The Anticlerical Knife

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 11 June 1908, Page 23

The Anticlerical Knife

The warfare of "the dark-lantern organisations and of the forces of anarchy against, religion on Continental Europe has of late been assuming a more acute form. To organised calumny (which the cour-ts have rendered unsafe) has succeeded organised brute violence. During the past six or eight months this has' assumed., various shapes. v Cardinal Merry del Val (Papal Secre- - tary of State) has been made to feel it at the hands of the anarchist gang in Marino, and for some time past ecclesiastical students have been now and then made the object of apparently organised onslaughts by-^-the armed' ruffianism of the lodge and of the anarchist ' circle '. Some time ago a crowd of anti-clerical hoodlums committed the indiscretion of ' falling on ' a group of Irish students returning through Tivoli from" a day's tramp in the mountains. The sturdy youths from the Green 'shores ,of Erin stood on their defence, and plied clenched fistntnd walking-stick to. such good effect that( a number of the aggressors had to lie up in the hos- "~ pital for repairs. - r The latest achievement'"' of the forces of disorder has been the cowardly '-■ knifing ' ,of a little isolated group of three ■ Scottish ecclesiastical students at , Ariccia.^in the mountains near Rome. We ' quote in part from the Rome correspondent of the London ' Times ' :— „ ' A small number .of the students, who were mounted on donkeys, happened to meet on the Ariccia bridge a group of idle ruffians playing at morra. They were greeted with every kind of filthy and "blasphemous insult, but rode quietly by paying 'no attention. Their assailants followed them, throwing stones, and when

one of the students dismounted to remonstrate with y them they surrounded aifd" assaulted him. The other students came to his rescue, and in the scuffle • which ensued knives were at once drawn- by the aggressors, who then fled, leaving two students on' the ground severely . wounded. The police acted promptly," and within a very short time -succeeded in arresting four of the men most- concerned. Three of these are Romans who were spending the day only at Ariccia"; is a Roman anarchist' now' living in Ariccia. Some difficulty was experienced by the police in protecting their prisoners from • the crowd in Albano, who wished to lynch- them. ' The Scots College has owned its house between- Albano and Marino almost- as long as it has - been established in Rome, some .two and i a half centuries, and the students, who always -go therefor the summer villeggiatura. (holidays) are'Anuch loved "and re- ■ spected in the neighborhood/ <' Prom, the Rome correspondent of the London ' Tablet '* we learn that tlie^Marino anarchist was the ringleader of both, the verbal and the physical attack. 'He had', says^the 'Tablet', 'in his possession, when arrested, an anarchist manifesto reeking from the first " line to the last with advocacy of violence as the only . means of effecting anything;' One of the wounded*students lay, for long, near unto death in the hospital at Albano. The affair has created a first-class sensation,' and the pressure put upon, the Italian Government— r which is so generally weak and often even complaisant, towards the forces- of disorder — may result in some drastic action against the practice of carrying lethal weapons: If so, the .cowardly, attack" on the Scottish." students will prove a benefit to Italy— out of the eater will come forth meat, and out of the lion's mouth honey. ■ , 1