Part 4

If an example is not given, if cowardice, lying, and foolishness are not punished, life will become even more difficult and complicated than it is for all those who have duties and responsibilities, and for the mass of citizens who need to rebuild for themselves a quiet and laborious life.

We want to know who must do it, whether this M. Fedele has been or has not been punished, he who has not only deserted his place, but who has upset this whole region through his fright? Will he be punished? Will all those functioneers, who believed this foolish news, and have called for help before knowing the truth, will they be called and invited to show some courage, some cold blood, and equilibrium? As for the Agenzia Stefani which has covered itself with ridicule during all the period of the eruption, telegraphing all over the world, that the Vesuvian Observatory had been destroyed, while the news was false, and which has been obliged to contradict the news that it had given half an hour before, it has already been justly and severely upbraided and censured by our Prefect who will write to Rome to the central Government, that the director may be called, and an investigation made. Let the culprits be punished, and let none of them have the chance to escape, or to invent any thing more. Let nobody throw panic among those who have duties to fulfil in these sad and trying moments.

Let nobody start panic in Naples, in this city which must revive and begin again its work and energy. If a whole city like ours, a whole region, a whole population, from a prince of the House of Savoia to the humblest of soldiers must fall at the mercy of a frightened panic-stricken man, of an official whose business is to be forever mistaken, we would like to know if such absurd thing must be tolerated, if such thing has to continue. Let all those who have any fault in the panic of last night, be punished, and let military power interfere where it must, and government one where it wants and can, provided this dangerous and annoying scandal should not be repeated.

Let the Neapolitan public, the great punisher, act as it knows how to act when needed, and let it severely punish those newspapers that have printed false news exagrerating ruin and death.

LET THE LAND BE SAVED

For the present every thing is satisfactory. The Government could not, and cannot do more or better than it has done, to organise ready help through all the vast zone of the Vesuvian country stricken by this dreadful conflagration. The life of one hundred and fifty thousand people running away, has been guarded and protected with energy and wisdom, and the deserted towns, those less damaged, have been in the quickest possible way set again to their own normal life. The streets quite destroyed have been rebuilt, at least in those parts where circulation is more necessary, and with the return of the many fugitives to the towns where the dreadful shower was worse, they have managed to start again a life, abnormal perhaps, but at least a life. You need only go over this long, fatiguing, hard pilgrimage, in these countries stricken by the terrible disaster, to realize the extraordinary new start to life, the work of reparation, the rebuilding of everything, where nothing more had been left. All has been made anew, from the bread for the famished, to the medical assistance to the sick, from the first work in removing cinders and lappillus, to the building of wooden barracks, from the trains already running through the high piles of rocks, to the tearing down of tumbling roofs, from the free dinners distributed all around, to the Serino water brought here from Naples every day. All has sprung to a new life. To say who has done all this is easy: The Government has had this simple, happy idea. It has trusted two men of intelligence, two men of will, the Duke of Aosta and General Tarditi; it has put its trust in the obedience, abnegation, heroism of the chiefs and of the soldiers; it has added to this sane, serious, and practical civil element, and has given much money, it has adhered to all requests, it has answered to all demands. Ready help is active, there where life is. How long will all this last? And can it last? And must it last? The salvation of to day is done! Man has saved man! Those who had power, intellect, good will, ardor, enthusiasm have given it all! The history of these days will remain memorable in the pages of human help! And I would like to have the vigour and the time to write it up myself, as an homage to the ideal which binds men. But what, and who will save to-morrow man and his house, man and his descendence, man and his bread, man and his field?

Who and what will create a new life firm, continued, of constant evolution?

One is the secret: this country must be saved. Oh men! who are tenderly concerned over the despair of nearly ten thousand people, oh! men of heart and mind, give, give food to all these unfortunate beings, to these poor people who have nothing to do, to the women, to the old people, to the children! Alas! you will not be able to do it always! Build, rebuild roofs and hearths that they may find a shelter, but the house will perhaps be empty, and the hearth fireless. Have the streets cleared free from the rocks, lapillus, and cinders which the fury of the vulcano has brought down, but these streets will be deserted and sad. Reform the social life with its laws and regulations, but all that will be a dead letter. Ah! all is useless if the country is not saved. The land which gives bread and fire, the land which gives life must be saved in all its region so terribly damaged. This land alone knows the secret of its resurrection. Save the land, you men of good will. Save it in all its modest and imposing forms: save the little orchard, and the small tract, the garden, the humble edge which closes the large field, save the land of the poor farmer, of the modest peasant, of the small land-owner, fertil or steril as it may be. Modest peasant, save the land, no matter how it is, rich or poor; the land is always the land, the spring of life, the earth which is flour, vegetables, the earth which is life itself! From the miserable little grass, to the highest of trees, the earth which enriches man, warms him up, lights up his nights. The earth which gives food to the tired limbs, wood to the hearth, oil to the lamp. Save this land! You cannot help these people beyond a certain length of time, your money would not be enough, your charitable impulse would not last, and of these charities people, after all, will get tired. And so it will be, for the necessity of human conscience, for the dignity of man, even if marked by misfortune.

No alms any longer, but some means by which everybody may rise again, take up again his modest and laborious round of existence, support himself and his family, and close every day, with a blessing to God. Some means by which he may end his mortal pilgrimage having accomplished his work among men, as a worker, and head of a family. Save the earth, save the wheat and the vine, the oil and the oak, save every inch of land around the silent country homes. Save the land which slopes down over the cruel and fatal mountain, just as that, farther off, which cannot fear its tragic explosion. Ah, those poor lands ascending up to S. Anastasia all covered and buried, but still trying to emerge, those poor country lands around beautiful Somma Vesuviana cut out of existence, smothered and gone! Ah! that silent and deserted grave which is now the country between Somma and Ottaiano, dead, under half a meter of stones and cinders, everything dead, the grass, the plants, the bushes, the trees! Who will forget, who will ever forget that incomparable vision of death?

Call men of science, those who study science to better life, and tell them to get together, to observe, to notice, to reveal to the ignorant the secret to save this dead land. Call men of finances, not those who understand it as a mere dance of cyphers, but those who know what it means to life, and let them form a great project, by which the land may be saved.

Money will come, people are already giving it, and more will still be given, especially if people know that it is not only used for charities but for the redemption of work, not only used for provisory help, but for a larger, wiser, and more austere aid.

The Government will give now or later all that is necessary, and perhaps beyond what is necessary. Form a great, serious practical project, based on strong views, an agrary and financial project, which may teach, guide, advise! Give little or much money, as needed or where it is needed, in order that every farmer may get back his little tract of land, that every peasant may rebuild his field, and every owner may redeem his property.

Give your advice and take the easiest means to have it fulfilled. Let money be given, not lent to he who has cleared and redeemed his field. If the money has to be lent, let it be on long time, and let the Government pay a strong part of the interest on the agrary loan, just as was done at the time of the earthquake in Ligury. Let the cheapest and most efficacious advice be given, that every man may start with his own hands and the help of his people, to free his land from its funeral shroud, and let help be given as a prize to will, and tenacity. Let it be a civil help to honest citizens, that their small destroyed fortune may be rebuilt for their children. This, at least, you must do, men of good will.

Let all the land around be delivered from the heavy mantle which wraps and smothers it, let it be free, and from one season to another, let the grass, plants, trees, flowers and fruits grow up again.

May the waving crops spring up again, in the devastated fields, and the olive and vines grow there anew. May the almond tree bloom once more with red flowers there where the storm has passed, leaving death behind. Oh men of good will if you will know how to do this, you will have saved your country, and in renewing life where death has reigned, you will have come as near to God as anybody ever did before.

April 21, 1906.

EVERY DAY HAS ITS MORROW

It is not certainly through cold blooded and cruel newspaper work, that I, with some strong and faithful collaborators of the "Giorno" have gone in the places which have been more severely stricken by the furies of Vesuvius; nor have I gone there through any stupid and vain curiosity. We had all gone before, when the tremendous eruption was at its worst and we went trembling with anxiety and we saw and felt all the horror of that storm in its terrific aspect. We returned home every evening, every night in a real convulsion of anguish. Every day has its morrow, and to a period of great emotion, when all your soul rebels and rises against a misfortune which nothing can fight, another long and slow period follows, full of mortal sadness. The period of the morrow of a catastrophe when your spirit calmed down, and clear in its sadness, measures silently all the damage that people and things have suffered.

For the journalistic sportsman, Ottaiano, S. Giuseppe, Boscotrecase, Torre Annunziata, Somma Vesuviana don't hold now any more the necessary interest to suggest terrorising news, nor does the frivolous curiosity of the frivolous reader find any interest in these exausted subjects. But for me every day has its morrow, and so it is for all those who have a heart, who feel to be citizens of a great country rather than newspaper men; who feel the voice of their conscience before that of their fancy. Every day has its morrow and it is this morrow that we sadly and simply have gone to seek there where the ruins of country and villages have been left. Another sentiment has urged me and the other pilgrims of this humble duty, the thought that now, little by little, the violent crisis being calmed down and passed, people may forget all this great trouble! We are so willingly careless here when deep sorrow has passed, and the sun shines on human misfortunes. We forget so easily the pains and troubles of others, when the pang of their sorrow is ended. But we should not forget; we must not stop having pity, we must not stop giving our cares and help, we must continue! So we have gone every where it seemed necessary, stopping first at Ottaiano, and we have seen and inquired of the people, and things have told us their secret.

April 22, 1906.

THE NEW POMPEI

Between two edges of lapillus which have formed on the right and left of the rails, among mountains of ashes accumulated here and there in order to free the way, that the trains might get as far as Ottaiano, the little station is crowded with different and strange people. Here are dark faced peasants, silently advancing from the villages where they have been sheltered, and now looking for the little home which once was theirs. Civil functioneers who come here perhaps to try and, doubtless in vain, to rebuild some kind of social life among the ruins of this new Pompei. Small proprietors have climbed up here just through that sad curiosity some people, seem to feel who know they are ruined: rich proprietors of lands and houses, who come to calculate how much of their fortunes has been lost, and consider whether it is worth the while to fight for the future; some weeping woman of the people, a few but rare ladies who have come through a spirit of charity. Many soldiers, many officers, all covered with dust, and not brilliant looking certainly, but fulfilling the most constant and patient duty, a duty always greater and more complex. Here is their general in the midst of a group of persons, who draw close to him, wishing for something, (every body wishes for something), and general Durelli has an answer for everyone, a brief but kind answer. He has a word for everybody, and promises only what he can keep. He is the soul, the breath, the mind, of this new Pompei. I know all this, and I simply bow to him, as I don't want to make him lose any of his precious time. But later when all interrogatories, with every distinguished or obscure person, peasants, gentlemen, poor traders or proprietors of Ottaiano is over, every one declares to me that in this incomparable trouble, in this ruination of the prettiest of towns, the choice of General Durelli, as a reorganiser, could not be better. He occupies one of the few standing houses left inhabited by the parson, and he sleeps there a few hours, and takes his meals, but he is always on his feet, always around, plunging his high boots deep in a meter of lapillus, going to and fro, watching every thing, providing promptly to all with clear and efficacious orders. Around him, groups of bare-footed women, with half naked children in their arms, push and press, while new people coming from the different main roads, arrive, urging him with demands and requests. The women, especially the poorest of them, with sad looking faces relate to him their misfortune, and general Durelli always kind and patient tries to console them and give them what they ask. He begs them to be quiet and wait, hoping for better times.

They draw slowly away, sitting in groups on the ground or on the accumulated ashes, forming thus a strange and never to be forgotten picture. Their clothes are gray with ashes and dust, whilst their babies with smutty faces and hair, lay quietly in their arms, watching eagerly around. They wait there in silence. Perhaps better hours will come.

UNDER THE NATIVE ROOF.

In the long, hard fatiguing pilgrimage where every step costs untold pain, where every look sees a precipice, a young peasant accompanies us as a guide.

One reads trouble and misery in his dark eyes, his voice is low and dragging, almost complaining.

Are you from Ottaiano, I ask him, while going up the steep road.

--Yes, I and my family are from that place.

--Did you run away from there in that terrible night?

--Yes, we fled just about dawn when the fall of stones was at its worst.

--And how long did this last?

--Fully twenty four hours madam, from ten o'clock on Saturday night, till ten o'clock on Palm Sunday.

A whole day, yes, a whole day. He doesn't lie nor exaggerate. If he did, how could all this ruin be around us?

--Did your house fall down? I inquire.

--Yes, he answers sadly. There it stands on that height yonder. Look at it! look at it! All I possessed is buried there! My bed, my poor furniture, all.

Tears gather in his eyes. At least have you saved your family?

--Yes, he murmurs, they are at Sarno. But I have lost all. I was supporting them, and have lost my wagon and my two mules, for I was a driver.

--Are they buried?

--The wagon can be seen under the stones; and as he speaks he seems to take heart all at once, It can be seen! perhaps I shall be able to drag it out. But the mules! The mules are dead. How shall I manage?

A deep sigh heaves his broad chest.

--And you have come back here, I ask him? Many of you have come back?

--I have come back. This is my country. I have come to try to save my wagon and those poor animals, Nothing, nothing!

--Will you remain here?

--I shall! Where could I go? This is my country. I will also make my family return from Sarno. If you knew how many have returned!

--How many? How many?

--At least three thousand. Many have come back the following day. You see, we could not stay away.

--And where do they live?

--Nearly all sleep out in the fields under straw sheds, and the others in the few houses that remain standing now.

--They are building cabins, and little by little you will see every body, coming back to their own country.

--Was this place, fine? I ask him quite touched.

--The finest of all, and our country is fine!

And he utters these words enthusiastically, but again he looks down sighing, and is silent.

AMONG THE RUINS.

Of course the farther we get from the station, from Municipio square, the fewer people we see, and the more we advance towards Scudieri's house, Ateneo Chierchia, and the feudal palace of Ottaiano, where the ruins take a more imposing and solemn aspect, the greater the solitude.

But while we stop at every step, to look from the top of the mountains of stones and ashes, on which we climb and descend, while we look at the piled up ceilings, shutters, stones, furniture, pictures, and utensils all in demolition, now and then, we see somebody coming out of a small lane closed by a small gate. Here is an old woman, she looks to be seventy years old, she is thin, wrinkled, but quite straight. I speak to her, I ask her all about that dreadful night.

--I was sleeping, madam, I was sleeping. I woke up and heard screams: "The mountain, the mountain!" Who could believe that a disaster was on us? What was there to be done? I turn entreating God, but I see death coming. My lady! What noise, what darkness, what flashes! The door could not be opened. I just jumped out of the window.

--Out of the window? at your age?

--The window was low and I fell on the ashes. I began to run madly, I don't know where. I protected my head with my arm! Look how wounded it is by a stone falling on me!

And she shows me her fore-arm. It has a long wound, a torn place which is beginning to heal.

--And where did you go?

--Where could I go? Old as I am? In the country towards Somma; there I spent the night. I said, this is the hour of my death! Let your will be done my Lord!

--And you have come back?

--I have come back. What could I do in another country? Who wants an old woman? If I have to die, I want to die here.

Here is a man of the people coming from a street. He bends over a mattress, tucks it up and lays it on a cart which is in a corner, where he has already layed other things.

--Have you found your things again? I ask him.

--I have found some of them, he tells me readily, with a rather excited tone. I am taking these things to Sarno where my wife and children are. They have no place where to sleep. But I am coming back at once. I am a man, I can work. I am coming back day after to-morrow. I want to work here.

--And what will you do?

--What they'll give me to do? Have you seen all those men on the square? They are not from Ottaiano, they are from Marigliano, Pomigliano, and other countries, all people coming here to seek work. They take away the stones and cinders, and ask a great amount of money. Well, this must be done by us, from Ottaiano. Also gratis, even if they don't give us for it but the soldiers' ranch.

The country is ours, the trouble is ours, we must repair it. And he ties with a rope his few things, loads them on the cart with a firm and decided air.

THE BABIES

Speaking with people, I find that the most touching episodes are those concerning the babies.

How heart-rending the cry and screams must have been of the parents and relatives who were trying to gather them, that they might take them away, lifting in their arms the youngest, tying to their clothes the largest, what a tearing cry must have been heard under the terrible shower of burning stones, lappillus, and ashes! Many of these children, got lost through the country in that dark night, their parents, not finding them, but after three days at long distances, while for three days, they believed them dead and wept desperately over them! The boarders of Ateneo Chierchia ran out helping the younger ones, and carried them on their shoulders wrapped in blankets that they might not be wounded, and in these conditions they fled through the terrible night. The soldiers who had come from Nola during the day gathered a number of other children, and fed them, keeping them with them till the following days, when they could be returned to their parents. As for mothers, in that terrible flight, half wild with despair, they wrapped the little ones in their dresses and shawls thus repairing them from certain death. A poor lady, who had a four months old baby, hid it under her arms, covered it with a basket, and thus carried it for eleven miles, on foot, at night, the baby however quietly sleeping under its shelter. The children of one of the teachers in Ottaiano, took their father who was very ill, closed him in a kind of covered box, and carried him so, on their shoulders till Caserta. The poor man naturally died there of his former trouble, but his children can say that they have saved him from dying under the stones of Ottaiano. Strange to say in this flight of fourteen thousand persons, not one single baby has died, and the people from Ottaiano say, that this is a miracle of the Madonna, a true, real miracle, and every mother clasping her child alive in her arms, has been obliged to believe in this miracle.

A WITNESS.

From the ruins of his beautiful house, from the flowered terrace, covered for one meter with vulcanic stones and cinders, comes Luigi Scudieri, a friend of ours, a witness of the great cataclism. His gay and open expression has not changed, his family is saved, all of them, from his old parents to his children. The palaces of his noble and powerful family have tumbled down one after the other and their rich fabrics, their vast territories are now buried, for many, many years perhaps. Their fortune is compromised, yet he is back here since four or five days, back in Ottaiano, actively busying himself around, advising, guiding, conforting the more desolate, the desperate, helping every one, speaking to every body.

Of course I ask him to tell me all about the destruction of Ottaiano, but notwithstanding his natural brightness, he gets confused and troubled while he speaks.