"Sterminator Vesevo" (Vesuvius the great exterminator): Diary of the Eruption of April 1906 — John Shaqi
"Sterminator Vesevo" (Vesuvius the great exterminator): Diary of the Eruption of April 1906Serao, Matilde
History
"Sterminator Vesevo" (Vesuvius the great exterminator): Diary of the Eruption of April 1906
Serao, Matilde
Vesuvius (Italy); Volcanoes
No alms any longer, but some means by which everybody may rise
again, take up again his modest and laborious round of existence,
support himself and his family, and close every day, with a blessing
to God. Some means by which he may end his mortal pilgrimage having
accomplished his work among men, as a worker, and head of a family.
Save the earth, save the wheat and the vine, the oil and the oak, save
every inch of land around the silent country homes. Save the land which
slopes down over the cruel and fatal mountain, just as that, farther
off, which cannot fear its tragic explosion. Ah, those poor lands
ascending up to S. Anastasia all covered and buried, but still trying
to emerge, those poor country lands around beautiful Somma Vesuviana
cut out of existence, smothered and gone! Ah! that silent and deserted
grave which is now the country between Somma and Ottaiano, dead, under
half a meter of stones and cinders, everything dead, the grass, the
plants, the bushes, the trees! Who will forget, who will ever forget
that incomparable vision of death?
Call men of science, those who study science to better life, and tell
them to get together, to observe, to notice, to reveal to the ignorant
the secret to save this dead land. Call men of finances, not those who
understand it as a mere dance of cyphers, but those who know what it
means to life, and let them form a great project, by which the land may
be saved.
Money will come, people are already giving it, and more will still be
given, especially if people know that it is not only used for charities
but for the redemption of work, not only used for provisory help, but
for a larger, wiser, and more austere aid.
The Government will give now or later all that is necessary, and
perhaps beyond what is necessary. Form a great, serious practical
project, based on strong views, an agrary and financial project, which
may teach, guide, advise! Give little or much money, as needed or where
it is needed, in order that every farmer may get back his little tract
of land, that every peasant may rebuild his field, and every owner may
redeem his property.
Give your advice and take the easiest means to have it fulfilled.
Let money be given, not lent to he who has cleared and redeemed his
field. If the money has to be lent, let it be on long time, and let the
Government pay a strong part of the interest on the agrary loan, just
as was done at the time of the earthquake in Ligury. Let the cheapest
and most efficacious advice be given, that every man may start with his
own hands and the help of his people, to free his land from its funeral
shroud, and let help be given as a prize to will, and tenacity. Let it
be a civil help to honest citizens, that their small destroyed fortune
may be rebuilt for their children. This, at least, you must do, men of
good will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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