UNREST IN ITALY

Otago Witness, Issue 3495, 8 March 1921, Page 17

UNREST IN ITALY

ROME, February 26. Four thousand students at Naples, ex asperated at the high price of books, smashed windows and set fire to the book shops. They snowed the streets with leaves from costly volumes. Troops quelled the outbreak. MILAN, March 1. There has been an aggravated renewal of the disturbance in Florence. The Socialists erected a barricade, resulting in conflicts with the troops, who stormed the barricades, using machine guns. They have now posted field guns in the streets. The Carabinieri slew the driver of a train for refusing to remove his cap as the wounded were passing, and this was

the signal for savage excesses, the Nationalists looting, wrecking, and igniting the Socialists’ buildings and murdering the secretary of the Railway-men's Union. The electrical workers plunged the city in darkness, and the hotels, restaurants, and amusement houses were closed. The students at .Palermo, from the roofs of the university, rained tiles on the heads of the troops. The latter ascended the church steeple and fusiladed the students, killing six. March 3. As a reprisal for the Fasoistis destruction of Trieste, the Labour headquarters, 300 armed Communists overpowered the guard at San Marco dockyard and burnt the workshops and factories. The damage done amounts to £1,000,000. There were many casualties as the result of conflicts with soldiers. LONDON, March 2. The Daily Telegraph's Milan correspondent states that as a result of three days’ conflicts at Florence and elsewhere about 20 persons were killed, over 100 were seri ously wounded, and between 400 and 500 were arrested. The outbreak at Florence was an insurrection with a revolutionary purpose, secretly prepared by Communist agitators, but the Government’s strong action suppressed the rising.