TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE EARTHQUAKE.
THE year 1908 has closed with a record of death and destruction which is unsurpassed in the history of European catastrophes. The great earthquake at Lisbon is supposed to have caused the deaths of about fifty thousand persons, whereas it is to be feared that when the full roll of Reggio and Messina is made up the immediate deaths will number nearly two hundred thousand, while those who will die later from their injuries and the effects of exposure and starvation must greatly increase the total. Already the number of injured is said to reach over a hundred thousand. No doubt natural catastrophes accompanied by great loss of life in China and India give totals as great as, or even greater than, that with which we are dealing ; but in those cases the tale of human misery has not been anything like so appalling. For example, twenty-three years ago a so-called tidal wave swept over a low-lying part of the coast of Bengal and overwhelmed a vast number of persons, and in the same way a flood in the Yaugtse Valley destroyed human life by the hundred thousand. Death by flood, however, cannot be compared to death in the shape assumed this week in Sicily and Calabria. When an earthquake overthrows cities by the seashore, death by drowning is added to death by land shock and conflagration. In such an earthquake earth, fire, and water contend in hideous competition for the lives of the victims. The air seems the only element that is not ravening to leap in fury on the human race.
Survivors at Reggio and Messina give an awe-inspiring description of the swiftness and almost simultaneousness of the three attacks. First came, or first appeared to come, the seaquake wave, inaccurately called a tidal wave owing to its resemblance to such a phenomenon. The wave, rising some thirty or forty feet in height, swept over the towns of Messina and Reggio, hurling destruction on all that came in its way. Either just after or at the same time the earth rocked and trembled, toppling over the strongest of buildings, shaking down huge walls, and twisting roads and bridges as if they were bits of twine. Next the wave receded, carrying with it timbers and wreckage of all sorts and the countless corpses of men and animals, just as when a dam made by a child at play is broken and the water hurries along with it odds and ends of sticks and straw which it has licked from the sides of the mimic embankments. But the retreat of the waters brought no relief to the wretched inhabitants of the doomed towns. Almost instantly fires began to break out in every direction among the ruined houses and to consume what remained of them. Nature seemed determined that nothing should be left undone to obliterate what were once populous cities. During the crisis of the catastrophe the air is described as being full of the shrieks of the wounded, but there soon followed an even more terrifying silence. Finally, lest any horror should be wanting, bands of criminals, either recruited from men whose prison walls had crumbled away and left them free, or else from the more degraded part of the population, began to loot what remained of the houses and to rifle the persons of the dead, dying, and wounded. And all the time through the ruined streets of what literally five minutes before had been great and populous cities (Messina had a hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants) wandered half-naked men, women, and children mad with terror and misery, bewailing with crazy clamour their own ruin and the loss or death of those dearest to them. Rescuers say that the people they first encountered in the streets were speechless, or at any rate too distracted to answer the questions put td them.
It is a strange aggravation of the misery caused by the earthquake that almost all the survivors are left without clothes. It was pitch-dark and nearly everybody was in bed when the first shock was felt ; but that shock was so terrific, and a Southern population knows so well that in the case of an earthquake he who stops to dress or to collect clothes or valuables is dooming himself to death, that none waited for these purposes. People rushed headlong into the streets exactly as they were. So strong is the instinct to get away from, the houses in places subject to earthquake that in the towns of Southern Italy the slightest tremor of earthquake will fill the streets as if by magic. The present writer once heard from an Englishwoman an ' account of a slight earthquake at Naples in the "fifties." She happened to be looking out of the window of her hotel when the shock took place. Almost before she had realised what had happened, she saw that what appeared to be a mob had filled the street below her. It has often been noted that living in an earthquake zone produces a sense of fatalism among the population. Not only can man do nothing to avoid earthquakes, but even what he can do to mitigate their worst consequences is very small. No doubt the erection of light, one-storied buildings, such as are used in Japan, buildings from which escape is easy, and which when they fall do the minimum of damage, would be useful, but it is only a palliative. Again, it is possible that science may 'ultimately be able to give some warning of impending shocks. But even here the remedy is of very doubtful utility, since the destructive shock in many cases follows very closely on the first sign of disturbance. Man may provide against destruction by flood and fire, or even by the tornado and the blizzard, but nothing he can do will stay the earth when it begins to rock, or prevent the solid ground opening beneath his feet and swallowing him and his works as it did only five days ago at Reggio. As was natural and certain, the sympathy expressed throughout the world for Italy in her misfortune has been deep and sincere. The British people have been specially moved, for they love Italy and the Italians, and nothing which wounds them can fail to wound us. Unhappily there is not much that we can do to remove so vast a mountain of suffering as that which now oppresses Sicily and Southern Calabria. What little can be done through gifts of money and by personal service will, however, be done, and done in the spirit of the truest and keenest sympathy. The Lord Mayor opened a public subscription at the Mansion House literally within a few hours of the news of the catastrophe reaching these shores, and we do not doubt that the widest support will be given to his fund. It is, we feel, quite unnecessary to say anything more on this point. The appeal already has had the widest possible publicity. We may add that the British public has watched with a glow of admiration as well as of sympathy the prompt and businesslike action of the King of Italy. He and the Queen realised without a moment's hesitation where was their proper place at such a time. They started for Sicily with as little fuss and delay as if they had been private persons. Both'of them have been working their hardest to rescue those who still remain alive among the ruins, and to give help and comfort to the wounded and distressed. We cannot doubt that the good example thus shown, and the encouragement given to the rescuers, are of very real value. Before a calamity so tremendous men engaged in the exhausting toil of rescue are apt to grow faint, and to let a certain sense of fatalistic discouragement overmaster them. Their individual efforts seem so puny and so forlorn in face of death that comes not individually, but in battalions and brigades, nay, corps d'araide, that they are tempted to fold their hands and say : "God's will be done ! We can do nothing." Yet against such pessimism it is essential that a struggle shall be made, and that man should redeem his character as the possessor of the unconquerable mind. King Victor Emmanuel's presence among the rescuers is a sign and symbol that his courage has not failed him, and it must not fail his subjects. Italy's need and sorrow are the opportunity for Italy's noblest and bravest to show that they feel towards her, in Wordsworth's noble phrase, as a lover or a child.
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