It is with infinite regret that we record the news
which was beginning to get through to England when we went to press last week. In the early morning of July 28rd a series of violent earthquake shocks passed through the country cast of Naples and up to Foggia. We have tried elsewhere to express our sympathy with the Italian people. Here we only chronicle the facts. More than two thousand people perished and the material damage has been enormous. Whole villages must be rebuilt, some of them on safer sites. Most of the victims were sleeping in their houses which collapsed upon them ; fortunately many people were sleeping out in the harvest fields where they worked by day. Of the buildings that escaped, there remain fortunately such magnificent specimens as the Cathedral and Arch of Trajan at Benevento : their builders have defeated the tooth of time and the angry blows of nature.
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