Whenever he needs money, and cannot get 
it from fresh victims, he sends them on the 
streets of Palermo or Naples to earn it for 
him. 
 
He served 
once a prison sentence in America for 
procuring young girls for a similar purpose. 
 
Both statements are absolute lies. 
The first falsely and wantonly accuses identifi-
able women of being enslaved prostitutes. 
The second falsely and wantonly accuses a 
well-known man of letters of being a proved 
felon. 
Taken together, they show that anonymous 
scoundrels, backed by the resources of a great 
newspaper organisation, can—in fact, as 
distinct from legal fiction—freely direct, against 
any man or woman who happens to be socially 
ill-protected, an unscrupulously untrue and in-
decent campaign, which, judged by its effects, 
may be morally indistinguishable from murder. 
 
3.  This state of affairs constitutes a menace 
of unprecedented gravity against the life and work 
of every individual citizen, and against the very 
foundations of public morality. 
The allegation that a man has been imprisoned 
as a white slaver is as vitally damaging as any 
that can be made. 
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