"Vengeance of Providence"

Stretched on beds, curled up on doorsteps, sprawled upon roofs, sleepy southern Italians awakened at 1:10 a. m. one night last week to find the world crashing about their heads. Straight across the country's "ankle," from Naples on the west to Foggia and Bari on the east, the earth heaved in the most terrible disaster since a quake plus a tidal wave snuffed out the lives of 77,000 Sicilians and Calabrians at Messina in 1908. More than 3,500 were reported killed last week, and how many thousands were injured no man knew. For four days after the quake the earth that had leaped in convulsion quivered with minor earthquakes like a frightened horse.

Centre of the disturbance and scene of the greatest loss of life were the mountain villages of Avellino, Villanova-Albanese, Melfi, in the Apennines back of Naples. Here thousands were mangled, buried alive in the debris of stone houses that crumpled and knocked each other down like rows of toy soldiers. Though Bari on the Adriatic was shaken by severe tremors and many houses damaged, none was killed, none injured. Fascist engineers were proud, for modern Bari is their handiwork. They have converted a small sleepy fishing village into a great modern port (rival of Brindisi), laid out broad avenues and block after block of modern sanitary dwellings which with cracked plaster and sprung roofs were still safely standing last week.

Saintly Skull. In Naples, too, though tenements were split open, though houses, churches and bridges fell, the loss of life was comparatively small. The first tremors set all the church-bells in the city to jangling. Crying Miracola! Miracola! (Miracle! Miracle!) pious Neapolitans tumbled from their houses to pray in the streets. At dawn hundreds were kneeling before the cathedral, calling upon St. Januarius.

A great and good man, a bishop and a martyr, St. Januarius is not the Patron Saint of Earthquakes, but of Naples. Tortured and beheaded by the Emperor Diocletian, his skull and two phials containing his blood (see cut) are among the most sacred relics of Naples Cathedral. Eighteen times a year the phials of blood miraculously liquefy. The skull has a reputation for stopping eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius. While the faithful prayed in the square last week, dour Cardinal Ascalesi, splendid in scarlet soutane and sash, held high the gold-encased skull, blessed 20,000 worshippers.

Relief. All Italy mobilized for the relief of the stricken district. From his desk in the red brick palazzo Venezia, Il Duce ordered to the stricken district five regiments, a squadron of observation planes, and his brand new Earthquake Relief Train. From the Vatican Pope Pius sent a special nuncio, Mgr. Spirito Chiapetta. Little King Vittorio Emanuele went himself, motored from village to village. Exhausted soldiers and rescue squads, grief-stricken peasants glimpsed a pair of bright eyes and the top of His Majesty's campaign cap as the car passed, were comforted.

It was a heartrending tour. In Melfi, soldiers and workmen had been working like mad trying to extricate pretty 20-year-old Giuseppina Bocheppi, pinned under a building, starving but still alive, moaning for help. Just as the royal car entered the village another wall collapsed, killed Giuseppina and one of her rescuers. King Vittorio Emanuele, who had stood helplessly wringing his hands before a similar scene in another village an hour before, burst into tears.

In Aquilonia a hollow-eyed, dejected peasant couple passed the royal car carrying the bodies of their two dead children. Immaculate aides-de-camp leaped quickly from the car to help, but the grief-stricken couple shook their heads. They wanted to bury their children with their own hands.

In one day the Naples army corps alone sent 12,000 rations of bread, 16,000 tins of meat, 7.500 tents, 15,000 blankets into the stricken district. Anxious as Prime Minister Mussolini was to succor his people, he was still more anxious to preserve Italian dignity, pride. Politely but firmly he refused all offers of help from abroad.

Earthquake Zones. Why do earthquakes so often recur in the same places? Writes the erudite Montessus, whose world seismological map is speckled with nearly 160.000 quakes: "The earth's crust trembles almost only along two narrow bands which lie along great circles of the earth, the Mediterranean, or Alpino-Caucasian- Himalayan Circle; and the Circum-Pacific or Ando-Japanese-Malayan Circle." Fifty-three percent of all recorded earthquakes have occurred on the first of these, the Eurasian earthquake belt (see map, p. 23). Neatly tucked in the western end of this belt is much-troubled Naples.

Readers of Bulwer Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii remember the destruction of ancient Rome's shore resort, by earthquake and eruption of Vesuvius in 63 and 79 A. D. Since then Central and Southern Italy has been shaken by innumerable minor and six major earthquakes. The 1456 quake wiped out 40,000 people in Naples, that of 1626, 70,000 more. In September 1693, 100,000 died in Sicily. Buildings fell and graveyards filled again in 1783. Many an Italian oldster remembers the horror of Messina in 1908. Obscured by War news was the quake of 1915 when 30,000 Italian lives were destroyed. Italian pacifists cried then: "This is God's justice on a bloodthirsty world!"

Scientists divide earthquakes into two main groups, those of volcanic origin (generally local in character), and what they call tectonic earthquakes: slipping and faulting of the earth's crust either from subsurface erosion or (as many now hold) a result of the gravital pull of the sun and moon. Though Vesuvius had been in mild eruption for a fortnight before last week's quake, Italy's greatest seismologist, Professor Giovanni Agamennone, insisted that last week's cataclysm belonged to the latter class:

"Although the quake zone is in a volcanic area, I firmly believe the earthquake was due to tectonic causes, that is, it was the result of the enormous and persistent work of erosion done by the incessant flow of great bodies of underground water. We must absolutely exclude the theory that the quake was due to the present activity of Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic centers in the stricken zone gave not the slightest sign of activity at the time of the quake."

Manhattan's leading seismologist, Father Joseph Lynch of Fordham University, talked about flywheels:

"There will always be earthquakes, just as it will always be necessary to adjust flywheels. The spinning of the earth is not unlike a flywheel's motion. Factors are constantly at work calling for readjustment. Pressure on different parts of the earth's crust varies. Even the moon may have some effect. I look upon the quake recorded yesterday as the first of a series."

Backing up Father Lynch, minor shocks occurred last week in New Zealand, South America, Germany.

Disagreeing radically with the seismologists, Naples' dour Cardinal Ascalesi, guardian of St. Januarius' skull, insisted that the real cause of the earthquake was the indecent dresses of Neapolitan women.

"The conduct of our young people," said His Eminence, "has attracted the vengeance of providence."

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