Strange Times 70: An Orgy of Arson

Today brings street warfare in Italy, bridge warfare in Kentucky, shame on the high seas, and useless news about Tbilisi. Consult your almanac for…

March 11, 1921

• The leper colony in Massachusetts' Buzzards Bay has been evacuated, and the afflicted transferred to the federal leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana.

• A Native American delegation petitions to have one of their number named as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 

• After the "climax of one of the wildest jams" yet in the six-day bicycle race at the Garden, reigning champions Maurice Brocco and Willie Coburn launch themselves into a tie for first place.

• Caruso enjoys such a good day that several of his entourage leave his side for the first time in weeks, to attend the afternoon matinee of Aida at the Metropolitan Opera House.

• The Weather: Fair and warmer today; Saturday cloudy, becoming unsettled; moderate south winds.

If you enjoy reading about this sort of relentless political violence, it is my sworn duty to inform you that the digital edition of Comrades is on sale now. 

MILAN, March 10.—The last sparks of the communist conflagration in Tuscany have provoked an outbreak in the mountain city of Siena. Two hundred revolutionists barricaded within the palace of the proletariat assailed a column of military nationalists with revolver shots and a shower of bombs. 

While the awestricken population scampered beyond the city gates, mountain artillery was brought up and the terrorist citadel was bombarded with 3-inch shells until the defenders capitulated. Sixty-two of them were taken off to forts, some badly wounded. Then the Fascisti performed the usual rite of "baptism of fire," which, like an orgy of arson, has reduced the syndicalist edifices at Fucecchio, Empoli, and Meleganano to heaps of ashes.

An exciting affair happened in the suburbs of Pisa. The Marquis Jerome Serlupi and a motoring party were waylaid by a Socialist mob, but thanks to their defense with pistols they furrowed their way through to safety. Thereupon the exasperated mob marched on the Marquis's family villa at San Casciano. His eldest son, Lieutenant Domenico Serlupi, and Count Vannicelli of Florence, assisted by a brigadier, four carabineers and servants on the estate, maintained a gallant resistance until troops with machine guns motored from Florence to disperse those besiegers. Meantime four of those inside the villa were shot down. 

Since these events the central scene of political conflict has shifted from Tuscany to Piedmont. Nationalist demonstrators were fired on from the Labor Chamber at Casale Monefrate, in Alexsandria Province. Signor Carlotto, Secretary of the Turin Fascisti League, and three others were killed. Captain De Vecchi, leader of the movement, was wounded in the arm and twenty others were moved to a hospital. Troops stormed the building after a four-hour siege and captured 200 Socialists barricaded inside.

Dr. Guilio Doria, President of the Fascisti militants in Adria, near Ravago, was shot at by the Secretary of the Carters' Federation, and, though wounded in the head contrived to kill his adversary. At Savora the printing works of a Communist newspaper, the Red Banner, were blown up by nitroglycerine.

While the streets of Italy ran with blood, all was peaceful back in the United States. Oh, wait, no it wasn't.

LEXINGTON, Ky.,  March 10.—In a battle fought on the bridge between Newport and Covington, Ky., today, in which guards of two trucks loaded with whisky and bandits were engaged, Norman Ashcraft, a guard, and Elmer McCabe, said to be one of the robbers, were fatally wounded.

While the gun fight was at its height a street car ran onto the bridge between the opposing parties, who thereupon used the car as a barricade, firing through its windows at each other. Every window in the car was smashed and fully twenty bullets passed through it, but not a passenger was hit. After Ashcraft and McCabe had been wounded both bands of men mounted their machines and sped away leaving the injured men on the bridge.

The trucks were being transported across the bridge from Newport to Covington when a big automobile crowded with men drew in front of them, seemingly in an attempt to halt them. The guards on the trucks immediately sprang to the roadway and a moment later the automobile yielded up several men. Revolvers were put into play immediately.

Women express opinion; men whine about it so loudly that their complaint lands in a national newspaper. If you can't handle being shamed by temperance workers, don't moan about it—act like gentlemen and get drunk in your rooms.

How two women, delegates to a W.C.T.U. Convention in South America, "spoiled" a perfectly good trip for several of the passengers of the Santa Ana of the Grace Line, on her last trip to South America, was told yesterday by members of the crew when the vessel docked at Pier 33, Brooklyn. The women succeeded in putting a stop to the poker playing usually indulged in in the smoking room, and also kept such a supervision over the liquors that the sale was reduced to a minimum.

The women made their appearance in the smoking room the first night out, buttonholed the men as they entered the room and succeeded in embarrassing so many of them that, to use the phrase of the ship's crew, "the game was a frost." Few drinks were served in the men's saloon, owing to the work fo the women, but there was a noticeable increase in the number of flasks sold, probably to be drunk in the staterooms.

As we learned way back in Strange Times 21, when the Times needs to fill up the bottom of a column, they're not afraid to just copy something out of the almanac. 

WASHINGTON, March 10.—Geographers suspect the ancients knew what they were doing when they named the capital of the old Georgian kingdom Tiflis.

The word comes, according to the National Geographic Society, from a phrase meaning "Warm Town," and the review adds that the town produces seventy kinds of language; "the handsomest branch of the white race," particularly the women; is a great wine centre and much given to singing and dancing.

Guides are useless in Tiflis, it says, unless they can "wheedle and swear in at least a dozen languages."

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