It is my theory that among a populace of this kind the words relative to
agricultural pursuits will be those which are least likely to suffer
change with lapse of years, or to be replaced by others.
Acting on this principle, I put him through a catechism on the subject
as soon as we reached our destination, and was surprised at the relative
scarcity of Italian terms - barely 25 per cent I should say. Needless to
add, I omitted to note them down. Such as it is, be that my contribution
to the literature of these sporadic islets of mediaeval Hellenism, whose
outstanding features are being gnawed away by the waves of military
conscription, governmental schooling, and emigration.
Caulonia, my next halting-place, lay far off the line. I had therefore
the choice of spending the night at Gerace (old Locri) or Rocella
Ionica - intermediate stations. Both of them, to my knowledge, possessing
indifferent accommodation, I chose the former as being the nearest, and
slept there, not amiss; far better than on a previous occasion, when
certain things occurred which need not be set down here.
The trip from Delianuova over the summit of Montalto to Bova railway
station is by no means to be recommended to young boys or persons in
delicate health. Allowing for only forty-five minutes' rest, it took me
fourteen hours to walk to the town of Bova, and the railway station lies
nearly three hours apart from that place. There is hardly a level yard
of ground along the whole route, and though my "guide" twice took the
wrong track and thereby probably lost me some little time, I question
whether the best walker, provided (as I was) with the best maps, will be
able to traverse the distance in less than fifteen hours.
Whoever he is, I wish him joy of his journey. Pleasant to recall,
assuredly; the scenery and the mountain flowers are wondrously
beautiful; but I have fully realized what the men of Delianuova meant,
when they said:
"To Montalto, Yes; to Bova, No."
XXXIII
MUSOLINO AND THE LAW
Musolino will remain a hero for many long years to come. "He did his
duty ": such is the popular verdict on his career. He was not a brigand,
but an unfortunate - a martyr, a victim of the law. So he is described
not only by his country-people, but by the writers of many hundred
serious pamphlets in every province of Italy.
At any bookstall you may buy cheap illustrated tracts and poems setting
forth his achievements. In Cosenza I saw a play of which he was the
leading figure, depicted as a pale, long-suffering gentleman of the
"misunderstood" type - friend of the fatherless, champion of widows and
orphans, rectifier of all wrongs; in fact, as the embodiment of those
virtues which we are apt to associate with Prometheus or the founder of
Christianity.
Only to those who know nothing of local conditions will it seem strange
to say that Italian law is one of the factors that contribute to the
disintegration of family life throughout the country, and to the
production of creatures like Musolino. There are few villages which do
not contain some notorious assassins who have escaped punishment under
sentimental pleas, and now terrorize the neighbourhood. This is one of
the evils which derange patriarchalism; the decent-minded living in fear
of their lives, the others with a conspicuous example before their eyes
of the advantages of evil-doing. And another is that the innocent often
suffer, country-bred lads being locked up for months and years in prison
on the flimsiest pretexts - often on the mere word of some malevolent
local policeman - among hardened habitual offenders. If they survive the
treatment, which is not always the case, they return home completely
demoralized and a source of infection to others.
It is hardly surprising if, under such conditions, rich and poor alike
are ready to hide a picturesque fugitive from justice. A sad state of
affairs, but - as an unsavoury Italian proverb correctly says - il pesce
puzza dal capo.
For the fault lies not only in the fundamental perversity of all Roman
Law. It lies also in the local administration of that law, which is
inefficient and marked by that elaborate brutality characteristic of all
"philosophic" and tender-hearted nations. One thinks of the Byzantines.
. . . That justices should be well-salaried gentlemen, cognizant of
their duties to society; that carbineers and other police-functionaries
should be civilly responsible for outrages upon the public; that a
so-called "habeas-corpus" Act might be as useful here as among certain
savages of the north; that the Baghdad system of delays leads to
corruption of underpaid officials and witnesses alike (not to speak of
judges) - in a word, that the method pursued hereabouts is calculated to
create rather than to repress crime: these are truths of too elementary
a nature to find their way into the brains of the megalomaniac
rhetoricians who control their country's fate. They will never endorse
that saying of Stendhal's: "In Italy, with the exception of Milan, the
death-penalty is the preface of all civilization." (To this day, the
proportion of murders is still 13 per cent higher in Palermo than in
Milan.)
Speak to the wisest judges of the horrors of cellular confinement such
as Musolino was enduring up to a short time ago, as opposed to capital
punishment, and you will learn that they invoke the humanitarian
Beccaria in justification of it. Theorists!
For less formidable criminals there exists that wondrous institution of
domicilio coatto, which I have studied in the islands of Lipari and
Ponza. These evil-doers seldom try to escape; life is far too
comfortable, and the wine good and cheap; often, on completing their
sentences, they get themselves condemned anew, in order to return.
