"The Dearest Thing"

Like many another evil man, Bandit Salvatore Giuliano (TIME, Sept. 12) loves his mother. Or so he says. While thousands of determined young carabinieri, aided by airplanes, combed the hot Sicilian hills for him last week, Giuliano henchmen boldly invaded Palermo and put up handbills: "You, carabinieri! Have you not reflected that I do not fight for money, but for the love of my mother, which God has given us as the dearest thing in our lives? Just think that there can be no family without a mother . . . What reason can you give for defining me as a bloodthirsty scoundrel if I kill you only because I feel a duty toward my mother?"

Giuliano's mother, Maria, is a quarrelsome old woman who has long been in jail for helping him. "Giuliano," said a Palermo street vendor, "is trying to survive only so that he will not give his mother pain and perhaps cause her death by news of his death."

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