Evening Star Newspaper, September 2, 1929, Page 20

“lack of suspicion on the part of the 20 DEPORTED ITALIANS GET AWAY | FROM ISLAND IN SMALL BOAT _?)olitical Prisoners Aided by Friends, but Two Are Delayed by Passing Patrols While En Route to Craft. Recent cables from France told of the arrival in Paris of three Italian political deportees who had One was Francesco Nitti, nephew of succeeded in escaping from Lipari. the former prime minister of Italy. The second was a professor, the third a war veteran. Nitti was asked to write the story of his erperiences and escape. This story is presented in, two installments, the second of which appears below. BY FRANCESCO FAUSTO NITTL | (Written exclusively for The Btar and the North American Newspaper Alllance.) © ' PARIS, September 1.—It was at Lipari that my dream of escape began to ;ake shape when I met two dear friends, Signor Emilio Lussu and Prof. Carlo selli. Signor Lussu is & hero of the war, and as & captain serving in the famous Sassari Brigade he was four times decorated for gallantry. Alter the war he became head of the so-called party of action in Sardinia. This party represented the strongest and largest democratic opposition to Fascism, and Lussu fought Fascism uncompromisingly in the press, in the Chamber of Deputies and in his own private life. October 31, 1926, during one of the pogroms organized by the Fascists a thousand armed Fascists who sought against their adversaries, Lussu’s house at Cagliari, Sardinia, was attacked by to sack Lu: home and kill him. Lussu put up a brave defense, and one of his assailants was killed. Lussu was arrested, and after a year in prison under remand was tried but adjudged not guilty of manslaughter, the court finding he had acted in self-defense. Deported for Five Years. Public opinion was entirely favorable to him, but nevertheless Mussolini had him deported to Lipari for five years. Prof. Carlo Rosselli, & leader among the younger clement of the Soclalist Reformist party, had organized the flight abroad of Signor Filippo Turati, leader of his party. Rosselli was ar- rested and sentenced to 10 months after a trial which caused a sensation. When he had served his sentence Ros- gelll was deported to Lipari for five ars. I found in those two friends a will equal to my own to snap the chains which bound us. But this was not easy, Lipari i5 off the coasts of Cala- bria, Sicily and Sardinia, and is, as it were, surrounded by Italy. The supervision of the deportees is of the keenest character. On the is- land 400 men are assigned to guard 500 deportees. ‘There are, moveover, 200 Fascist militiamen under four of- cers, 80 carabinieri, police, sailors, teleg- raphists, etc. Furthermore, the local inhabitants are always ready to spy. The coasts are guarded day and night by three high-speed motor launches armed with machine guns, by a small gunboat, and by various other craft. A wireless*station maintains constant contact between our police authorities and the naval authorities at Messina, Palermo, Tratani and Cagliari. Prisoners Restricted. At Lipari the deportees may leave their houses at 7 in the morning, but must be at home at 7 p.m. in Winter and 9 in Summer. They may walk only in the three or four ‘roads in the interior of the island, and not for more than about three-quarters of a mile. Farther away from the little township a string of 12 posts 'manned by Faselst militia prevents the deportees from straying too far. Lussu, Rosselll and I were under par- ticularly stringent surveillance. Dur- ing his short walks Lussu was followed step by step by four policemen. The ttle house in which he and I vas under constant guard. quarters of an hour or so after we were supposed to be at home at night patrols visited each house and made certain the deportees were all indoors. A further roll call was made every morning at 8 o'clock. We worked a year making everything ready for our escape, down to the small- est detail. Scme of our friends in exile abroad had promised their help, and said that they would come and carry us away at night, taking, the guards by surprise. Our first task was to find a place suitable for escaping in a boat. We studied the habits of our jailers. For months we all followed a course which attracted no sort of suspicion, and at the same time we were carrying on our rfiepunuons for giving our guards the ip. Resorted to Disguise. Often at night Lussu would go on reconnoitering expeditions, disguised as an old fisherman. Those expeditions gave us valuable information. We fixed upon = place for getting away from the island. To reach it we should have to ass quite close to two armed patrols, gul we reckoned on darkness and on Fasc ‘The place was not far from the village. It was a little cove sur- rounded by rocks rising sheer from the sea. The arrangement was that we meet our friends from abroad at this cove at @ pm., July 27, about a month ago. This was the exact hour at which, as ‘on every other evening, we had to be in for evening roll call. If our friends should fail us and the guards surprise Us we should certainly be stopped, but we had every faith in our friends and we decided to carry through the attempt. Rcsgem. who lived three-quarters of & mile from the cove, had to reach it after a dangerous creep through a net- work of alleys. Lussu, who could not come out of the house by the front door, which was ;Vntchtd b]{' ;he ‘police, ‘opped a Y0 rom a window over- ldorokplgtx a lnnep:t the back of the house. He was disguised as an old boatman and he limped along, smoking a big pipe. through several brightly lit streets Where the officers of the police and of the garrison were walking about or sit- ting at cafes. T was standing in a tavern until a few minutes before the time for our escape: then, with a cheery “au revoir” to some {riendly deportees, who naturally knew nothing about my plans, I walked to- ward my house. Whenyl had got to a certain point 1 turned and, to avoid a patrol coming toward me, iay flat on the ground. Then | I crawled on all fours to a deep shadow, where I remained motionless a few inutes. m1-‘rcm-n there I reached our rendezvous without further difficulty, and diving fully dressed into the sea I swam to &) int where it had been agreed that our riends should pick us up. Eight forty- five struck from the clock in the village. "There was no sign of Lussu or Rosselli, and I was beginning to ask myself what had happened and Whether my two friends, less fortunate than myself, had been arrested. All sorts of melancholy | thoughts crossed my mind, and I was ring through the darkness in the ope of seeing the boat which was to take us away, but all in vain. Nine o'clock struck, and I was becom- ing more and more anxious about my two friends. I had been in the water nearly 20 minutes, and I was gemn'[ chills. Boat Approaches. A little later I heard a noise, which considering my state of nerves, struck as terribly loud. It was the of motor engine coming closer, nd I was in an agony of doubt whether the boat Was the one I was expecting or a police 1unch. jark outline of & boat showed e darl W 50 yards away. It was coming slowly toward the spot where I was up to my neck in water. When it was 10 yards away a voice which I recognized at once s that of one of my friends who had been exiled abroad whispered the pass- I«IIQQF on. '?de!nnol describe what I felt. There was something marvelous inf the purc= ‘tuality with which our friends had kept the appointment, especially when ¢ considers the smallness of their boat _the hundreds of miles they had had to cover, as well as the difficulties-to be ‘overcome in approaching the island every kind of light patrol boat. I swam as quickly as I could toward my {riends, who dragged me on board and gave me a hearty welcome. Meanwhile, what had happened to Lussu and Rosselli? I quickly told my friends all there was to be told. They had stopped their motor to avoid being overheard. ‘Waited in Silence. It was an agonized wait. We lay in silence, broken only by an oceasional whisper, and we strained our aching eyes to plerce the night in hope of see- ing our two friends. We were 8o ab- sorbed we never noticed that the wind and the current had driven the boat toward shore and into a circle of light. My friends flung themselves on the oars and pulled desparately in the direc- tion of the sea. We had come so close to land that I was able clearly to see people coming and going in the little square leading to the water's edge and men in uniform enjoying the evening coolness. It was at that moment, when we had really begun to despair of ever seeing Lissu and Rosselll, that we heard two quick splashes near the spot where we should all have met. It could only be the missing men. It was then after 9:30, and we had just time to escape. In a quarter of an hour the alarm would have started in pursuit. ‘The motor throbbed loudly, but now we were indifferent to the noise. In- deed, at that moment the naoise seemed a cheering ohe, almost like a word of encouragement from a powerful ally. We quickly closed with our friends, who were swimming. dragged them aboard, and then started off full speed. Delayed by Patrols. After the first few moments of excitement Lussu told us he had come | across a patrol in front of a little street down which he had to go. A large lamp was throwing light on the place, and at any moment he might have been reorganized. He sat down a few steps away from the patrol, lighted a pipe and waited for the soldiers to move a few yards. Then he walked past them. Rosselli had lost time hidden in a doorway waiting for a squad of pol‘fge to pass. . e kept our journey at full speed 10 hours. Untit dawn we had to g:n- sider the possibility of having been followed. A quarter of an hour after our departure the alarm must certainly have been given and the wireless sta- tion must have warned all the neigh- boring naval bases of our escape. It was quite possible we might meet at daybreak some torpedo boat steaming to bar our way. Fortunately we had no such un- pleasant meeting. Probably the sur- prise and confusion on the island were so complete the authorities sent out entirely contradictory reports and in- structions. July 28 we reached a foreign land, and a few days later we were in_France. Thirteen days afterward the Fascist government issued a brief communica- tion to the Italian press about our escape, being ‘obliged to give the in- formation owing to the full reports about us already published in a large section of the foreign press. Deport Rosselli's Brother. Resorting to the penal practices of other days, when reprisals and taking of hostages were favored, two days fte escaped Rosselli’s brother, history student popular among his friends and entirely unconnected with politics, was arrested and im- mediately deported to Ustica. Rosselli's wife, an English-born wom- an, Miss Marion Cave, formerly a teacher at the British Institute in Florence, was arrested at Courmayeur,. where she was spending a holiday witk her two-year-old boy, knowing nothing about her husband’s escape. She was kept a day and a night in prison with criminals, and it was only because she was suffering from her heart that she was taken to a hotel, where she remained under close guard and was forbidden to communicate with anybody. (Copsright, 1929, by North American News- paper Alliance.) ——— L. D. LOUGHRAN RITES SET. Official of Cigar Firm Will Be Buried Tomorrow. Puneral services for Leo D. Loughran, 45 years old, vice Prosldrm. of the wholesale cigar firm of Daniel Loughran Co., Inc., 1309 H street, who died at his residence, 1407 Sixteenth street, Thurs- day, will be conducted in St. Matthew's Catholic Church tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. Interment will be in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Mr. Loughran was a- member of the Washington Lodge of Elks and a life léllel:’lb!l' of the Congressional Country lub. e A portrait by the Rev. Matthew Wil- Uam Peters, the only clergyman mem- ber of the Royal Artists of Britain, was recently sold in London for $9,450. eal Estate Loans (D. C. Property Only) 6% No Commission Charged You can take 12 years to pay off your loan without the expense of renewing. $1,000 for $10 per month, | including interest and prine cipal. Larger or smaller loans at proportionate rates. PERPETUAL BUILDING ASSOCIATION [Established 1881 Cor. 11th and E N.W. o ™ Reg. $10 Mantel Clocks $7.98 —8-day msahogany- finished clocks—guar- anteed tfmekeepers. “Secdnds” Porcelain TABLE TOPS . 79c¢ —Choice of two sizes, the 25x36 and 25x40. Subject to maker’s slight defects. Splen- did for use in laundries, ga- rages, ete., as well as for table tops. 0ld English Floor Waying Out= fit—brush, 1 qt. liquid wax, 2 Ibs. paste wax. .Origl- nally $6.00. Manning & Bow- man Electric Toaster, with guar- anteed nichrome element. $2.88 Manning & Gold-Encrusted GLASSWARE 46¢ ea. —Sparklin are, in rose, green or the plain crystal col- ors. Banded with 22.kt. gold encrustation, in Minton pat- tern. Sherbets, tumblers, ice teas, etc.—in great variety. Reg. 98c Galvan- Bowman _Electric Irons, with heat- proof stand, long cord and socket. Formerly $4.00. ized Iron Garbage Cans. 4%;-gal. size, with lock - tight Universal Electric 4-Pc. URN SET $23.95 —A handsome _set, triple nickel plated and highly pol- ished. Four pieces, cup, silver- lined urn, gold-lined sugar and creamer, and 14-in, scratchless bottom oval tray. $40.00 value. Dutch Ovens, 10- inch size with bail handle and cover. ‘The deep ridges allow the proper dripping of mois- Ash or Trash Cans, with rein- forced top and bot- tom and two side Reg. handles. 98¢ Imported GRILL PLATES 49¢ ea. —Three-compartment plates, o serviceable porcelain, pret- tily decorated. 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Choice of white and 20 colors. $1.00 Mirro Aluminum Covered Fry Pans, with colored wood handles and knobs. ~1 qt. 4 hr. drying Varnish Stain and a rubber set brush, for this low price. ture. Reg. $1.39. $1.49. Fine Dinnerware Sets 100 Pieces Res. $993 894,95 —Cholce of eight beautiful border patterns, baked on fine, thin porcelain. Pret- tily finished with 14-kt. coin matt gold handles. 100 pieces is a service for twelve. L\ Reg. $17.95 Luncheon 14-kt. coin matt gold handles. Special Sale W | An- EVE RAluminum Reg. $133 to $1.80 Values 4-qt. Covered Pot Roast ettles. Reg. $1.75 3.in1 French Fryers. Reg. $1.65. 500 More “Vatco” Universal Jiffy Auto Seat Covers » 7 \ ) C | — —These nationally known N e —— covers are made of practical, durable striped covert cloth. In sizes to fit the backs and seats of any make of car. Just the things to protect the upholstery of your car from sun and dust. —Jiffy Covers for seats and backs of Coupes and dste: — for- Roadsters o now 9100 set 75 Large Cedar Chests Regularly $27.98" $13.98 &= _Genuine red cedar chests. in plain and paneled front atylee: 44 and 48 inch lengths, elt’:’h complete with lock and key, cedar handles and strong casters. Handsome pieces of furniture as well as useful storage places, offered in this sale at exactly Half Price, “Seconds” $1.19 Holland ' Window Shades —Neat shades, mounted oh spring rollers and complete with tassel and all -nece: fix- tures, 3x5.9 size. Only slightly imperfect. Each Kann's—Third Floor. Use Our Budget Payment Plan : for Large Purchases 3.egz Poachers. Reg. $1.35 —With prices so low the thrifty housewife will find this the time to stock her pantry shelves with needed Wear-Ever Aluminum utensils. In the assortment you will find— 11x15%-in. Cooky Sheets. Reg. $1.35 13Y4-in. Bakiug Pan. eg. $1.75. Kann’s—Third Floor. Dainty Stamped Aprons —Children’s Aproms, stamped and ready-made, of unbleached material; bound in colors. i —Sizes 8, 10 and n.79c —~Women's Stamped Aprons, of unbleached material. 39 plain and tinted...... C —~Women's Aprons, with pretty designs stamped on unbleached material. Choice of four l9c designs .o..eeeieeeiiins with de- ~Women's A v and tinted on igns stal ix‘ggluch:gw material. c Good size, semi-made.. —Women's Hoover s?h Aprons, stamped and ready- made of unbleached material. 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Sanford’s Beauvais Axminster Rugs —What beauty you can bring into your home with a well chosen rug. And now you will find a complete line of these popular, long wearing rugs, in patterns, colors and sizes for every purpose—at most interest- ingly low prices. :7/151& o5 ;2’ L I 1 . 847! x70 In. A A o) 63 F....... 82805 27254 In.. 95 2 :;& Attractive Seamless ] Wilton Rugs at 814x10% Fr. —Heavy, seamless rugs in exquisite color- ings and handsome patterns. And unusual value at-the price. Tapestry Weave ' Brussels Rugs $19.95 Room Sizes —Mfii«dfin collection of rugs, in rich™ g on of rugs, in ri colorings—elal and borde patterns. At a practical price, -.,-"d