Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 253, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1918 — TAKE NO ADVANTAGE OF FOE [ARTICLE]

TAKE NO ADVANTAGE OF FOE

Feudist* In Italy end South America Display Sene* of Chivalry That la Remarkable. Before one can truly realize the ter* rible depravity to which human nature can occasionally descend one has to obtain just an inkling into that horror of horrors known by the name “vendetta.” The misery, the suffering, the fear sometimes engendered by these awful feuds it is impossible to paint in language too denunciatory, observes a writer in London Answers. A gentleman not long returned from South America described the other day the end of a vendetta he once had the misfortune to witness in the Boca (lowest quarter) of Buenos Aires. The antagonists had their knives strapped to their hands so that the weapons could not possibly drop from their fingers, however badly injured they became. Before* the police had separated them one of the luckless combatants; had received no less than 17 wounds. On being examined it wds discovered that this individual had a loaded revolver in his belt. “Whyever did you net use your firearm?” asked the prefect of police. “No; it was a fight with knives,” explained the other, with a gasp, apd the next moment he sank unconscious to the ground. In Naples, where warning of a vendetta is almost invariably given in private, a member of the Camorra is sometimes called In to settle a dispute, and in this way occasionally what might otherwise have been a brutal feud ends in the chink of glasses at a sumptuous banquet. If a Camorrlst meets his death at the hands of a foe It becomes the bounden duty of some other member bf the Camorra to avehge it, notice being almost invariably given to the relatives of the deceased that it is absolutely unnecessary for them to take any steps infthe matter whatever. In Naples, curiously enough, the sympathy of the people is much more with the murderer in these cases than with the victim, judging that if he had had no grievance the former would never have bared his blade; and it is quite surprising how far people are prepared to go in order to protect him from the police. It is an unwritten law among the hot-blooded races among whom the vendetta still exists that, in an open street fight, no adversary must be assailed with a knife until he has had time to unclasp his own. Not the least extraordinary feature of several of the vendettas is the refusal on the part of its dying victims to disclose the name of those who have mortally wounded them.