting of evidence before the present prosecutions could bo begun. The extent of the society’s depreciations can be gathered from the statement that in one ycar-*l923—its crimes included 700 murders, 1,200 robberies with violence, 200 cases of incendiarism, 3,000 of blackmail, and 700 of cattle maiming, chiefly against landowners for refusing to pay contributions. But that was only the record for Sicily. From time to time members of the Mafia have emigrated, and various outrages have been attributed to them in the United States, notably in the Southern States. They are supposed to have founded the notorious Black Hand Society in America, of which a good deal has been heard at some past times. Sicily will be less romantic without its Mafia, but it will be a more natural province of a modern State.