MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1927, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

NOTABLE TRIAL. OF SICILIAN BRIGANDS. (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received this day at 10.15 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 18. The “ Daily News ” Parlmer’s correspondent reports inside a huge iron cage, the Assize Court, guarded by scores of carabineers, sat to try 153 Sicilian brigands, headed by the notorious old Ferrarello, with his private gang of fifty, and remnants of other gangs of prisoners, which include doctor, engineer, two priests, seven women, including the aged queen of the gang, who is the mother of five prisoners named Antaloro. The brigands ruled the interior for fifty years, Ferrarello disputing for the chieftainship with Paralzzolo, until a jealous brother-in-law knifed and murdered Paralzzolo. The clean-up was due to the energy of the new Fascist prefect, determined to re-establish the regime of the law. He captured the outfit after four months’ vigil. Sixty lawyers have been engaged for the defence and a three months’ trial is anticipated.

VIMY RIDGE TUNNEL. LONDON, Oct. 18. Canadian engineers, when preparing the Vimy Ridge War Memorial site, discovered the famous Grange Tunnel, with its miles of underground passages that were pushed out to within a few yards of the German lines. The Vimy Ridge entrance is choked up with tangled materials. It is exactly in the same condition that it was in 1917. This is the only original intact portion of the entire Western front battlefields. The duckboards lie in the tranches, and there are the officers’ beds rotting and collapsed in the cliallv dug-outs. Hundreds of names and many messages, written on the chalk in indelible pencils, are as fresh as they were a decade ago.

Mills bombs lie on the ledges, with cans of bully beef, tin hats and rusting rifles. The chalk is still blackened from the smoke of the candles that were set in the niches to light the passages. The authorities are preserving intact what is destined to be one of the most touching memorials and most remarkable relics of the war.