The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1911. THE CURSE OF MODERN ITALY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 66, 18 March 1911, Page 4

The Marlborough Express. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1911. THE CURSE OF MODERN ITALY.

The Italian Government is at lust making a determined attempt to stamp out the dangerous secret societies which deal .in organised ciime and have so long defied the power of the State. Italy has suffered from these societies for many j^ars; but so strong has been their li.iiuence, so wide-reaching their power to punish those of .their members who may play the traitor, so universal is- the dread of their vengeance, that tho number of cases in which captures have been made and convictions obtained has been most lamentably small. Most of the societies date back to the time when the Bourbons were ruling in Southern Italy and Sicily, and when the tyranny of their rulers drove the people to" resort to underground methods of resistance. No doubt when first established the Naples Camorra, the oldest and most formidable of these organisations, was merely a political secret society, whose operations had no criminal taint. As time went on, however, men and women1 of an avowedly criminal tendency succeeded in gaining control of the societies, and for the past thirty or forty years there can be little doubt that the Camorra, the Mala Vita: £or Evil Life) and the Black Hand;societies Jiave been entirely crimirtalv^itt their sympathies and operations'.*' Northern Italy has never suffered from these societies so' much as1 the South, for the Northern Italy of to-day is largely industrial, and . much more law-abiding than the remainder of the kingdom. Naples, on the other hand, is well known to be a hotbed of Camorrist activity, and it is difficult, fully to estimate the extent to which the influence of these secret societies has affected even, the political life of the South. It is. even said that there are not a few Deputies in the Italian Parliament who are Camorrists. Certain it is that in Sicily the Camorrists and Black Hands exercise a very powerful influence over the elections, especially of the local bodies. The societies live by an elaborate system of blackmail, and in quite a number of cases it has been proved thai men of the highest respectability have paid large sums of money into the Camorrist coffers, arid have afterwards exhibited the most profound reluctance to give any information to the- police. And, after all,, there is nothing in it that is surprising; For the avenging hand of the Camorra is terribly farreaching. Several instances are on record of traitors to the society, or witnesses who have given evidence of Camorrist outrages, having been followed to Argentina, where there is a large Italian population, to New York, and even to the west coast of South America, and most brutally murdered. Indeed, one of the most serious features of Cambrrism and Black Handism is to be found in the fact that a complete understanding appears to exist between certain Italian secret societies in the United States and the parent founts of viliany in Italy. Our readers will no doubt remember the case of the Italian detective employed by the New York police to track down the scoundrels who so foully murdered an Italian banker in New York, whose sole offence was that he had defied the blackmailing threats of an American branch of the Black Hand society.; The unfortunate detective, who had gone to Sicily to search for the murderers, was shot down in broad daylight in one of the principal thoroughfares in the beautiful and busy city of Palermo. And yet, although the crime was committed in sight of several hundreds of people, two out of the three murderers got away and were never captured, and against the third it was found impossible to induce a single spectator of the crime to give evidence. Such was the dread of Camorrist vengeance! It has even been asserted that the Italian courts are not entirely free from Camorrist influence, and that some of the highest dignitaries of the law are either in the pay or tmder the thumb of the societies. All these facts being : considered, it is not surprising that tho Italian Government has been \ and is still experiencing very great j difficulty in breaking up these dangerous associations and bringing their members to justice. Nevertheless, to its credit be it said, the Government is making a very strenuous and determined attempt to root out tho Camorra viliany wherever it can possibly get evidence. The chief difficulty is to get witnesses to come forward, and a second obstacle in the path of justice is the reluctance of juries to return a verdict of guilty, t

At the trial which has just commenced at Viterbo, where a gang of Camorrists are before the court, it was found extremely difficult to induce the citizens to act as jurymen. After considerable delay, however, a jury consisting mainly of professional men was empanelled; but it still remains to' be seen whether the jurymen will have the courage to return an honest verdict. The same trouble was at one time very prominent in Southern Italy, when the Carbinerij or mounted police, were stamping out the brigandage for which, up to a few years ago, practically all Southern Italy and especially Calabria enjoyed so evil a reputation. It took some years to convince the people that the Government would effectually protect witness against the vengeance of the brigands and their secret associates and abettors in the towns and villages; but in the long run the confidence of the people was gained, and to-day brigandage is practically nonexistent. In initiating a national crusade against the foul deeds of the Camorra, the Black Hand, and the Mala Vita, the Italian Government deserves the sympathy of the civilised world, and the outcome of the Viterbo proceedings will be watched with the keenest interest, not only in Italy but at New York and Buenos Ayres, in both of which cities Italian secret societies are very powerful. London has recently seen at close hand to what extremes of criminal violence the members of Continental secret societies are prepared to proceed in their impudent defiance of law and order. The time is not far distant when some combined international action must be taken to stamp out these societies, and it is possible that both the Whitechapel sensation and the Viterbo trial may play an important part in bringing such a project to a practical head.