Yet more absurd still. In Florence a band of young men were arrested for singing the choruses from the Prophète, which sounded revolutionary to the ears of the police. At the same time, the indulgence shown to the crimes of the police is boundless.
A poor man named Pascia was, in the same city, last week condemned to thirty-five days’ imprisonment for having said an impudent word to the guards. On hearing the sentence his wife, a young woman with a baby in her arms, expostulated, asking who would now earn her own and her child’s bread. She was arrested, and locked up for the night on the charge of ‘outraging authority.’
On the twenty-second of April of this year, Alfredo Ghazzi, Customs-house guard on the Italian border of the Tresa, fired into a fishing-boat on the Tresa, having received no provocation whatever, and maimed two men, named Zennari and Zannori, of whom the former died; the latter, after a long illness recovered. The military tribunal of Milan entirely absolved the guard Ghazzi.
For an offence of the kind (reanto arbitrario in servizio), even though ending in its victim’s death, the legal maximum of punishment is only two years’ imprisonment; but in this instance not even a fine was levied.
In Prussia the murder of men, women and children is frequent by the bayonets and the bullets of guards and sentinels. The other day a little boy was on the grass of a square in Berlin; the guard tried to arrest him; the child, frightened, ran away; the guard shot him dead. Such occurrences are frequent. If a newspaper condemns them the editor is imprisoned. It is wholly illogical to tell anarchists that human life is sacred when its sanctity can be disregarded at will by any soldier or police officer. The public was convulsed with horror before the assassination of Carnot; quite rightly; but why is it wholly unmoved at the assassination of the fishermen of Tresa, or of the child of Berlin?
The English nation has not perhaps been greatly interested in the fate of the conscript Evangelisto; has perhaps never heard of him. Briefly, he was, in the spring of this year, a young trooper, a peasant who had recently joined at Padua, could not learn to ride and had weak health; he was bullied to death by the officer immediately over him; he was made to ride with his feet tied beneath his horse, when he fell he was pulled up into the saddle and beaten, his hands being tied; once again he fell, and then never rose again; they swore at him and flung water over him in vain; he was dead. The officer who killed him is still at large and retains his position in the cavalry; being young, rich, and of rank, he drives four-in-hand about Udine, where he is now quartered, and when he is hissed and hooted by the country people they are arrested. Now, if the Italian press were to say what it has not said about this disgraceful affair under the new law, such lawful and proper censure would be called calumny of the army, and would be visited with fine and imprisonment.
The soldier is to be inviolable and revered as a god, when his bayonet or his sabre are the instruments of oppression of the government; but at other times he is considered as carrion with which his superiors may do whatever they choose.
It is constantly stated that the officer who tortured Evangelisto to death will be brought to trial, but months have elapsed since the tragedy and the young man is still enjoying himself[[P]] in full possession of his military rank. How could any public writer, who does his duty to the public, castigate too severely such atrocities as these?
Yet even to hint at the brutality which goes on in the barracks is considered almost treason in Italy even as in Germany.
The legislation of fear goes hand in hand with a military despotism. The one is the outcome of the other.