HARSH DISCIPLINE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 37, 3 January 1890, Page 13

HARSH DISCIPLINE.

(Roman correspondence of New York Freeman' t Journal.") ALTHOUGH every effort has been made to keep the demoralisation of the Italian army out of the newspapers, it has been % failure. The men are treated with great cruelty, starved and pnnisbed, often for bo cause. The insubordination that results, naturally, from this condition of affairs, had lately a bloody issue during a military march to Benevento. A benagiier suddenly shot bis commanding officer dead and also a sergeant who endeavoured to disarm him. At the court martial that tried him, it was clearly proved that the criminal had been maddened by bad treatment. When his superiors refused to releaso him, provisionally, from fatigue-duty, although dangerously ill, he lost all self-restraint.

A soldier of the 40 ih line, named Pussaby, died of exhaustion at Lecce, He wss suff -ring from an incurable disease of the stomach, and wat literally murdered by the fatigue duties imposed on him without any regard for his condition. The regimental physicians appear to be a very hard-hearted class. They distrust the soldiers as a rule, and from the fear of being deceived they refuse, systematically, leave of absence, even when anyone can see its necessity. As a consequence the army is hateful to the soldiers themselves, and looked on with absolute horror by the peasantry. The radical papers are beginning to take the matter up, and may possibly frighten the Government iato doing something. A Roman journalist gives a vivid picture of the scenes now occurring ia every part o< United Italy. " I was staying," he said, "in a little town in the Cainpagna, through which detachments of cavalry were in the habit of passing. As the town was very close to the encampment, I was present every evening at very piiuful scenes. When the commander of the detachment arrived, he was always petitioned by five or six poor wretches, asking to be exempt from their services for various reasons. You should have seen how this officer snapped at them, calling them 1 izy meals, and heaping all sorts of abuse on them, without ever taking the trouble of trying to fiad out whether they were really sick or professional idlers. Unfortunately these petitions were nearly always well-founded, for the unhappy creatures who beggeii for a day's rest were actually shivering with fever and presented visible evidence of all those signs of malaria that can deceive no one. Bat the officer, who had generally di jed too well, and had not all the coolness desirable in a reasonable judge, wanted especially to be taken fjr a shrewd individual not to be played on. What I saw in this village was but the faithful reproduction of what we all see everywhere. It is one of the symptoms that do not permit us to have muoh confidence in the moral solidity of our army."