The statement that the Italian railway strike has failed in southern Italy and that the Catholic organizations are strongly opposing it is of rather grave significance, What the state of Socialist propa ganda, which is certainly not unconnected with the strike, may be exactly in Italy to-day we do not know. But certainly eighteen or twenty years ago Socialism in Italy was violently anti-clerical. There was an illustrated paper in Rome called "?'Asing" (the ass), which purported to preach the workingman's cause and subsisted chiefly upon the grossest, most indecent gibes at priests, cardinals and the whole world of the Vatican. Those who do not see eye to eye with the Roman Catholic Church in all things could probably find subjects for criticism in Rome. But. the scurrility of "U'Asino" was a thing
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.