AMAZING SCENES IN ITALIAN CITY.

SEIZED BY FASCISTI.

The town and province of Bologna, as well as the neighbouring districts of Modena and Ferrara, are in a great state of political ferment. The Fascisti, answering the general call to mobilisation, are flocking into Bologna in battalions and regiments, setting up tents on the outskirts and in public squares, sleeping under porticoes, and being rationed in military fashion under the arcades. Two or three divisions, some 20,000 or 30,000 strong, have been mustered for what might seem almost a comic opera enterprise. Their whole aim is to depose the Prefect of Bologna and expel him beyond the bounds of Romagna. The Prefect had issued a decree forbidding the organised movements of large groups, whether Communists or Fascisti, from one district to another and from one province to another. A sort of civil war, carried on with clubs and bludgeons, and occasionally with firearms and pocket bombs, had been going on, and the effervescence was increasing. The Prefect wisely intended to stop it, and was supported by Rome. But the Fascisti considered it an insidious favour to the Communists, who never obeyed any order, and consequently they decided to take the law and vigilance over public order into their own hands, creating thereby a state of things described by Milton as “confusion worse confounded.” The Prefect, Signor Mori, is to-day practically besieged in the Bologna Government Palace. The Fascisti hold bivouac all round it, tens of thousands strong. The pity is that there is no Dante on the spot to describe the scenes. For five days the Fascisti came into the town by trains, trams, and on foot, and yesterday the tide of influx became an immense stream. Royal Guards from all the provinces round have been also sent, so that, between the Guards and the Fascisti the population of the town has increased by 50,000, all to depose or to defend a Prefect.

The Premier, Signor Facta, has issued a drastic order for general disarmament, forbidding the carrying of sticks and clubs, which the Fascisti resolutely disobey. He sent Senator Vigliani to make inquiry, and the Senator, after visiting Bologna and receiving delegations of the citizens, has returned to Rome. The Ministry is violently attacked by the followers of Signor Nitti, by socialists, and by all the dissatisfied elements, and a crisis is threatened.

The Fascisti, so far, have committed relatively few excesses, but they have sacked some Socialist and Communist meeting places, set fire to some Labour Exchanges, and prevented the firemen from doing their duty. In Turin, as an aside, a group of Fascisti waylaid the delivery vans of the newspaper Stampa, which had written some criticisms on them, burned 30,000 copies of the paper in the public squares, and threw a delivery car into the River Po, from which sappers later on recovered it.