The night before Easter has been full of fright and confusion for the
people already prostrated by so many emotions.
This ringing of telephones, this continued and sudden ringing, in the
depth of night, repeated every where, in military offices, government
offices, newspaper offices, this anxious running to the telephones,
this news given with trembling voice, these brief dialogues sometimes
impetuous, sometimes sad, have been, and still are an incubus on
us all, from the general to the reporter, from the Prefect to the
municipal usher, from the director of a railway station to the firemen!
Indeed, this ringing which makes our nerves thrill in the most painful
way, the exhausted nerves of all those who have been obliged to suffer
for the last ten days, and think, and act, in the mean time, this
terrible, continued noise has not permitted us to sleep in this night
before Easter. We all have been the victims of a deathly joke, invented
by a man who, mad with terror, has made himself guilty of the lowest of
deeds.
But obeying to our rigorous duty as publishers, also in this night
before Easter, and in this very Easter morning we have given, in a
very brief and simple form, without clamour or exaggeration, without
lugubrious inventions, the news which the idleness of this M. Fedele
had changed in a tolling of bells, and in a breath of death. It is
natural that Prefects, under Prefects, Commissaries of Prefecture,
should have been more than concerned, and that at head quarters they
should have kept watch all night, giving orders on all the lines,
awakening every body, and mobilitating every thing. Has not our M.
Fedele spread terror every where? Later on in that same Easter morning,
while our hearts rejoicing, especially this year when the day had
brought peace and resurrection, every body was suddenly saddened by the
spreading of this false news, not given by us, but thrown among us in
the most emphatic and cruel way, spreading sorrow in the hardly revived
spirits of the people, announcing that there were dead and wounded,
even among the officers and the soldiers. Oh! poor mothers of officers
and soldiers near and far away, you must have been the first to get
the sad news, this low lying news, and your poor heart must have been
broken before you were able to know that this news it was false.
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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.