On Monday evening, a spherical bomb was thrown into the
Piazza Colonna, at Rome. As the band was playing, the square was full of people, and the explosion caused a con- siderable amount of damage. Six persons in all were injured, four of them slightly, but a child and a gendarme seriously. Though a brief panic ensued, the crowd was soon pacified, and the band went on with its music. The perpetrator of the outrage has escaped without arrest, and there seems no clue to his whereabouts. Probably the crime was inspired by the desire for private vengeance, and not by any political motive. That, however, is by no means a consolatory explanation. If intending murderers are to throw dynamite into crowded public places in the hope of killing an enemy, and without any thought as to how many persons may be wounded or slaughtered inci- dentally, society will have to take special means,—if special means exist,—to protect itself against such criminals. A more callously wicked act it is hardly possible to imagine.
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