"The Italian state has passed this difficult test with honor, but the judiciary and law enforcement agencies have revealed, in their actions, a disheartening inefficiency that allowed the Red Brigades to operate with mocking arrogance. The blame lies not so much with the police as with those who, out of demagoguery, to please the left, or to gain easy popularity, sought to dismantle the secret services, remove the most dutiful officials, and turn prisons into dormitories with daily leave. The subversives of democracy and the opponents of the law were able to preach and wreak havoc unhindered. We hope not to see them now hypocritically joining in mourning for a crime for which they are, ideologically if not materially, jointly responsible. Theirs were not merely words. A young man blown to pieces by a bomb on the Trapani-Palermo railway—the incident occurred yesterday—belonged to Democrazia Proletaria. The bandits who raided a department store in Bologna came from the Student Movement. It is pointless for these groups to now feign consternation and astonishment at the savage acts of the Red Brigades. Terrorism is their own creation."