When I visited the commune it seemed as if a plague had fallen. More soldiers were being hurried to the district and posted in spots to command the situation, arrests were being made, even in houses where the dead lay; but a terrible silence hung over both military and populace. I talked with one of the Carabineers, and he told me he could never forgive himself for helping to shoot down his own people, and that he longed for the day when he could leave the service. It was the second disturbance in which he had been, and in both cases the sufferers were the simple-minded peasantry who, finding themselves deprived of what they regarded as their just rights, had been incited to violence by Socialists. The _disgrazia_ made a profound impression throughout the kingdom, and more than one resident foreigner in speaking of the subject remarked: “Some day there is going to be more than that. The people who really work and produce something in this country are getting about tired of paying enormous rents to support the aristocrats, and heavy tithes and taxes to maintain the Church, the army, and a government of splendor. We expect trouble, and that before long.” The Socialists are growing, and a paper called _Avanti_, published in Rome, is the chief organ of the malcontents. During our stay in Italy it made a number of successful _exposés_ of ministerial and official derelictions and won suits brought against it in retaliation, while numerous illustrated weeklies indulged in caricatures and cartoons of the Pope, cardinals and ministers, that seemed to meet with great popular favor; but my observation was that socialism as a principle was not generally understood by the masses, and the only reason that the socialistic groups have much following was because they are against things as they are rather than for socialism as a solution of the problem of what they should be. Socialism as a political belief is not being readily transplanted to this country by any class of the emigrants except the educated emigrants from the north and in and about Rome. CHAPTER V IN THE ROMAN ZONE From the Sabine Mountains to the sea, south to Frosinone and north to Siena is that section of the peninsula which, it seems to me, is so greatly affected by life and conditions in Rome as to be set off properly as the Roman zone. It includes the greater portion of the provinces of Romagna Lazio, or Latium and Umbria, and the lower portion of Tuscany. The greatest positive influence in Italy to-day is the Church; the greatest potentiality, the army and the military party; the greatest question, the condition of the peasantry of Italia Meridionale; the greatest danger to the nation as a nation, the bitterness between the people of the great and prosperous provinces of the north and the less favored ones of the south.